Asian migrants are inextricably linked to contemporary debates concerning the nation-state, neoliberalism, globalization, and transnationalism. This volume brings together these streams of inquiry and proposes a synthetic approach to examine various processes of migration and community formation on a global scale. The essays included in Asian Diasporas look at the worldwide dispersal of Asian populations through the lens of diaspora. They illustrate the underlying structures of inequality that create diasporic communities--the cultural barriers that impede belonging to the place they inhabit and the place they call "homeland," the unequal processes that embody globalization, and the social inequalities in host and origin country alike. Five major themes connect and cut across the collection: the recognition of inter-Asian strife; the persistence of the nation state; the salience of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality; the forces of labor, colonialism, and globalization; and the centrality of culture.

A common answer to disparate questions: envisioning Caribbean federation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century
Moving toward the crossroads of our destiny: black diaspora politics and the pursuit of West Indian nationhood (1930-1945)
From long-standing dream to impending reality: Caribbean federation and the mobilization of black diaspora politics (1945-1950)
Finalizing, defining, and welcoming the new nation (1950-1958).
A common answer to disparate questions: envisioning Caribbean federation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century
Moving toward the crossroads of our destiny: black diaspora politics and the pursuit of West Indian nationhood (1930-1945)
From long-standing dream to impending reality: Caribbean federation and the mobilization of black diaspora politics (1945-1950)
Finalizing, defining, and welcoming the new nation (1950-1958).

Dialogues Across Diasporas focuses on the shared historical legacies of members of the Africana and Latina diasporas, and the cultural impact of the African diaspora in the Americas. This book seeks to emphasize connections rather than divisions among different migratory ethnic communities via a reconfiguration of borders and ethnic identities. This collection of essays has three major goals: first, to foreground shared themes and strategies in the literary productions of women of Africana and Latina/o descent; second, to highlight the importance of the arts for community activism within shared diasporic spaces; and third, to illustrate the potential of artistic and activist collaborations among women from both groups across disciplinary, political, national, and ethnic divides. Dialogues across Diasporas is divided into three sections. The first section provides a theoretical overview of diasporic migrations, politics, and identities. It argues that diverse diasporas can unite around shared political and cultural experiences such as converting contested spaces into communities and resisting rhetorics of exclusion. The second section demonstrates the diverse ways in which migratory women and daughters of the diaspora frame their histories, lived experiences, and different forms of knowledge via poetry, short stories, academic essays, and other art forms. The third section focuses on women s activism, suggesting opportunities for collaboration among and between diverse diasporic communities."

Based on a decade the author spent among the African-Caribbean Creole people on Nicaragua's southern Caribbean coast, Disparate Diasporas is a study of identity formation and politics in that community. Edmund Gordon lived in Bluefields, Nicaragua, during most of the 1980s, a turbulent period during which he participated in the community's search for solutions to problems ranging from a crumbling economic base to the mutual mistrust and animosity between most Creole people and the Sandinista revolutionary government. Disparate Diasporas is not a conventional ethnography. Rather than being just an observer, Gordon actively participated in the life of the community, intent on contributing to its political processes. A basic premise of his book is that engagement and activity can enhance ethnographic insights and sharpen theoretical understanding. Disparate Diasporas shows how a particular Black community can evolve distinct types of diasporic consciousness, and, depending on the historical moment, how different types of memories, consciousness, and politics come to predominate. The author uses the Gramscian notion of common sense to understand the Creole community's history of shifting politics and ideologies, focusing on the period of the 1970s and 1980s. His work explains the inability of the Sandinistas to come to terms with the racial and cultural challenge to the Nicaraguan nation posed by the Creole community.

Asians have settled in every country in the Western Hemisphere; some are recent arrivals, other descendents of immigrants who arrived centuries ago. Bringing together essays by thirteen scholars from the humanities and social sciences, Displacements and Diasporas explores this genuinely transnational Asian American experience-one that crosses the Pacific and traverses the Americas from Canada to Brazil, from New York to the Caribbean. With an emphasis on anthropological and historical contexts, the essays show how the experiences of Asians across the Americas have been shaped by the social dynamics and politics of settlement locations as much as by transnational connections and the economic forces of globalization. Contributors bring new insights to the unique situations of Asian communities previously overlooked by scholars, such as Vietnamese Canadians and the Lao living in Rhode Island. Other topics include Chinese laborers and merchants in Latin America and the Caribbean, Japanese immigrants and their descendants in Brazil, Afro-Amerasians in America, and the politics of second-generation Indian American youth culture. Together the essays provide a valuable comparative portrait of Asians across the Americas. Engaging issues of diaspora, transnational social practice and community building, gender, identity, institutionalized racism, and deterritoriality, this volume presents fresh perspectives on displacement, opening the topic up to a wider, more interdisciplinary terrain of inquiry and teaching.  

Arabs --Latin America.
Jews --Latin America.
Latin America --Emigration and immigration.
Middle East --Emigration and immigration.
Latin America --Ethnic relations.

Immigration is an important and much-discussed topic throughout the world, and its depiction on screen helps shape the way we perceive this issue. In Migration in Contemporary Hispanic Cinema, Thomas G. Deveny looks at film and immigration with a global perspective, examining emigration and immigration films from Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Central America, and the Hispanic Caribbean. In this volume, Deveny approaches each movie with a close textual analysis, keeping in mind the sociological theories regarding migration, as well as incorporating criticism on the film. Recurring themes, such as the depiction of the Other, individual identity, and social and cultural contextualization (stereotypes, rejection, acceptance, and change) are identified and discussed. Films such as Flowers from Another World, Return to Hansala, El Camino, 14 Kilometers, Maria Full of Grace, and others are carefully studied. Additional chapters analyze films about Colombian mules coming to the United States and Uruguayan prostitutes in Spain, and the final chapter examines Al otro Lado (To the Other Side), a film with narratives involving three nationalities and three destinations, thus showing the global nature of the phenomenon. Through the analyses of immigration and emigration depictions in film, this book enables readers to comprehend the universal nature of migration. Like the films it analyzes, Migration in Contemporary Hispanic Cinema will provide a deeper understanding of people who leave their homeland for a better life."

Childhood and Migration in Europe explores the under-researched and often misunderstood worlds of migrant children and young people, drawing on extensive empirical research with children and young people from diverse migrant backgrounds living in a rapidly changing European society.  Through in-depth exploration and analysis of the experiences of children who moved to Ireland in the first decade of the 21st century, it addresses the tendency of migration research and policy to overlook the presence of children in migratory flows.    Challenging dominant adult-centric perspectives on contemporary global migration flows and presenting understandings of the lives of migrant children and young people from their own experiences, this book presents a detailed exploration of children's lives in four different migrant populations in Ireland.  With a unique comparative perspective, Childhood and Migration in Europe advances upon current conceptualisations of migration and integration by interrogating accepted views of migrant children and focusing on children's own voices and experiences. It challenges the prevailing assimilationist discourses underlying much existing research and policy, which often construct migrant children as deficient in different ways and in need of 'being integrated'.

Circular migration, whereby rural migrants do not remain permanently in town, has particular significance in the academic literature on development and urbanization in Africa, often having negative connotations in southern Africanist studies due to its links with an iniquitous migrant labour system. Literature on other African regions often views circular migration more positively. This book reviews the current evidence about circular migration and urbanization in sub-Saharan Africa. The author challenges the dominant view that rural-urban migration continues unabated and shows that circular migration has continued and has adapted, with faster out-migration in the face of declining urban economic opportunities. The empirical core of the book illustrates these trends through a detailed examination of the case of Zimbabwe based on the author's longstanding research on Harare. The political and economic changes in Zimbabwe since the 1980s transformed Harare from one of the best African cities to live in over this period to one of the worst. Harare citizens' livelihoods exemplify, in microcosm, the central theme of the book: the re-invention of circulation and rural-urban links in response to economic change. Deborah Potts is a Senior Lecturer in the Geography Department of King's College London. She works in the broad research field of urbanization and migration in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly southern Africa and has conducted research on these themes in Harare in Zimbabwe since 1985. Southern Africa (South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, Namibia) and Zimbabwe: University of Cape Town Press (PB)

Around the globe, people leave their homes to better themselves, to satisfy needs, and to care for their families. They also migrate to escape undesirable conditions, ranging from a lack of economic opportunities to violent conflicts at home or in the community. Most studies of migration have analyzed the topic at either the macro level of national and global economic and political forces, or the micro level of the psychology of individual migrants. Few studies have examined the “culture of migration”—that is, the cultural beliefs and social patterns that influence people to move. Cultures of Migration combines anthropological and geographical sensibilities, as well as sociological and economic models, to explore the household-level decision-making process that prompts migration. The authors draw their examples not only from their previous studies of Mexican Oaxacans and Turkish Kurds but also from migrants from Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, the Pacific, and many parts of Asia. They examine social, economic, and political factors that can induce a household to decide to send members abroad, along with the cultural beliefs and traditions that can limit migration. The authors look at both transnational and internal migrations, and at shorter- and longer-term stays in the receiving location. They also consider the effect that migration has on those who remain behind. The authors’ “culture of migration” model adds an important new dimension to our understanding of the cultural beliefs and social patterns associated with migration and will help specialists better respond to increasing human mobility.

The literature on migration realities in Europe is usually centered around the role played by the EU on member states' migration policies. In order to offer a comparative cross-country approach, previous research often allows too much to fall through the cracks. Facets of Migration in Contemporary Europe: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Specific Challenges directly addresses this issue. Through its multidisciplinary approach, it includes contributions ranging from policy-oriented chapters dedicated to the role of low-skilled and 'illegal' migrants to the securitization of migration in Europe as well as the role of Diasporas and language policies for the integration of migrants. The central theme of the volume is that experiences of migration in Western European countries can help the emerging countries of immigration in Central and Eastern Europe to improve their migration policies and living conditions.

Yosefa Loshitzky challenges the utopian notion of a post-national "New Europe" by focusing on the waves of migrants and refugees that some view as a potential threat to European identity, a concern heightened by the rhetoric of the war on terror, the London Underground bombings, and the riots in Paris's banlieues. Opening a cinematic window onto this struggle, Loshitzky determines patterns in the representation and negotiation of European identity in several European films from the late 20th and early 21st centuries, including Bernardo Bertolucci's Besieged, Stephen Frears's Dirty Pretty Things, Mathieu Kassovitz's La Haine, and Michael Winterbottom's In This World, Code 46, and The Road to Guantanamo.