Migration and Culture

The International Library of Studies on Migration series

编辑罗宾·科恩教授essor of Development Studies and Director, International Migration Institute, University of Oxford and Gunvor Jónsson, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, SOAS University of London, UK

Migration and Culture marks a first in providing a comprehensive collection of published articles linking migration and culture. Prior approaches to migration have often stressed statistical and economic factors. The theoretically challenging and comparative accounts represented here are part of a new wave of thinking which illustrates the meaning of migration and its profound cultural implications. With an original introductory essay by the editors, this volume will be of great interest and value to sociologists, anthropologists, and those interested in cultural studies, diaspora, transnationalism and post-colonialism and the cultural aspects of globalisation.

‘Cohen and Jónsson have assembled an impressive array of contributions that will interest researchers, teachers, and students who wish to understand the complex relationships between migration and culture. They begin with their own original essay on the complicated relationship between culture and migration. Informative and wide-ranging, it performs the important task of defining culture. . . This introductory essay provides a good, substantive overview of issues surrounding the topic of migration and culture. . . This book deserves the attention of all scholars who study migration. The contributions vividly reflect the international character of research on migration and culture, demonstrating that social scientists around the world, analyzing migration in its many different contexts, are profoundly advancing knowledge about the relationship between it and culture. . . In addition, the collection convincingly reveals that ethnographic methods of investigation are shedding new light on the noneconomic causes and consequences of migration that have been unduly neglected by quantitative studies. Economists, sociologists, and geographers would gain an appreciation of this brand of qualitative research by consulting the volume. Finally, the contributions provide rich evidence that the traditional model of migration, settlement, adaptation, and assimilation that has guided research should be replaced by a fresh theoretical approach that conceptualizes migration in terms of transnational identities and transnational communities.
– Robert L. Boyd, Journal of Regional Science