논문
- 아카이브
- 인문DB
- 학술연구
- 논문
Adjustment of status, remittances, and return: Some observations on 21st century migration processes
- 저자
- Brettell, C.B.
- 서지
- City and Society 19(1)
- 발간일
- 2007
- 조회수
- 153
- SNS 공유
-
In his essay on disjuncture and difference in the global economy, Arjun Appadurai (1996:33) develops five dimensions of global flows: ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes and ideoscapes. He suggests that the suffix ‘scape’ allows us to examine these global flows from different angles and perspectives that take into account historical, linguistic and political situated-ness of different sorts of actors at multiple levels of analysis from the nation state to the individual. Migrants are included in his concept of ethnoscape—part of the shifting world of persons. Facilitated by improved transportation and global communication, as well as by political change, more people from more places are leaving their homelands to find opportunity elsewhere. There is virtually no place in the world that is untouched by this movement, whether internal or international, whether as a sending nation, a receiving nation, or both. Martin et al (2006:4) have suggested that if the world’s migrants were gathered as one “nation” it would be the sixth most populous. This astounding fact, in and of itself, is a call to anthropologists to place the global “nation” of migrants at the forefront of their research agenda.
In his paper, economist Philip Martin discusses three impor-tant ‘Rs’—recruitment, remittances, and return—that are impor-tant to an understanding of labor migration in the 21st century. I will address each of these in turn, drawing on data from recent research conducted on US immigrants in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area, as well as some observations drawn from past research in a country with a long history of emigration that is now a country of immigration—Portugal. The broader question is how the respective concerns of anthropology and economics can be brought closer together in a more interdisciplinary understanding of migration processes and outcomes. This broad question embraces several more specific issues: the integration of a top-down approach with a bottom-up approach (macro and micro, if you will); the integration of policy with the motivations of people; and the util-ity of cross-cultural and cross-national comparison. Ultimately, Philip Martin challenges anthropologists to consider seriously what they can contribute to debates about the management of labor migration, as well as what explanations anthropologists might offer for why management (or broader migration policies) sometimes fails?
In his paper, economist Philip Martin discusses three impor-tant ‘Rs’—recruitment, remittances, and return—that are impor-tant to an understanding of labor migration in the 21st century. I will address each of these in turn, drawing on data from recent research conducted on US immigrants in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area, as well as some observations drawn from past research in a country with a long history of emigration that is now a country of immigration—Portugal. The broader question is how the respective concerns of anthropology and economics can be brought closer together in a more interdisciplinary understanding of migration processes and outcomes. This broad question embraces several more specific issues: the integration of a top-down approach with a bottom-up approach (macro and micro, if you will); the integration of policy with the motivations of people; and the util-ity of cross-cultural and cross-national comparison. Ultimately, Philip Martin challenges anthropologists to consider seriously what they can contribute to debates about the management of labor migration, as well as what explanations anthropologists might offer for why management (or broader migration policies) sometimes fails?
