Locating Migration

by Schiller, Nina Glick; Caglar, Ayse

• ISBN13: 9780801476877
• ISBN10: 0801476879
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-12-16
• Publisher: Cornell Univ Pr

Summary

In this book Nina Glick Schiller and Ayse Çaglar, along with a stellar group of contributing authors, examine the relationship between migrants and cities in a time of massive urban restructuring. They find that locality matters in migration research and migrants matter in the reconfiguration of contemporary cities. This book provides a new approach to the study of migrant settlement and transnational connection in which cities rather than nation-states, ethnic groups, or transnational communities serve as the starting point for comparative analysis. Neither negating nor privileging the nation-state, Locating Migration provides ethnographic insights into the various ways in which migrants and specific cities together mutually constitute and contest the local, national, and global. Cities are approached not as containers but as fluid and historically differentiated analytical entry points. Chapters explore migrants' relationship to the neoliberal rebranding, redevelopment, and rescaling of down-and-out, aspiring, and global cities in the United States and Europe. The various chapters document the pathways of incorporation and transnational connection of migrants from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe. Migrants are approached not as a homogenous category but in terms of their range of experiences of class, racialization, gender, history, politics, and religion. Setting aside the migrant/native divide that haunts most migration studies, the authors of this book view migrants as residents of cities and actors within them, understanding that to be a resident of a city is to live within, contribute to, and contest globe-spanning processes that shape urban economy, politics, and culture.

Author Biography

Nina Glick Schiller is Professor of Social Anthropology and Director of the Research Institute for Cosmopolitan Cultures at the University of Manchester. She is coauthor of Nations Unbound and Georges Woke up Laughing and founding editor of Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power. Ayse aglar is Professor of Sociology and Social Anthropology at the Central European University and a Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction: Migrants and Cities	p. 1
Migration and Cities: Refraining the Topic
The Urban Question and the Scale Question: Some Conceptual Clarifications	p. 23
The Socioterritoriality of Cities: A Framework for Understanding the Incorporation of Migrants in Urban Labor Markets	p. 42
Locality and Globality: Building a Comparative Analytical Framework in Migration and Urban Studies	p. 60
Migrants as Scale Makers: Rescaling Urban Neighborhoods, Cities, and Their Regions
Scalar Positioning and Immigrant Organizations: Asian Indians and the Dynamics of Place	p. 85
Cities and the Social Construction of Hot Spots: Rescaling, Ghanaian Migrants, and the Fragmentation of Urban Spaces	p. 104
Transnational Migration and Rescaling Processes: The Incorporation of Migrant Labor	p. 123
The Campaign for New Immigrants in Urban Regeneration: Imagining Possibilities and Confronting Realities	p. 143
Rescaling Processes in Two "Global" Cities: Festive Events as Pathways of Migrant Incorporation	p. 166
Downscaled Cities and Migrant Pathways: Locality and Agency without an Ethnic Lens	p. 190
Remaking Locality: Uneven Globalization and Transmigrants' Unequal Incorporation	p. 213
Afterword: An Ethnographic View of Size, Scale, and Locality	p. 235
Bibliography	p. 243
Biographical Notes	p. 267
Index	p. 271
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