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Migration Literature (migration + literature)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	100%

Selected Abstracts

Remitting the gift: Zambian mobility and anthropological insights for migration studies

POPULATION, SPACE AND PLACE (PREVIOUSLY:-INT JOURNAL OF POPULATION GEOGRAPHY), Issue 1 2005
Lisa Cliggett
Abstract This article brings together anthropological theories of gift exchange and ethnographic data on migrant gifting (,remitting') in order to understand the core of investing in social relations through remitting practices. Migration literature from throughout the developing world documents important patterns of remitting that furthers our understanding of how migrants' earnings help rural investment. In contrast to the majority of migration literature, scholars working in different regions of Zambia have documented migration patterns and remittance practices that do not echo the documented findings from other regions of the developing world. In Zambian migration, remittances consist more of food, ,town goods' or cash, rather than the larger sums of money or durable goods that other migration studies describe. The Zambian literature also documents cases of non-remitting. Rather than provide significant support to relatives in sending communities, Zambian migrants invest in social networks over time through ,gift-remitting'. These ,gift-remittances' facilitate options to return to home communities, or to maintain mutually beneficial social ties for both migrants and relatives in home villages. These findings compel policies directed towards enhancing migrants' remitting power to consider the core social foundation of their ties to home, and how investing in social relations can be incorporated into policy development. The article draws on fieldwork with the Gwembe Tonga people of Zambia's Southern Province since 1994, and recent ethnographic literature from Zambia. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Geographies of Gender and Migration: Spatializing Social Difference1

INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW, Issue 1 2006
Rachel Silvey
This article provides a review of the contributions that the discipline of geography is making to gender and migration research. In geographic analyses of migration, gender differences are examined most centrally in relation to specific spatialities of power. In particular, feminist geographers have developed insight into the gender dimensions of the social construction of scale, the politics of interlinkages between place and identity, and the socio-spatial production of borders. Supplementing recent reviews of the gender and migration literature in geography, this article examines the potential for continued cross-fertilization between feminist geography and migration research in other disciplines. The advances made by feminist geographers to migration studies are illustrated through analysis of the findings and debates tied to the subfield's central recent conceptual interventions. [source]

Religious Affiliation and Attendance Among Immigrants in Eight Western Countries: Individual and Contextual Effects

JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION, Issue 1 2006
FRANK VAN TUBERGEN
This study examines the religious affiliation and participation of immigrants from a large-scale, comparative perspective. I propose a "specific migration" framework, in which immigrants' religiosity is an outcome of both individual characteristics and contextual properties related to immigrants' country of origin, country of destination, and combinations of origin and destination (i.e., communities). I use notions discussed in the religion and migration literature that fit into this scheme. To test these ideas, I collected and standardized 20 existing surveys on immigrants in eight Western countries, yielding about 38,000 immigrants. Applying multilevel models, I found, among other things, that: (1) immigrants from countries with higher levels of modernization express lower levels of religious commitment; (2) immigrants in religious countries are more religious themselves; and (3) the well-documented higher levels of religious commitment among women is not generalizable to immigrants. [source]

Demographic variation in housing cost adjustments with US family migration

POPULATION, SPACE AND PLACE (PREVIOUSLY:-INT JOURNAL OF POPULATION GEOGRAPHY), Issue 4 2008
Suzanne Davies Withers
Abstract This paper examines the demographic variation in housing-cost adjustment associated with family migration in the United States. The American population continues to migrate away from very large metropolitan areas down the urban hierarchy towards smaller metropolitan and micropolitan areas, an exodus that is frequently attributed to the push effects of diseconomies and congestion, increasing presence of foreign-born population, and housing affordability problems, particularly in the large gateway cities. Yet, there is no empirical study of the housing-cost adjustments associated with migration. This study addresses this gap by empirically assessing whether migration is associated with housing affordability adjustments, whether migrating families increase or decrease their housing costs, whether demographic variations occur in these adjustments, and whether there are significant differences in the geographies of housing-cost adjustments among migrant families. These questions are addressed using the Census 2000 county-to-county migration flows merged with Census measures, and the 2000 Public Use Micro-Sample 5% National file. The results indicate significant changes in housing costs associated with migration, and interstate migration in particular. On average, the direction of migration is to more affordable places. Families migrating from the traditional gateway cities with a relatively high percentage of foreign-born populations are the most likely to make enormous shifts in affordability. However, these moves do not correspond neatly with regional white-flight theory. Hispanics are far more likely to decrease housing costs with migration, as are non-citizens and naturalised citizens. This research makes an important contribution to debates within the family migration literature, including conjectures of regional white flight and gendered theories of migration. Family migration towards greater housing affordability appears strategic and embedded in larger issues of family work,life balance. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]