Social anthropology and transnational studies in Latin America: introduction (original) (raw)
Related papers
Immigration and Transnationalism: Rethinking the Role of the State in Latin America
As more Latin American migrants make their way to the United States, the issue of transnationalism has received increased scholarly attention. Transnationalism refers to the delinking of the individual from his or her government and an increase in international ties as a result of the economic globalization that promotes the movement of people, goods, money, and ideas. Prevailing consensus is that the state, particularly in Latin America, is weakened by transnationalism because individuals are freer than ever from state control. This article argues that examining Latin American emigrant policies yields a different conclusion, namely that the state’s response to transnational pressures has made governments more active and relevant in certain ways than in the past. Studies of transnationalism must therefore incorporate state strategies for a better understanding of its impact on Latin American governments.
Migration, Development, and Latin American Sociology
The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Latin America, 2020
The migration-development relationship is a complex, multifaceted phenomenon. Most debates around this topic have been shaped by the hegemonic discourses of the receiving countries and international organizations. As a Latin American scholar, the author be lieves that these approaches suffer from at least four limitations that affect an under standing of international migration's causes and consequences in the contemporary glob al society: overvaluing the impact of remittances, neglecting the contributions of immi grants in receiving societies, failing to adequately discuss the root causes of migration, and distorting the question of rights. This chapter contributes to a global and comprehen sive approach to the migration-development relationship.
2018
This article retraces the ways in which politically-engaged Mexican migrant organizations from Chicago have contributed to the emergence of transnational political spaces since the late 1990s. The results of the underlying broad ethnographic study in Chicago and the Mexican state of Michoacán contribute to an understanding of transnational political spaces, based on the interplay of cross-border arenas of multifaceted political action. Mexican migrant organizations interact with their home communities, government agencies on both sides of the border and US civic organizations in civic and institutional political arenas. The ethnographic analysis highlights case-specific characteristics of transnational political spaces that are central to a more extensive theoretical understanding of transnationalization processes: "the local" as network of social relationships; the development of agency; political action in and beyond nation-state structures; and the intertwining of multifaceted interaction and communication arenas.
Diversities of international and transnational migration in and beyond Latin America
The Routledge Handbook of Latin American Development, 2018
Referred to by Durand and Massey (2010) as a series of 'new world orders,' the population flows into and out from Latin America since the 1500s have been characterized by huge diversity. Not only has the direction of flows changed over time, but migrants have moved to the continent, they have left, they have moved within and they have maintained complex transnational ties across borders. More than merely reflecting multiple patterns of mobilities, these movements have been the cornerstone of nation-building in Latin America, underpinned by expressions of intersectional power, exclusions, and inequalities (Wade, 2010). Furthermore, they act as important barometers of socioeconomic , political, and cultural change in the continent and other parts of the world. This chapter traces these processes focusing on three sets of movements: first, early flows from Europe to Latin America; second, migration from Latin America to Europe and the United States (US); and third, movements within Latin America, before exploring the ways in which transnational ties link these together. The chapter also argues that these processes are often underpinned by inequalities of power manifested in multiple ways, and that the complexities, multidirectionality, and transnationality of migration within and beyond Latin America is often overlooked and simplified.
Syllabus: SOC700 Latin American Migration and Transnationalism
This multidisciplinary course will examine issues related to Latin American migration to North America, Europe and Asia, and the transnational relationships that link migrants with people in both their sending and receiving communities. In particular, we will look at case studies of migrants from Mexico, Central America, Brazil, Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. We will also discuss how immigration and refugee policies, international trade agreements, foreign policy, and domestic political and economic conditions shape the context of migration in both sending and receiving societies as well s how emigration impacts the countries of origin and how migration varies across the region. The course is integrated with the PLACA speaker series and the annual PLACA conference (cosponsored with Cornell University) and through the speaker series and conference, students will have the opportunity to meet with some of the authors from the course and talk about their work. Through participation in the conference and engagement with speakers, students will have the opportunity for professional development within the field of immigration research. Featured speakers will include: *Alfredo López (Physician and former migrant worker) who will speak about the lives and health issues of migrant farmworkers
This article derives from ethnographic studies developed in the Northern Chilean territories that lie adjacent to Peru and Bolivia. The research results suggest that the daily activities of transborder inhabitants generate frictions between the local inscription of social practices, and the transnationalization of communitarian knowledge, economies and memories. These frictions situationally update the national identities in these areas. Over the last two decades, an idea has prevailed in migratory studies that the migrant’s border crossings articulate transnational social fields between origin and host societies, leading to a globalization “from below.” Ethnographic findings defy this conception, since the social networks and practices that interconnect these borderlands predate the establishment of the national frontiers. It was not the communities who transnationalized the territories: the borders transnationalized them. I will illustrate this assertion by ethnographically following Joanna, an Aymaran shepherdess that found a transnational solution to the lack of successors to her shepherding activities.
Regional responses to transnational migration in North and Central America
2011
This paper analyses the manifestations of and contestations to the migration management paradigm in North and Central America. I pay special attention to the understudied Central American Isthmus countries. I argue that migration management is not only an important response to increasing transnational migration but it also shapes the institutional arrangements of a new regional mobility regime. This regime is characterised by multilateralisation and tends to establish new forms of social control on mobile populations. Informed by studies of neoliberal governmentality and international government, recent research has criticised the concept of migration management as marked by a depoliticising language that tends to ‘teach’ technocratic western standards of migration governance to the countries and former ‘imperial subjects’ of the global South. Somewhat neglected in this recent wave of critical research, however, has been the interest expressed by the countries of the global South in...