International Migrants Day

On December 18, the international community recognizes and celebrates the rights of migrants around the world. Since year 2000, the international community has recognized International Migrants Day to highlight the human rights of migrants and express our support and solidarity.

 

To honor the day Berghahn is offering a 25% discount on all our Refugee & Migration Studies books for the next 30 days. At checkout, simply enter the code IMD15.

_________________________________________________________________________

Berghahn Journals is delighted to present a Free Virtual Issue dedicated to migration with hope that this will contribute to the overall discussion of the lives of migrants.

Click Here to Access the Special Virtual Issue! 

_________________________________________________________________________

Below is a selection of relevant titles on Refugee & Migration StudiesInternational Migrants Day

 

BUSH BOUND
Young Men and Rural Permanence in Migrant West Africa
Paolo Gaibazzi

 

Whereas most studies of migration focus on movement, this book examines the experience of staying put. It looks at young men living in a Soninke-speaking village in Gambia who, although eager to travel abroad for money and experience, settle as farmers, heads of families, businessmen, civic activists, or, alternatively, as unemployed, demoted youth. Those who stay do so not only because of financial and legal limitations, but also because of pressures to maintain family and social bases in the Gambia valley. ‘Stayers’ thus enable migrants to migrate, while ensuring the activities and values attached to rural life are passed on to the future generations.

Read Introduction

 

 

MAKING UBUMWE
Power, State and Camps in Rwanda’s Unity-Building Project
Andrea Purdeková

Volume 34, Forced Migration

 

Since the end of the Rwandan genocide, the new political elite has been challenged with building a unified nation. Reaching beyond the better-studied topics of post-conflict justice and memory, the book investigates the project of civic education, the upsurge of state-led neo-traditional institutions and activities, and the use of camps and retreats shape the “ideal” Rwandan citizen. Rwanda’s ingando camps offer unique insights into the uses of dislocation and liminality in an attempt to anchor identities and desired political roles, to practically orient and symbolically place individuals in the new Rwandan order, and, ultimately, to create additional platforms for the reproduction of political power itself.

Read PART I: INTRODUCTION

 

 

THE AGENDAS OF TIBETAN REFUGEES
Survival Strategies of a Government-in-Exile in a World of Transnational Organizations
Thomas Kauffmann

Volume 33, Forced Migration

 

Since the arrival of the first Tibetans in exile in 1959, a vast and continuous wave of international – especially Western – support has permitted these refugees to survive and even to flourish in their temporary places of residence. Today, these Tibetan refugees continue to attract assistance from Western governments, organizations and individuals, while other refugee populations are largely forgotten in the international agenda. This book shows and discusses how Tibetan refugees continue to attract resources, due, notably, to the dissemination of their political and religious agendas, as well as how a movement of Western supporters, born in very different conditions, guaranteed a unique relationship with these refugees.

Read Introduction

 

 

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF BORDER DRAWING
Arranging Legality in European Labor Migration Policies
Regine Paul

 

The conditions for non-EU migrant workers to gain legal entry to Britain, France, and Germany are at the same time similar and quite different. To explain this variation this book compares the fine-grained legal categories for migrant workers in each country, and examines the interaction of economic, social, and cultural rationales in determining migrant legality. Rather than investigating the failure of borders to keep unauthorized migrants out, the author highlights the different policies of each country as “border-drawing” actions. Policymakers draw lines between different migrant groups, and between migrants and citizens, through considerations of both their economic utility and skills, but also their places of origin and prospects for social integration. Overall, migrant worker legality is arranged against the backdrop of the specific vision each country has of itself in an economically competitive, globalized world with rapidly changing welfare and citizenship models.

Read Introduction: Labor Migration Management: A Case for Interdisciplinary and Interpretive Policy Studies 

 

 

NEGOTIATING IDENTITY IN SCANDINAVIA
Women, Migration, and the Diaspora
Edited by Haci Akman

 

Gender has a profound impact on the discourse on migration as well as various aspects of integration, social and political life, public debate, and art. This volume focuses on immigration and the concept of diaspora through the experiences of women living in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Through a variety of case studies, the authors approach the multifaceted nature of interactions between these women and their adopted countries, considering both the local and the global. The text examines the “making of the Scandinavian” and the novel ways in which diasporic communities create gendered forms of belonging that transcend the nation state.

 

 

 

Forthcoming in Paperback!

BEING HUMAN, BEING MIGRANT
Senses of Self and Well-Being
Edited by Anne Sigfrid Grønseth
Epilogue by Nigel Rapport

Volume 23, EASA Series

 

Migrant experiences accentuate general aspects of the human condition. Therefore, this volume explores migrant’s movements not only as geographical movements from here to there but also as movements that constitute an embodied, cognitive, and existential experience of living “in between” or on the “borderlands” between differently figured life-worlds. Focusing on memories, nostalgia, the here-and-now social experiences of daily living, and the hopes and dreams for the future, the volume demonstrates how all interact in migrants’ and refugees’ experience of identity and quest for well-being.

 

 

BELONGING IN OCEANIA
Movement, Place-Making and Multiple Identifications
Edited by Elfriede Hermann, Wolfgang Kempf and Toon van Meijl

Volume 3, Pacific Perspectives: Studies of the European Society for Oceanists

 

Ethnographic case studies explore what it means to “belong” in Oceania, as contributors consider ongoing formations of place, self and community in connection with travelling, internal and international migration. The chapters apply the multi-dimensional concepts of movement, place-making and cultural identifications to explain contemporary life in Oceanic societies. The volume closes by suggesting that constructions of multiple belongings—and, with these, the relevant forms of mobility, place-making and identifications—are being recontextualized and modified by emerging discourses of climate change and sea-level rise.

 

 

 

Forthcoming in Paperback

MIGRATION, SETTLEMENT AND BELONGING IN EUROPE, 1500-1930S
Comparative Perspectives
Edited by Steven King and Anne Winter

Volume 23, International Studies in Social History

 

The issues around settlement, belonging, and poor relief have for too long been understood largely from the perspective of England and Wales. This volume offers a pan-European survey that encompasses Switzerland, Prussia, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Britain. It explores how the conception of belonging changed over time and space from the 1500s onwards, how communities dealt with the welfare expectations of an increasingly mobile population that migrated both within and between states, the welfare rights that were attached to those who “belonged,” and how ordinary people secured access to welfare resources. What emerged was a sophisticated European settlement system, which on the one hand structured itself to limit the claims of the poor, and yet on the other was peculiarly sensitive to their demands and negotiations.

 

 

POINTS OF PASSAGE
Jewish Migrants from Eastern Europe in Scandinavia, Germany, and Britain 1880-1914
Edited by Tobias Brinkmann

 

Between 1880 and 1914 several million Eastern Europeans migrated West. Much is known about the immigration experience of Jews, Poles, Greeks, and others, notably in the United States. Yet, little is known about the paths of mass migration across “green borders” via European railway stations and ports to destinations in other continents. Ellis Island, literally a point of passage into America, has a much higher symbolic significance than the often inconspicuous departure stations, makeshift facilities for migrant masses at European railway stations and port cities, and former control posts along borders that were redrawn several times during the twentieth century. This volume focuses on the journeys of Jews from Eastern Europe through Germany, Britain, and Scandinavia between 1880 and 1914. The authors investigate various aspects of transmigration including medical controls, travel conditions, and the role of the steamship lines; and also review the rise of migration restrictions around the globe in the decades before 1914.

 

 

THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF REPRODUCTION
Migration, Health and Family Making
Edited by Maya Unnithan-Kumar and Sunil K. Khanna

 

Charting the experiences of internally or externally migrant communities, the volume examines social transformation through the dynamic relationship between movement, reproduction, and health. The chapters examine how healthcare experiences of migrants are not only embedded in their own unique health worldviews, but also influenced by the history, policy, and politics of the wider state systems. The research among migrant communities an understanding of how ideas of reproduction and “cultures of health” travel, how healing, birth and care practices become a result of movement, and how health-related perceptions and reproductive experiences can define migrant belonging and identity.

 

 

 

Honorable Mention 2013 PROSE Awards, Archaeology and Anthropology

New in Paperback!

PLACES OF PAIN
Forced Displacement, Popular Memory and Trans-local Identities in Bosnian War-torn Communities
Hariz Halilovich

Volume 10, Space and Place

 

“This is, overall, a carefully researched book following the tradition of Geertzian thick description in an effort to contribute theoretically through the concept of translocalism, analyze reflexively via the author’s own history of displacement and emplacement, and comment in a heartfelt way on how refugees recreate social worlds even after massive destruction. Halilovich’s account deserves room in any upper-level, if not introductory, undergraduate or graduate course covering some aspect of international migration, especially forced displacement — a phenomenon impacting some 50 million people around the world today.” · International Migration Review

Read Chapter 1. Introduction: The Journey through Bosnian War‒torn Communities

 

 

New in Paperback!

WIND OVER WATER
Migration in an East Asian Context
Edited by David W. Haines, Keiko Yamanaka, and Shinji Yamashita

 

“…this book is a worthy addition to migration research and Asian studies. It is warmly recommended to scholars, advanced graduate students, and anyone else interested in people on the move in Asia and beyond.” · Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute

Read Introduction

 

 

 

New in Paperback!

FRAGMENTED FATHERLAND
Immigration and Cold War Conflict in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1945-1980
Alexander Clarkson

Volume 34, Monographs in German History

 

“Drawing on a vast number of government records, including the national and local intelligence services as well as extensive press and secondary sources, Clarkson deftly and cogently analyzes the evolution of the FRG’s policies, from the conservative front line Cold War state of the 1950s that strongly supported anticommunist immigrants from Eastern Europe and the Balkans to a detente-seeking government in the late 1960s and 1970s that balanced the anti-colonial and anti-authoritarian movements within its borders with its core political and economic interests.” · Choice

Read Introduction: New Neighbours, New Challenges: Recognising Diversity

 

_________________________________________________________________________

From Berghahn Journals:

Transfers
Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies

 

Transfers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies is a new peer-reviewed journal publishing cutting-edge research on the processes, structures and consequences of the movement of people, resources, and commodities. Intellectually rigorous, broadly ranging, and conceptually innovative, the journal combines the empiricism of traditional mobility history with more recent methodological approaches from the social sciences and the humanities.

The journal’s scholarly essays, book and exhibit reviews, artwork and photography, as well as special features provide a rich variety of perspectives that include: analyses of the past and present experiences of vehicle drivers, passengers, pedestrians, migrants, and refugees; accounts of the arrival and transformation of mobility in different nations and locales; and investigations of the kinetic processes of global capital, technology, chemical and biological substances, images, narratives, sounds, and ideas.