Tag: refugee and migration studies

The Road to Belonging is Paved with Charity

Catherine Trundle’s recently published volume Americans in Tuscany: Charity, Compassion, and Belonging explores the lives of American female migrants to Italy, and follows a collection of women as they navigate Tuscan society in an attempt to integrate. The author discovered that these women have used charitable acts as a road map to guide their quest to belong. Following, the author provides more information about her background and how it led her to share the stories of this migrant group.

 

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What drew you to the study of American female migrants in Italy and their quest for inclusion?

 

I had conducted previous ethnographic work on American migrants to rural New Zealand, and was fascinated with what it meant to be an American abroad – how one’s sense of nationality and citizenship gets transforms through engagements with the stereotypes that others have of the migrant self, and how ‘culture’ gets characterized and sometimes essentialized in the process.

 

Continue reading “The Road to Belonging is Paved with Charity” →

Simulated Shelves: Browse July’s New Books

We are delighted to present a selection of our newly published, and soon to be published, July titles from our core subjects of Anthropology, Cultural Studies, Film Studies, History and Medical Anthropology.

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AMERICANS IN TUSCANY
Charity, Compassion, and Belonging
Catherine Trundle

 

Since the time of the Grand Tour, the Italian region of Tuscany has sustained a highly visible American and Anglo migrant community. Today American women continue to migrate there, many in order to marry Italian men. Confronted with experiences of social exclusion, unfamiliar family relations, and new cultural terrain, many women struggle to build local lives. Continue reading “Simulated Shelves: Browse July’s New Books” →

Today In History

 

Statehood Day is a holiday that takes place on June 25th in Slovenia & Croatia to commemorate both countries’ declaration of independence from Yugoslavia in 1991.

On related subjects from Berghahn Central & Eastern Europe List:

 

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STRANGERS EITHER WAY
The Lives of Croatian Refugees in their New Home
Jasna Čapo Žmegač
Translated by Nina H. Antoljak and Mateusz M. Stanojević

 

Croatia gained the world’s attention during the break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. In this context its image has been overshadowed by visions of ethnic conflict and cleansing, war crimes, virulent nationalism, and occasionally even emergent regionalism. Instead of the norm, this book offers a diverse insight into Croatia in the 1990s by dealing with one of the consequences of the war: the more or less forcible migration of Croats from Serbia and their settlement in Croatia, their “ethnic homeland.” This important study shows that at a time in which Croatia was perceived as a homogenized nation-in-the-making, there were tensions and ruptures within Croatian society caused by newly arrived refugees and displaced persons from Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Refugees who, in spite of their common ethnicity with the homeland population, were treated as foreigners; indeed, as unwanted aliens. Continue reading “Today In History” →

Women in History

Eighty six years ago on June 18, 1928, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic as a passenger aboard a Fokker tri-motor aircraft that was piloted by Wilmer Stultz and Louis Gordon. Just four years later, in 1932 Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean. She completed her 2,026 mile journey in under 15 hours after departing from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland.

Forty five years later on same date, June 18, 1983, Sally Ride became the first American woman to fly to space as a crew member on space shuttle Challenger for STS-7.

To celebrate women in history we invite you to browse through some of our Gender Studies titles:

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GENDER HISTORY IN A TRANSNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
Networks, Biographies, Gender Orders
Edited by Oliver Janz and Daniel Schönpflug Continue reading “Women in History” →

Simulated Shelves: Browse May’s New-Book Library

This month, Berghahn’s library will expand by eleven books. The soon-to-be-published titles make up a distinct lot, ranging from Abigail Loxham’s Cinema at the Edges to Anne Eriksen’s Antiquities to Heritage to Philip Ther’s The Dark Side of Nation-States. The following list of new volumes is complete with brief descriptions of the books and a peek at each cover.

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NEGOTIATING IDENTITY IN SCANDINAVIA

Women, Migration and the Disaspora

Edited by Haci Akman

Continue reading “Simulated Shelves: Browse May’s New-Book Library” →

Marking Museum Week: #AskTheCurator or View the Book

This week hundreds of museums across the United Kingdom and Europe are participating in Twitter’s first Museum Week campaign. Each day during this week is associated with a hashtag, from #DayInTheLife to #MuseumMemories, all intended to hit on various delightful aspects of the museum world. Today’s hashtag, #AskTheCurator is an opportunity to engage with museum experts. But for those who prefer to engage with experts the classic way — by way of their books — we have curated a collection of some of our Museum Studies titles in the following gallery.

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EXTREME COLLECTING

Challenging Practices for 21st Century Museums

Edited by Graeme Were and J. C. H. King

By exploring the processes of collecting, which challenge the bounds of normally acceptable practice, this book debates the practice of collecting ‘difficult’ objects, from a historical and contemporary perspective; and discusses the acquisition of objects related to war and genocide, and those purchased from the internet, as well as considering human remains, mass produced objects and illicitly traded antiquities. Much of the book engages with the question of the limits to the practice of collecting as a means to think through the implementation of new strategies. Continue reading “Marking Museum Week: #AskTheCurator or View the Book” →

Storms, Sickness, Suspicions: The Darker Side of Migration

In Points of Passage: Jewish Migrants from Eastern Europe in Scandinavia, Germany, and Britain 1880-1914, published last October, contributors reveal some of the less-savory aspects of immigration (of which there were many). Following, in an excerpt from the newly published volume, editor Tobias Brinkmann gives two examples of passengers enduring misery before arriving on the supposed paradise of North American soil. This is the second entry about the book; read the former here.
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The essay collection “Points of Passage” seeks to shift attention from the well-known success story of Jewish immigration in the United States to the journey. On which paths did Jewish (and other) migrants travel from Eastern Europe to the ports on the North Sea and across the Atlantic between the 1880s and the 1920s, and which obstacles did they face? Researching the paths of migration can be much more challenging than studying immigration.

Continue reading “Storms, Sickness, Suspicions: The Darker Side of Migration” →

Egress and Ingress: Exploring ‘Points of Passage’

Ellis Island in New York City is a historically recognized entrance point for European migrants to the United States. But if this is so well-known, then why do we know so little about the points of departure? This is one of many research questions that informed the writing of Points of Passage: Jewish Migrants from Eastern Europe in Scandinavia, Germany, and Britain 1880-1914, published last October. Following, an excerpt from the volume — bookended by comments from editor Tobias Brinkmann — delves deeper into these queries.

 

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When I began researching the history of Jewish migrations in the 1990s I concentrated on immigrants. I collected sources on the settlement of Jewish immigrants from small villages in the Central and Eastern European countryside in Chicago between 1840 and 1900. Within a few years the immigrants built a Jewish community, prospered economically and became respected members of Chicago’s social and political circles. My first book concentrated on two major research questions that continue to drive immigration studies: the impact of forces strengthening or weakening ethnic communities, and the impact of assimilation processes on immigrants.

Continue reading “Egress and Ingress: Exploring ‘Points of Passage’” →

Following the Diaspora: A Study of the Hadrami Community

The Hadrami community’s migratory patterns throughout the Indian Ocean region have historically been propelled by trade and religious ambitions. Leif Manger’s complex ethnographic account of this community’s varied and widespread diaspora from South Yemen is explored in The Hadrami Diaspora: Community-Building on the Indian Ocean Rim, which was published this month in paperback. Following, Manger discusses his work on this volume and his time spent with this diverse community in widespread areas.

 

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Berghahn Books: What came first, your interest in Hadrami culture or your interest in migration? What drew you to these areas of study?

 

Leif Manger: Yemen has always been a dream for me, but I was particularly fascinated by the terraces in the mountains of the north of the country and the ecological effects of adaptations in such areas. This was due to my research interests in my early career, on intensification of agriculture, agro-pastoral interaction and development.

Continue reading “Following the Diaspora: A Study of the Hadrami Community” →

The Very Human Experiences of the Other

If the search for self was a game, migrants would be more than a few chips down. Having to overcome physical and cultural displacement in addition to psychological uncertainty makes the search, for those who are transient, a complicated quest. Below, in an excerpt from the Introduction of Being Human, Being Migrant: Senses of Self and Well-Being, published in October, editor Anne Sigfrid Grønseth addresses the difficulties of migration and asserts that these hardships are of larger breadth than simply issues of movement.

 

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This volume is as much about being human as it is about being a migrant. It takes as its starting point from the proposition that migrant experiences tell us about the human condition, on the basis that senses of well-being, self, other and humanity are challenged when people move between shifting social and cultural contexts. Our contemporary world is characterised by an increasing degree of movement that highlights how societies and cultural units are never separate but overlapping, rapid changing and engaged in repeated processes of fission and fusion.

Continue reading “The Very Human Experiences of the Other” →