Kate Vieira
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780816697519
- eISBN:
- 9781452954226
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816697519.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Migration Studies (including Refugee Studies)
American by Paper is a book about the consequences of papers—visas, green cards, and passports—for immigrant literacy. For immigrants, papers can mean the difference between family reunification and ...
More
American by Paper is a book about the consequences of papers—visas, green cards, and passports—for immigrant literacy. For immigrants, papers can mean the difference between family reunification and separation, a living wage and poverty, and sometimes life and death. Documented and undocumented, all 40 million migrants currently living in the U.S. must deal with papers. They often do so through everyday acts of writing. An ethnographic study, American by Papertells the story of how migrants write to attain papers, how they write when they cannot attain papers, and how their writing can function as papers. It describes how migrants in two communities—one from the Azores, largely documented, and one from Brazil, largely undocumented—come to experience literacy not as a means of assimilation, as educational policy makers often believe, nor as a means of empowerment, as literacy scholars often hope, but instead as enmeshed in papers, those authoritative bureaucratic objects that are the currency of highly literate societies and that powerfully regulate transnational lives.Less
American by Paper is a book about the consequences of papers—visas, green cards, and passports—for immigrant literacy. For immigrants, papers can mean the difference between family reunification and separation, a living wage and poverty, and sometimes life and death. Documented and undocumented, all 40 million migrants currently living in the U.S. must deal with papers. They often do so through everyday acts of writing. An ethnographic study, American by Papertells the story of how migrants write to attain papers, how they write when they cannot attain papers, and how their writing can function as papers. It describes how migrants in two communities—one from the Azores, largely documented, and one from Brazil, largely undocumented—come to experience literacy not as a means of assimilation, as educational policy makers often believe, nor as a means of empowerment, as literacy scholars often hope, but instead as enmeshed in papers, those authoritative bureaucratic objects that are the currency of highly literate societies and that powerfully regulate transnational lives.
Cawo M. Abdi
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816697380
- eISBN:
- 9781452952376
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816697380.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Migration Studies (including Refugee Studies)
The focus of this book is the factors—local and global, factual and fictional, political and historical—that shape Somali migration experiences in consequential ways. Comparing Somali settlement in ...
More
The focus of this book is the factors—local and global, factual and fictional, political and historical—that shape Somali migration experiences in consequential ways. Comparing Somali settlement in the UAE, a relatively closed Muslim nation where citizens are a minority within a large South Asian population of labor migrants, with South Africa, a nation where apartheid’s racial hierarchies determined immigration policies until very recently, with the United States, a traditional nation of immigrants with its own racial, socio-economic and political distinctions, sheds light on the significance of immigration policies in shaping migrant experiences. The analysis underscores the convergence of the local and global that prods so many people to move across borders in search for physical, economic, cultural, and spiritual wellbeing. It also shows how refugees and migrants develop distinct adaptive strategies in each social context, depending on economic opportunities and the religious, social, and political milieux they enter. Migrants’ religious, social, and political location within both their immediate environment and the broader society all remain key to the process of migrants' integration or exclusion, of whether they are able to realize their aspirations for an earthly Eden, jannah. The three studies show how Somalis’ search for flexible citizenship and physical and emotional security leads to unanticipated conditions that confound their expectations. Ultimately, finding the complexity of migrant and refugee lives, and how one’s understanding of successful migration and integration must go beyond legal, economic, and physical security to encompass a sense of religious, cultural, and social belonging.Less
The focus of this book is the factors—local and global, factual and fictional, political and historical—that shape Somali migration experiences in consequential ways. Comparing Somali settlement in the UAE, a relatively closed Muslim nation where citizens are a minority within a large South Asian population of labor migrants, with South Africa, a nation where apartheid’s racial hierarchies determined immigration policies until very recently, with the United States, a traditional nation of immigrants with its own racial, socio-economic and political distinctions, sheds light on the significance of immigration policies in shaping migrant experiences. The analysis underscores the convergence of the local and global that prods so many people to move across borders in search for physical, economic, cultural, and spiritual wellbeing. It also shows how refugees and migrants develop distinct adaptive strategies in each social context, depending on economic opportunities and the religious, social, and political milieux they enter. Migrants’ religious, social, and political location within both their immediate environment and the broader society all remain key to the process of migrants' integration or exclusion, of whether they are able to realize their aspirations for an earthly Eden, jannah. The three studies show how Somalis’ search for flexible citizenship and physical and emotional security leads to unanticipated conditions that confound their expectations. Ultimately, finding the complexity of migrant and refugee lives, and how one’s understanding of successful migration and integration must go beyond legal, economic, and physical security to encompass a sense of religious, cultural, and social belonging.
Robyn Magalit Rodriguez
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816665273
- eISBN:
- 9781452946481
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816665273.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Migration Studies (including Refugee Studies)
Migrant workers from the Philippines are ubiquitous to global capitalism, with nearly 10 percent of the population employed in almost two hundred countries. In a visit to the United States in 2003, ...
More
Migrant workers from the Philippines are ubiquitous to global capitalism, with nearly 10 percent of the population employed in almost two hundred countries. In a visit to the United States in 2003, Philippine president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo even referred to herself as not only the head of state but also “the CEO of a global Philippine enterprise of eight million Filipinos who live and work abroad.” The book investigates how and why the Philippine government transformed itself into what it calls a labor brokerage state, which actively prepares, mobilizes, and regulates its citizens for migrant work abroad. Filipino men and women fill a range of jobs around the globe, including domestic work, construction, and engineering, and they have even worked in the Middle East to support U.S. military operations. At the same time, the state redefines nationalism to normalize its citizens to migration while fostering their ties to the Philippines. Those who leave the country to work and send their wages to their families at home are treated as new national heroes. Drawing on ethnographic research of the Philippine government’s migration bureaucracy, interviews, and archival work, the book presents a new analysis of neoliberal globalization and its consequences for nation-state formation.Less
Migrant workers from the Philippines are ubiquitous to global capitalism, with nearly 10 percent of the population employed in almost two hundred countries. In a visit to the United States in 2003, Philippine president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo even referred to herself as not only the head of state but also “the CEO of a global Philippine enterprise of eight million Filipinos who live and work abroad.” The book investigates how and why the Philippine government transformed itself into what it calls a labor brokerage state, which actively prepares, mobilizes, and regulates its citizens for migrant work abroad. Filipino men and women fill a range of jobs around the globe, including domestic work, construction, and engineering, and they have even worked in the Middle East to support U.S. military operations. At the same time, the state redefines nationalism to normalize its citizens to migration while fostering their ties to the Philippines. Those who leave the country to work and send their wages to their families at home are treated as new national heroes. Drawing on ethnographic research of the Philippine government’s migration bureaucracy, interviews, and archival work, the book presents a new analysis of neoliberal globalization and its consequences for nation-state formation.
