Journal ArticleDOI
Consequences of Migration and Remittances for Mexican Transnational Communities
Dennis Conway,Jeffrey H. Cohen +1 more
TLDR
The multifaceted consequences of remittances and migration are illustrated, emphasizing positive nonmonetary and social impacts, and the situation in home communities is illustrated.Abstract:
To better understand the positive contributions return migrants and migrant remittances make in Latin American society, this paper offers a reevaluation of existing conceptual frameworks. Previous research dwelt upon the unproductive nature of expenditures and the difficulties facing return migrants as they reintegrate themselves in home communities, among other problems caused by migration. Drawing upon recent feminist scholarship and the growing body of literature focused on the positive aspects of “migradollars” (U.S. dollars returned by migrants) upon home communities, we propose that remittance investments should be analyzed for their progressive and satisficing effects. We focus on the potential range of household strategies for remittance investment, the ways migrant circulation patterns relate to family and household decision making, and the impact of remittances and migration upon community structure. Finally, using ethnographic data from rural Mexico, we illustrate our argument and demon...read more
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Journal ArticleDOI
Migration and Development: A Theoretical Perspective
Abstract: The debate on migration and development has swung back and forth like a pendulum, from developmentalist optimism in the 1950s and 1960s, to neo-Marxist pessimism over the 1970s and 1980s, towards more optimistic views in the 1990s and 2000s. This paper argues how such discursive shifts in the migration and development debate should be primarily seen as part of more general paradigm shifts in social and development theory. However, the classical opposition between pessimistic and optimistic views is challenged by empirical evidence pointing to the heterogeneity of migration impacts. By integrating and amending insights from the new economics of labor migration, livelihood perspectives in development studies and transnational perspectives in migration studies – which share several though as yet unobserved conceptual parallels – this paper elaborates the contours of a conceptual framework that simultaneously integrates agency and structure perspectives and is therefore able to account for the heterogeneous nature of migration-development interactions. The resulting perspective reveals the naivety of recent views celebrating migration as self-help development “from below”. These views are largely ideologically driven and shift the attention away from structural constraints and the vital role of states in shaping favorable conditions for positive development impacts of migration to occur.
Journal ArticleDOI
Transnationalism and identity
TL;DR: Transnationalism and identity are concepts that inherently call for juxtaposition as discussed by the authors, which is so because many peoples' transnational networks of exchange and participation are grounded upon some perception of common identity; conversely, the identities of numerous individuals and groups of people are negotiated within social worlds that span more than one place.
Climate change and agriculture : a review of impacts and adaptations
TL;DR: The vulnerability of the agricultural sector to both climate change and variability is well established in the literature as discussed by the authors and the general consensus is that changes in temperature and precipitation will result in changes in land and water regimes that will subsequently affect agricultural productivity.
Journal ArticleDOI
Migration and Agricultural Change: The Case of Smallholder Agriculture in Highland Ecuador
TL;DR: In this article, the effects of international migration on agricultural production and land-use in two regions of Canar Province, Ecuador, were examined and an agricultural survey was administered in two communities to determine land use and agricultural production of migrant and non-migrant households.
Journal ArticleDOI
Migration as a contribution to resilience and innovation in climate adaptation: Social networks and co-development in Northwest Africa
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explored possible opportunities, innovative approaches and institutional mechanisms for migration as a contribution to climate adaptation in the Western Sahel region, with a focus on Mali, Mauritania and Senegal.
References
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Book ChapterDOI
The Forms of Capital
TL;DR: In this article, the authors define cultural capital as accumulated labor that, when appropriated on a private, that is, exclusive, basis by agents or groups of agents, enables them to appropriate social energy in the form of reified or living labor.
From immigrant to transmigrant : Theorizing transnational migration
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors use their own studies of migration from Haiti, St Vincent, Grenada and the Philippines to the United States to delineate some of the parameters of an ethnography of transnational migration and explore the reasons for and the implications of trans-national migrations.
Journal ArticleDOI
From immigrant to transmigrant: theorizing transnational migration
TL;DR: In this article, the authors use their studies of migration from St Vincent, Grenada, the Philippines, and Haiti to the U.S. to delineate some of the parameters of an ethnography of transnational migration and explore the reasons for and the implications of trans-national migrations.
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Gender and cooperative conflicts
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss well-being, agency, and cooperative conflicts in the context of household economics, bargaining models, and information bases in Finnish households, and the relationship between gender and cooperation.
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Gendered Transitions: Mexican Experiences of Immigration
TL;DR: Hondagneu-Sotelo as discussed by the authors argues that people do not migrate as a result of concerted household strategies, but as a consequence of negotiations often fraught with conflict in families and social networks.