Class, Contention, and a World in Motion

Prevailing scholarship on migration tends to present migrants as the objects of history, subjected to abstract global forces or to concrete forms of regulation imposed by state and supra state organizations. In this volume, by contrast, the focus is on migrants as the subjects of history who not only react but also act to engage with and transform their worlds. Using ethnographic examples from Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and the Middle East, contributors question how and why particular forms of political struggle and collective action may, or indeed may not, be carried forward in the context of geographic and social border crossings. In doing so, they bring the dynamic relationship between class, gender, and culture to the forefront in each distinctive migration setting.

Winnie Lem is professor of International Development Studies at Trent University, Canada. Her publications include Cultivating Dissent: Work, Identity and Praxis in Rural Languedoc (SUNY Press,1997); Culture, Economy, Power: Anthropology as Critique; Anthropology as Praxis (SUNY Press, 2002) [co-edited with Belinda Leach]; Confronting Capital: Critique and Engagement in Anthropology (Routledge, 2012) [co-edited with Belinda Leach and Pauline Gardiner Barber]; Migration in the 21st Century: Political Economy and Ethnography (Routledge, 2012 [co-edited with Pauline Gardiner Barber]. She has published in American Ethnologist, Critique of Anthropology, Ethnic and Racial Studies and is currently co-editor-in-chief of Dialectical Anthropology.

Pauline Gardiner Barber is Professor of Anthropology at Dalhousie University, Canada. Recent articles on Filipinos as global migrants appear in Berghahn, Blackwell, SUNY and Routledge volumes, as well as journals such as the Third World Quarterly, Focaal: European Journal of Anthropology and Anthropologica. She is co-editor of the Ashgate Press series Gender in a Global/Local World.

Winnie Lem is professor of International Development Studies at Trent University, Canada. Her publications include Cultivating Dissent: Work, Identity and Praxis in Rural Languedoc (SUNY Press,1997); Culture, Economy, Power: Anthropology as Critique; Anthropology as Praxis (SUNY Press, 2002) [co-edited with Belinda Leach]; Confronting Capital: Critique and Engagement in Anthropology (Routledge, 2012) [co-edited with Belinda Leach and Pauline Gardiner Barber]; Migration in the 21st Century: Political Economy and Ethnography (Routledge, 2012 [co-edited with Pauline Gardiner Barber]. She has published in American Ethnologist, Critique of Anthropology, Ethnic and Racial Studies and is currently co-editor-in-chief of Dialectical Anthropology.

“This volume fills a theoretical and empirical gap in the study of migration and globalization. Drawing upon the wealth of insights that anthropology may provide into the complex tapestry of spatial mobility, the volume enriches our understanding of the reasons behind global migration, providing a view of its effects on migrants and the social formation they are part of.” · Social Anthropology/Anthropologie sociale

"This book represents a superb edited collection of important and relevant articles on the relationship between class and migration in the contemporary world. As such, the introduction and the articles make a major contribution to the literatures on migration and industrial/service work under contemporary capitalist conditions of labor and neoliberal globalization." · Donald M. Nonini, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

“The authors challenge currently dominant approaches to migration, and offer important ways to move between the individual experience and the structure of the world system.” · Alan Smart, University of Calgary