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What is Migration History?

ISBN: 978-0-745-64335-9

May 2009

Polity

200 pages

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Description
The study of migration is and always has been an interdisciplinary field of study, vast and vibrant in nature. This short introduction to the field, written by leading historians of migration for student readers, offers an acute analysis of key issues across several disciplines. It takes in its scope an overview of migrations through history, how classic theories have interpreted such movements, and contemporary topics and debates including transnational and transcultural lives, access to citizenship, and migrant entrepreneurship.

Historical perspectives reveal how the scholarly field emerged and developed over time and across cultures and how historians of migration have recently begun to re-write the story of human life on earth. Throughout, the authors suggest how the movements of millions of mobile men and women persistently challenge changing scholarly paradigms for understanding their lives. Key concepts and theories, such as systems, networks, and gender, are explained and historicized to produce a complex picture of the interaction of migrants, scholars, and disciplinary cultures in a globalized world.

About the Author
Christiane Harzig, Associate Professor, Arizona State University

Dirk Hoerder, Professor, Arizona State University

Features
  • A concise introduction to a key and vibrant field of history: migration.
  • Written by some of the leading scholars in the international field.
  • Balances material on the theories and approaches to migration with providing an overview of the history of human migration itself.
  • Introduces the key areas of contemporary debate, including gender, transnational and transcultural lives, and migrant entrepreneurs.