Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Eating Soup without a Spoon
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S): Cohen, Jeffrey Harris
BIRTHDATE: 1962
WEBSITE:
CITY: Bexley
STATE: OH
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: American
https://anthropology.osu.edu/people/cohen.319 * https://anthropology.osu.edu/sites/anthropology.osu.edu/files/Cohen%20cv.pdf
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no 95035415
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/no95035415
HEADING: Cohen, Jeffrey H. (Jeffrey Harris)
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100 10 |a Cohen, Jeffrey H. |q (Jeffrey Harris)
670 __ |a Cooperation and community, 1994: |b t.p. (Jeffrey H. Harris) vita (Ph.D., Indiana Univ., 1994)
670 __ |a Indiana Univ. student tel. dir., 1994/95 |b (Cohen, Jeffrey Harris)
670 __ |a Cooperation and community, 1999: |b CIP t.p. (Jeffrey H. Cohen) datasheet (b. Sept. 19, 1962)
953 __ |a xx00 |b sb16
985 __ |c OCLC |e LSPC
PERSONAL
Born 1962, in Brooklyn, NY; married.
EDUCATION:Indiana University, B.A., 1984, Ph.D., 1994; University of New Mexico, M.A., 1987.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Wright State University, Dayton, OH, instructor, 1994-5; Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, assistant professor, 1995-99; Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, assistant professor, 2000-05; Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, associate professor, 2005-12, professor, 2012–; coeditor, Migration Letters.
MEMBER:American Anthropological Association; Latin American Studies Association; Society for Anthropological Sciences; Society for Applied Anthropology (sustaining fellow); Society for Economic Anthropology; Society for Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology.
AWARDS:Harold K. Schneider prize, Society for Economic Anthropology, 1989; Latin American fellowship, Indiana University, 1990; Montague Scholar, Texas A&M University, Center for Teaching Excellence, 1997; Big 12 Faculty Fellowship for research, Texas A&M University, 1998; Roy C. Buck Award, College of the Liberal Arts, Pennsylvania State University, 2001; García-Robles Fulbright, 2003; Faculty Honoree, Undergraduate Academic Achievement program, The Ohio State University, 2009; Faculty mentor Honoree, Honors and Scholars Collegium, The Ohio State University, 2015; Social and Behavioral Sciences Diversity Enhancement Award, The Ohio State University, 2015.
WRITINGS
Contributor of chapters to books. Contributor of articles to journals, including Population, Space, and Place, International Journal of Sociology, Anthropological Quarterly, European Review, Migration Letters, and others.
SIDELIGHTS
Anthropologist Jeffrey H. Cohen’s research and writing focuses on migration, economic development, and nutrition. He has conducted extensive ethnographic field work among indigenous communities in Oaxaca, Mexico, and has also studied migration of Dominican populations to the United States. In addition to examining issues relating to migration, including the role of political turmoil as a motivator, Cohen has also studied the importance of traditional foods–such as grasshoppers–in Oaxaca. Trained at Indiana University, where he completed his Ph.D. in 1994, Cohen has taught at Wright State University, Texas A&M University, and Pennsylvania State University. Since 2005 he has taught at Ohio State University, becoming a full professor in 2012. Cohen has written or coauthored four books, and is also coeditor of the peer-reviewed journal Migration Letters.
Cooperation and Community
Cohen’s first book, Cooperation and Community: Economy and Society in Oaxaca, is based on fieldwork he conducted there in the mid-1990s. It examines cooperative and reciprocal activities within the community of Santa Ana del Valle. These include participating in civic roles and events; acting as godparents; exchanging various kinds of labor; and other activities through which social bonds are created and maintained.
Cohen also looks at the ways in which social change has affected these cooperative practices. The author discusses the effects of transnational migration and tourism, telecommunications, and greater access to higher education. Through interviews with community members, Cohen shows how residents are challenged by and also benefit from cooperative and reciprocal behaviors.
The Culture of Migration in Southern Mexico
In The Culture of Migration in Southern Mexico Cohen examines the causes, patterns, and effects of migration for rural Oaxacans. Using data and research from twelve communities, the author explains that economic factors play a large role in a decision to migrate, but that cultural and social factors are also important. Indeed, despite the promise of higher wages elsewhere, many Oaxacans choose not to migrate. Those who do leave their farms or villages may go only as far as the nearest large city; others may go to other parts of Mexico or to the United States. Most migrants send money back to Mexico. Though this increased income benefits families and communities, the absence of loved ones can also create stresses for families. Many migrants, Cohen finds, return to their homes within a few years of leaving.
Writing in Latin American Research Review, Dennis Conway stated that the book “is a much needed view from the global South, where the author brings his anthropological lens and his long-term immersion experience in Oaxacan rural society to help the reader understand how migration, both internal and international, has emerged as a tried-and-tested survival and sustenance strategy for many rural households and formative families.” The reviewer also admired Cohen’s documentation of the motives and experiences of those who choose not to migrate.
Cultures of Migration
Written with Ibrahim Sirkeci, Cultures of Migration: The Global Nature of Contemporary Mobility discusses migration as a cultural process. The authors look at both individual outcomes and national outcomes of mobility. They argue against the categorization of migrants as either economic migrants or political refugees, writing that what is most important is the commonalties among all people who move. The authors also discuss the relationship between those who move and those who stay, observing the ways in which migration affects both groups.
Linda Q. Wang, writing in International Social Science Review, hailed Cultures of Migration as a “refreshing breeze in the growing arena of migration studies.” Wang pointed out that the authors “highlight the major contributors to the dynamic cultures of migration to include such factors as insecurity and conflict, and cite the vital importance of household to migration outcomes.” Choice contributor A. Cho also gave the book a high rating, recommending it as “an important addition to the field.”
Eating Soup without a Spoon
Eating Soup without a Spoon: Anthropological Theory and Method in the Real World is a memoir of Cohen’s early career doing fieldwork in Mexico. The book combines methodology with personal narrative, and is illustrated with Cohen’s own photographs. The author moved to rural Oaxaca with his wife in 1992 to study cooperation, reciprocity, and other types of social interactions, especially as these traditional dynamics were being affected by economic and sociopolitical change and by migration. The author describes the process of moving, setting up a new home, making friends and contacts, and beginning his fieldwork. He discusses his rookie mistakes, as well as his growing abilities as an anthropologist. He also provides aspiring anthropologists with helpful advice on collecting data, avoiding errors, and enjoying the surprises and challenges inherent in fieldwork.
Choice reviewer C. Hendrickson found much to admire in Eating Soup without a Spoon. The author’s discussions, said the reviewer, are “wide-ranging and give a broad sense of fieldwork and field methods.” Even so, Hendrickson observed that the author provides little discussion of theoretical issues.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Choice, April, 2012, A. Cho, review of Cultures of Migration: The Global Nature of Contemporary Mobility, p. 1491; June, 2016, C. Hendrickson, review of Eating Soup without a Spoon: Anthropoligical Theory and Method in the Real World, p. 1513.
International Social Science Review, fall-winter, 2012, Linda Q. Wang, review of Cultures of Migration, p. 166.
Latin American Research Review, winter, 2007, Dennis Conway, “Evolving Transnational Migration Systems: Linking the Americas ‘from Below,'” review of The Culture of Migration in Southern Mexico, p. 215.
ONLINE
Ohio State University Department of Anthropology Web Site, https://anthropology.osu.edu/ (May 15, 2017), author faculty profile.
World Bank Blogs, http://blogs.worldbank.org/ (May 15, 2017), Cohen profile.
Jeffrey Cohen
Professor
Faculty
Dr. Cohen's research focuses on three areas: migration, development and nutrition. Since the early 1990s he as studied the impact, structure and outcome of migration from indigenous communities in Oaxaca, Mexico to the US with support from the National Science Foundation. He has also conducted comparative research on Mexican, Dominican and Turkish migration. His work on traditional foods, nutrition and migration was supported by the National Geographic Society. In addition to ongoing work in Oaxaca, he is currently studying the migration of Mexicans to Columbus.
Jeffrey H. Cohen
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Jeffrey H. Cohen (born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1962) is an American anthropologist.[1]
Jeffrey Cohen grew up in Indianapolis, where he attended Indianapolis Public School #86 and Shortridge High School. For college he attended Indiana University. He went on to earn his PhD also at Indiana under the guidance of Richard Wilk. Cohen's work is centered ethnographically in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. For his dissertation, he explored how an indigenous, peasant community responded to globalization. Since that time much of his work focuses on migration, economic development and identity. He graduated with his doctorate in 1994 and is currently an associate professor at The Ohio State University in the department of anthropology and a member of steering committee for the Initiative in Population Research. Since the late 1980s he has worked in Oaxaca's central valleys region and specifically in the community of Santa Ana del Valle, documented in his book, Cooperation and Community, published in 1999 by the University of Texas Press.[2]
In 2004 he published the Culture of Migration, also with the University of Texas Press. This book documents a long term study of migration in 13 villages, all located in Oaxaca's central valleys. The book argues that a "culture of migration" defines movement and frames migration as one of the many strategic moves Oaxacans participate in to organize their lives. Cohen notes the importance of domestic migration, the rise of international and transnational movers and the role that remittances play in the lives of Oaxaquenos in their home communities.[3]
He has also worked on Dominican migration to the US where he was part of an interdisciplinary investigation of why Dominicans are traveling to Reading, PA.[4] He also conducts collaborative and comparative research with Ibrahim Sirkeci on Kurdish and Mexican immigration issues.
In 2007 he began an analysis of the impact of political and civil unrest in Oaxaca on migration patterns[5] and compared Oaxacan and Chiapaneco migration patterns. He also studies food and nutrition among immigrants and the role traditional foods, such as chapulines (grasshoppers) play for Oaxacans.[6]
He is also co-editor of Migration Letters journal.[7]
In 2010, an editorial written for the Kirwan institute on immigration reform and the Arizona state's recent moves to enforce federal laws was featured in the Huffington Post.[8]
Associate Professor of Anthropology, Ohio State University
Mr. Cohen is Associate Professor of Anthropology at The Ohio State University. His work focuses on migration, economic development, and food safety/nutrition. Dr. Cohen has authored several books, including Cooperation and Community: Economy and Society in Oaxaca, Economic Development: An Anthropological Approach, The Culture of Migration in Southern Mexico and The Cultures of Migration: The Global Nature of Contemporary Movement. He is also co-editor of Migration Letter.
Cohen, Jeffrey H.: Eating soup without a spoon:
anthropological theory and method in the real world
C. Hendrickson
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries.
53.10 (June 2016): p1513.
COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Full Text:
Cohen, Jeffrey H. Eating soup without a spoon: anthropological theory and method in the real world. Texas, 2015. 177p bibl index afp ISBN
9781477305379 cloth, $75.00; ISBN 9781477307823 pbk, $24.95
(cc) 53-4448
GN33
2015-6682 CIP
Based on yearlong dissertation fieldwork in southern Mexico, Cohen's latest book combines two genres in anthropological literature: field
methodology and field memoir, including reflections on research and life experiences. In 1992, Cohen (Ohio State) and his wife settled in Santa
Ana del Valle, a rural community in Oaxaca, with the goal of investigating issues of cooperation, reciprocity, power, hierarchies, and inequality
understood in the context of shifting economic conditions, local sociopolitical relations, and migration. In the first two-thirds of the book, Cohen
describes his entry into the field, establishing a household and personal contacts, and early efforts collecting quantitative and qualitative data via
surveys, participant observation, and interviews. He continues with additional reflections on relationships in the field (informants, friendships),
community rituals and social obligations, challenges and negotiations, and archival research. Discussions are wide-ranging and give a broad sense
of fieldwork and field methods. However, despite the book's subtitle, Cohen provides few details about his engagement with theoretical issues and
conversations with other academics in the context of his dissertation research. Instead, he focuses on the experiential and methodological
dimensions of his initial year of fieldwork. Summing Up: ** Recommended. Most levels/libraries.--C. Hendrickson, Marlboro College
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Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Hendrickson, C. "Cohen, Jeffrey H.: Eating soup without a spoon: anthropological theory and method in the real world." CHOICE: Current
Reviews for Academic Libraries, June 2016, p. 1513. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA454942859&it=r&asid=d388fc5875d24c943209c949611ac14f. Accessed 10 Apr.
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A454942859
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Cohen, Jeffrey H., and Ibrahim Sirkeci. Cultures of
Migration: The Global Nature of Contemporary Mobility
Linda Q. Wang
International Social Science Review.
87.3-4 (Fall-Winter 2012): p166.
COPYRIGHT 2012 Pi Gamma Mu
http://www.pigammamu.org/international-social-science-review.html
Full Text:
Cohen, Jeffrey H., and Ibrahim Sirkeci. Cultures of Migration: The Global Nature of Contemporary Mobility. Austin, TX: University of Texas
Press, 2011. xiv + 165 pages. Paper, $24.95.
Scholars of migration studies have produced an extensive research repertoire that has significantly advanced our understanding of migration and
migrants, from definitions to theorems of migration, from categorization to outcomes of migration, and from linear assimilation experiences to
varied incorporation strategies of migrants. Until recently, more extensive research had been conducted on issues of migration relating either to
the origins or destinations of migrants, with particular emphasis on the social, cultural, economic, and political impacts of migrants on their
destinations. More recently, however, a surging interest in framing transnationalism in migration studies has occurred. Cultures of Migration, coauthored
by anthropologist Jeffrey H. Cohen and management specialist Ibrahim Sirkeci, is a welcome addition to this body of literature that
offers a fresh perspective on immigration studies.
Distinguished from mainstream approaches, Cohen and Sirkeci's Cultures of Migration proposes a new model of migration studies that
incorporates the strengths of the humanities and the social sciences in examining migration as a cultural process. The proposed model of "cultures
of migration" has its focus on the dynamic "social universe" of migrants and migration outcomes. This "meso-level" model offers the possibility
of bridging the existing "micro-level" models built upon examinations of individual decisions in the migration process and the "macro-level"
models derived from studies of national outcomes in migration studies.
Cohen and Sirkeci propose the use of "mobility" in place of "migration" as a starting point to universalize all people who move. By deemphasizing
the geographic scaling system of migration, local or international, and the various categorization of migrants, economic migrants or
political refugees, Cultures of Migration attempts to redirect the focus of migration study to the shared characteristics of everyone who moves.
On this even playing field, Cultures of Migration examines the relationship between movers and non-movers, the influences of movers on nonmovers,
the effects of non-movers on movers, and the interfaces of movers and non-movers that shape migration outcomes and the "social field"
in internal migration as well as the "transnational social field" in international migration. In so doing, Cohen and Sirkeci highlight the major
contributors to the dynamic cultures of migration to include such factors as insecurity and conflict, and cite the vital importance of household to
migration outcomes.
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Cohen and Sirkeci's Cultures of Migration is an encouraging and ambitious attempt to introduce a new focus in the study of migration. Instead of
geographically scaling migration and categorizing migrants which are popular contexts of migration studies, Cultures of Migration proposes a
valuable perspective that crosses all these boundaries and zooms into the fundamentally shared cultural process, the dynamic (transnational)
"social universe" of migration at all geographic scales, international or local, and of all migrants, voluntary or involuntary. In sum, it is a
refreshing breeze in the growing arena of migration studies that Cultures of Migration raises our awareness of a new, more universal dimension,
in the understanding of migration and migrants that merits attention.
Linda Q. Wang, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Geography
University of South Carolina-Aiken
Aiken, South Carolina
Wang, Linda Q.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Wang, Linda Q. "Cohen, Jeffrey H., and Ibrahim Sirkeci. Cultures of Migration: The Global Nature of Contemporary Mobility." International
Social Science Review, vol. 87, no. 3-4, 2012, p. 166+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA327356238&it=r&asid=f0f952a871c5f5d82bf44241ad417c94. Accessed 10 Apr.
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A327356238
----
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Cohen, Jeffrey H.: Cultures of migration: the global nature
of contemporary mobility
A. Cho
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries.
49.8 (Apr. 2012): p1491.
COPYRIGHT 2012 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Full Text:
49-4539
JV6225
2011-1178 CIP
Cohen, Jeffrey H. Cultures of migration: the global nature of contemporary mobility, by Jeffrey H. Cohen and Ibrahim Sirkeci. Texas, 2011. 165p
bibl index afp ISBN 9780292726840, $55.00; ISBN 9780292726857 pbk, $24.95
While there is much research literature in migration studies in the areas of economic and political forces, or the psychology of migration, Cohen
(anthropology, Ohio State Univ., Columbus) and Sirkeci (transnational studies, Regent's College London, UK) bring a fresh view, emphasizing
the notion of a "culture of migration"--the understanding of social norms and cultural practices associated with migration. From an
anthropological viewpoint, the book looks closely at the cultural beliefs and traditions that often affect migration, not only for those who migrate,
but also those who remain behind. Drawing on case studies from a wide geographical canvas--from their own previous studies of Kurds in Turkey
and Oaxacans in Mexico, as well as from studies on migrations in Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, the Pacific, and many parts of Asia--Cohen and
Sirkeci marvelously detail the factors that "push and pull" the transnational and internal flow of migrations. In examining the nuances of what
exactly prompts both individuals and households to decide to send members abroad while others remain home, this research is an important
addition to the field of migration studies. Summing Up: Highly recommended. *** Upper-division undergraduates and above.--A. Cho,
University of British Columbia
Cho, A.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Cho, A. "Cohen, Jeffrey H.: Cultures of migration: the global nature of contemporary mobility." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic
Libraries, Apr. 2012, p. 1491. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA284551004&it=r&asid=dea0de164ca7594a2184fc351ea80070. Accessed 10 Apr.
2017.
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Gale Document Number: GALE|A284551004
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Evolving transnational migration systems: linking the
Americas "from below"
Dennis Conway
Latin American Research Review.
42.1 (Winter 2007): p215.
COPYRIGHT 2007 Latin American Studies Association
http://lasa.international.pitt.edu/eng/larr/editorial-policy.asp
Full Text:
THE CULTURE OF MIGRATION IN SOUTHERN MEXICO. By Jeffrey H. Cohen. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004. Pp. 207. $50.00
cloth, $21.95 paper.)
CROSSING THE BORDER: RESEARCH FROM THE MEXICAN IMMIGRATION PROJECT. Edited by Jorge Durand and Douglas S.
Massey. (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2004. Pp. 384. $42.50 cloth.)
FROM CUENCA TO QUEENS: AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL STORY OF TRANSNATIONAL MIGRATION. By Anne Miles. (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 2004. Pp. 247. $55.00 cloth, $22.95 paper.)
NEW DESTINATIONS: MEXICAN IMMIGRATION IN THE UNITED STATES. Edited by Victor Zuniga and Ruben Hernandez-Leon. (New
York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2005. Pp. 368. $45.00 cloth.)
In-the-not-too-distant past, migration research's all-too-obvious interdisciplinary character was fraught with disciplinary rigidity in both
theoretical construction and methodological persuasion. Domains of migration scholarship were discipline bound, with each social science
discipline reserving a migration research agenda as its exclusive right. Lip service might be paid to cross-disciplinary or interdisciplinary
exchanges of theoretical insights or methodological explanations, when a few (more) enlightened migration scholars commented on migration's
"confusion frontier" or the field's "interdisciplinary potential," but disciplinary scholarship on migration processes and patterns was content to be
cautious and inward looking rather than adventurous and "outside the box." Whether it was Latin America, Mexico, the Caribbean, Jamaica or
North America, Europe or another country or region with its internal and international migration patterns and processes were under scrutiny,
disciplinary thematic approaches "ruled the waves" for decades.
An unfortunate consequence of this rigidity was the self-serving tendency for disciplinary scholarship to view alternative research findings as
suspect, partial, or insufficient. Research could thus be seen as theoretically flawed or limited, methodologically deficient in rigor, and lacking the
necessary statistical framework to allow scholars to draw general inferences. Humanists disputed the generality of social science "explanations,"
or at the very least called them into question because of their reductionism, empirical dependency, or their modeling restrictiveness. Marxist and
neo-Marxist historical materialistic scholarship was a complete theoretical and methodological opposite of neoclassical "reductionist" approaches,
logical positivism, quantitative modeling and the like. Disciplinary "narratives" were expressed in completely different languages, jargon reigned
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supreme, and turf wars occurred within and between disciplines so that the interdisciplinary nature of migration was rarely factored into research
agendas, projects, and explanations. Circles of migration scholarship talked past each other, not with each other, so that it was difficult, if not
institutionally impossible, for scholars to seek interdisciplinary connections, gain interdisciplinary insights to reinforce more holistic
understanding, and to move migration research beyond the "confusion frontier."
More recently, in anthropology, cultural studies, and cultural geography in particular, postmodernism and poststructuralism joined the jousting
tournament to take on social science and its goals of generalization, but fortunately, this latest critical onslaught was not so damaging, or
distracting, to migration's evolving interdisciplinary maturity. If there were "cultural clashes" and disputes over what constituted theory and
central tendencies in social process, social contextual limits and opportunities and agency transformative action served us better. So, such
counter-arguments on behalf of the recognition of difference, diversity, uniqueness, imagined attachments and multiple identity formations and
the rest, did not stifle the cross-fertilization of ideas. Insights were mutually shared among those with social scientific goals and collective
agendas to build empirically tested, theoretical constructs. Poststructuralist perspectives might come to be referenced, if they added to our
explanatory power and depth of understanding. Yesterday's turf wars had proven counterproductive, so unnecessary disciplinary rigidity and
defensive posturing on behalf of the superiority of one methodological approach over another could be duly consigned to history. Migration
research was saved another round of advances and retreats, counterattacks and capitulations, and disciplinary isolationism. Migration's "confusion
frontier" needed to be opened up to scrutiny from many sides, and signs are everywhere that it has been; the quality of modern scholarship
demonstrates this positive turn of events.
Are things really different today? Yes. We have come far in the last ten to fifteen years or so, and the scholarly field of migration has matured,
embraced interdisciplinary explanations and methodologies, and advanced our collective social scientific understanding of such an important
societal process as human migration. The collection of recent texts under review in this essay is proof positive that we have indeed built the
necessary academic bridges. At least in the research field of Mexican migration scholarship, which is well represented in these four texts, there
has been a meeting of minds and a refreshing merger of methodological approaches and a cross-fertilization of theoretical and empirical insights.
The rigid (and unproductive) barriers of disciplinary correctness are no longer the defining constructs for these research inquiries, and the rigor of
quantitative analysis is matched and merged with qualitative assessments and in-depth inferential explanations.
Instead of limiting themselves to one discipline, these four texts--two monographs by anthropological social scientists and two 'collective
products' of the bi-national Mexican Migration Project (MMP) headed by sociologists Douglas Massey and Jorge Durand--comprise a rich
interdisciplinary collection including in-depth ethnographic life-story accounts, personal life-history and migration-history experiences, family
transnational histories, community-level accounts, sampled subpopulations, representative samples, age- and gender-selective cohorts,
demographic investigations, and humanistic interpretations. The veritable potpourri of offerings allows us to draw out common themes and
explanations and to substantiate generalizations on Mexico-U.S. cross-border migration flows, patterns of settlement, circulation, and more
permanent relocation behaviors, as well as the development of transnational migration systems and their dynamics. The binational mix of authors
in two of the collections--Durand and Massey and Zuniga and Hernandez-Leon--is complemented by the two U.S. anthropologists' ethnographic
treatise, which is culturally enriched by many years of immersion in their respective field sites and local communities, living among, and
befriending, their primary respondents and migrant and nonmigrant families.
To provide order to the more detailed review of these complementary texts on Latin American transnational migration, I am going to start with
Durand and Massey's Crossing the Border, which provides many insightful social scientific analyses and studies of migrants' experiences while
"on the move" and when adapting to their transnational worlds. (1) Policy issues are again raised in this collection, so the applied value of this
field of research is well represented. A second collection of the Mexican Migration Project, coedited by Zuniga and Hernandez-Leon and entitled
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New Destinations, rounds out the coverage by adding more insights, as well as more micro-level interpretations. This second text adds to the
collective evaluation of this transnational migration system's evolutionary character by covering the geographical dispersal of new immigrant
destinations and the subsequent ramifications of their presence in new destinations and their adaptation experiences and experiences of
adjustment, or partial-adjustment, of the local "host" communities.
Cohen's The Culture of Migration in Southern Mexico focuses on rural Mexican society and examines the complex range of factors that cause
rural Oaxacans to migrate or stay at home, and which contribute to the development of a culture of migration in which a transnational path to el
norte is one among many options for members of the community. The fourth volume under review, Miles's From Cuenca to Queens, takes a
biographical approach to transnational migration and follows the path of an Ecuadorian family, the Quitasacas, from their home community in
Cuenca, a squatter neighborhood in the city of Guayaquil, to Queens in New York City. Here, the lens focuses in on the most micro-level unit in
the transnational migration system, thereby completing "the story" these four texts narrate.
This review essay, therefore, moves from the societal scales of structure and agency interactions to locality and community interactions, and
eventually depicts the agency behaviors at the family and individual levels, in terms of transnational family biographies of chance, hope, promise,
frustration, and failure. Mexican-U.S. transnational migration (and the Latin American-U.S. migration by inference) is thoroughly examined,
that's for sure!
Durand and Massey's Crossing the Border brings rigorous inquiry to the forefront and in a series of well-focused analyses provides a broad
empirical range of substantive findings based upon the substantive data of the Mexican Migration Project (MMP), sponsored by the Russell Sage
Foundation. They go to considerable pains to emphasize the social scientific rigor of the analyses and the comprehensiveness of the data, on
which the contributors draw their generalizations. In their words: "the MMP has (ethno)surveyed eighty-one binational communities, yielding
reliable data on nearly eighteen thousand current and former U.S. migrants, some 60 percent of whom were undocumented at the time of the
survey. The data set contains life histories of around fifty-five hundred migrant households, yielding nearly 260,000 person-years of information
on immigration stretching back into the 1920s. The MMP database offers the largest, most comprehensive, and most reliable source of statistical
data on documented and undocumented Mexican immigrants currently available"(3). Following an introductory chapter in which Durand and
Massey reflect on what they have learned from the MMP are four sections, three with four contributing chapters--"Migration and the Family,"
"Regional and Sectoral Differences," and "Lessons for Policy Makers"--and one, "Migration and Gender," with two contributions, which taken
together make this rich empirical substantiation a treasure trove with considerable analytical and empirical authority.
Crossing the Border contests many of the myths that the U.S. anti-immigration lobby relies upon. The restrictive policies of the late 1980s and
1990s are not only criticized for their counterproductive effects, but they are found to be based on erroneous thinking. Today's Mexican migrants
are neither desperately poor nor are they intent on settling permanently in el norte. The increased militarization of the border and heightened
security have not succeeded in preventing immigrant entry, but instead have hindered or delayed return. Migration, savings, and remittance
relationships are highly interdependent, and investments in houses, community projects, and family support "back home" remain highly
significant motivations for temporary work "over there." Many immigrants come from dynamically developing regions, not the most
underdeveloped rural peripheries; more young men and women alike are seeking temporary work because of rural and urban labor market failures
and associated unemployment at home. And as Durand and Massey conclude, "Left to their own devices, the vast majority would return to
participate in Mexico's growth as an economy and society" (13). Several of the contributions stand out because of their convincing findings:
Mooney's chapter 3 on social capital accumulation in Mexican home communities and families; Parrado's chapter 4, which informatively links
migrant investments with the growth in the size and quality of Mexico's housing; Donato and Patterson's chapter 6, which is an engaging
assessment of women's border crossing strategies; Rivero-Fuentes's chapter 11, which challenges the false dichotomy that internal and
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international migration are distinctive mobility processes; and Reyes's chapter 15, which shows that the sharply falling probabilities of return
have substantially increased the length of Mexican migrants' sojourns and have therefore contributed to the rapid growth of the Mexican presence
in the United States to its current estimate of around 10 million, half of whom are irregular, or unauthorized.
Zuniga and Hernandez-Leon's New Destinations is the other MMP contribution, and it adds more insights on the national dispersal of Mexican
immigrants away from the traditional few destinations (California, Texas, and Chicago, Illinois) and utilizes more micro-level interpretations and
ethnographic case studies. The 'new geography of Mexican immigrant settlement' of the mid-1980s post-IRCA (Immigration Reform and Control
Act) era is given special attention throughout this collection, because this embedded and nationally-dispersed, Mexican-U.S. transnational
migration system now demonstrates its own momentum and its own cumulative causation. In this collection, immigrant experiences and
community formation is the main theme of the first section, and economic integration and local communities' reactions to their newcomers is the
theme of the second section--with three chapters in each section. The dynamic of intergroup relations is sensitively and informatively presented in
a third and concluding section, again with three contributing chapters. Ethnographic inquiries are more common in this MMP collection, which is
an appropriate change of scale and methodological lens given the local nature of new immigrant experiences and consequences. Here too, several
contributions stand out: Donato, Steinback, and Bankston's chapter 4 is one exceptional case in point, where authors discover counter-intuitive
findings about formal/legal and irregular migrants' receptions; another is Grey and Woodrick's chapter 6, which gives a positive spin to the
adaptation experiences and progressive character of the local communities' response; and a third is Rich and Miranda's chapter 8, which exposes
the local communities' ambivalent and conflicting response to the presence of Mexicans. The two MMP texts reviewed here are certainly
complementary, and the rigor of many of the examinations in the first volume is nicely balanced with the descriptive insights gained from the
ethnographic case studies in this latter collection. However, this Mexico-U.S. transnational, cross-border story is still not complete. What about
the view (or views) from Mexico and the challenges of transnational people's lives and livelihoods, as they are caught up in the uncertain world of
global-to-local, transnational interactions and go about their 'everyday practices'? These oversights are 'filled in' by the two remaining books in
this review set, by Cohen and Miles
Cohen's The Culture of Migration in Southern Mexico is a much needed view from the global South, where the author brings his anthropological
lens and his long-term immersion experience in Oaxacan rural society to help the reader understand how migration, both internal and
international, has emerged as a tried-and-tested survival and sustenance strategy for many rural households and formative families. Diverging
from the ethnographic practice of studying one rural community in depth, Cohen designed a more comparative framework for his data collection
and in-depth inquiries, enabling him to comprehensively record the historical emergence of household-level migration strategies, the increased
reliance on migration of household members as a life-skill strategy, and the variability in migration's incidence across his set of twelve rural
communities in the Oaxaca valley. Taking six years to complete this in-depth study, Cohen marshaled local support, graduate student assistance,
and lots of help from Oaxacan migrant families themselves, which allows him to write confidently about the growing "culture of migration" that
now permeates Oaxacan society.
Cohen is at pains to show that internal and international migration are only two options, among other mobility and immobility choices. They are
not inevitable, nor are they easily characterized as structurally determined responses to rural poverty or deprivation. Perhaps claiming a unique
first in such migration-focused treatises of rural Mexico, chapter 5 documents the experiences and rationales of nonmigrant households, capturing
the behavioral motives behind their reasons for staying, as opposed to leaving, either temporarily or permanently. Starting as he does in rural
sending communities of South Mexico, Cohen's informative and rigorous examination of which community resources underwrite migration and
how circuits of people, knowledge, money, and gifts in kind help to build reciprocal linkages among family-systems of migration that are part
internal and part international, or transnational in their spatial reach, is the ideal accompaniment to the MMP examinations of the wider MexicoU.S.
transnational migration systems and their impacts on local destination communities. Cohen concludes with this observation about the culture
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of migration in Oaxacan everyday life and experience in their increasingly uncertain world: "It is a sign of the resilience and ingenuity of most
rural Oaxacans that they can cope with the changes, that they can integrate migration into the patterns and processes that define their world, and
that they can use remittances to accomplish important goals for their households and their communities" (148).
The last story in this scalar descent through the societal hierarchy of optical views is Miles's From Cuenca to Queens, which takes a biographical
approach and follows the transnational path and conflicting experiences of the "joys and hardships," of one of the members of an indio
Ecuadorian family, the Quitasacas--namely, their eldest son Vincente from his rural home community in Cuenca to Queens, in New York City.
Family members' views and experiences are elicited to acquire a fuller, ethnographic account of Vincente's transnational journey. In Miles's own
words, her anthropological treatise "is about the construction of images, impressions, imaginings, and stories of transnational migration as it is
experienced and understood by one Ecuadorian family" (2). Appropriately sensitive to gendered relationships and the negotiated tensions within
this transnational family, Miles deals theoretically and interestingly with class, race, and culture issues in identity formation and is also
theoretically perceptive in recognizing the importance of contextual influences on family members' transitions through their life courses.
Her focus on the family as the decision-making and operational "transnational unit" and on family member's roles, images, and anxieties not only
widens the account but also provides important corroboration to the story of Vincente, the eldest son, who makes the journey from Cuenca to
Queens. One notable observation, which Miles characterizes as the Quitasaca's intra- and inter-generational quandary, is generalizable to other
Latin American multi-local, migration experiences: "the Quitasacas have long struggled with the disjunctures between their rural past, their urban
present, and their children's cosmopolitan futures" (50). Chapter 3, on "Family Matters," is indeed an impressive narration of intra-family
relationships, engendered power-struggles, and negotiated familial outcomes in which Miles's own participant observations are blended with the
scholarship of other insightful researchers.
The four chapters that follow give personal accounts of family members' views and experiences; first, that of Rosa, the stronger of the married
pair in chapter 4; then of her husband Lucho in chapter 5; of Vincente's two younger siblings in chapter 6; and eventually in chapter 7, of
Vincente, the transnational migrant himself. The summation chapter, chapter 8, called "Lives and Stories," brings the biographies together, and
not only reiterates the unpredictable nature of transnational journeys but also reminds us that families left behind follow unpredictable journeys
themselves. Mutual networks form beyond the family, and transnational migrants should be expected to follow divergent paths and have different
levels and degrees of success, failure, and hardship, largely because of the widening or narrowing geographical scales of the transnational system
in which transnational migrants and their families go about their daily lives, undertake their life decisions, and negotiate their way living between
and identifying with multiple worlds.
One underlying premise in all four texts reviewed here is that transnational migration offers hope, the promise of better things, better chances for
loved ones, progress; yet, all the while the paths towards these goals are prone to disruption, and achievement gives way to disappointment, but
not for long, or always. Crossing the U.S. border--whether one migrates from Ecuador, central Mexico, Oaxaca, or other distant places--has
become a job-seeking strategy for many, though not necessarily the truly disadvantaged, the most impoverished, nor the most desperately poor.
Crossing the border from the United States into Mexico, on the other hand, has become more dangerous for today's irregular migrants as the
militarization of the Mexico-U.S. border has increased (Lovato 2005). In addition to increased governmental concern (paranoia) over securing the
Mexico-U.S. border as an essential aspect of the war on drugs, the war on terrorism, and the threat "third nation immigrants" might pose to
domestic safety, the task of securing the border has also become privatized, with vigilante groups taking it upon themselves to conduct armed
patrols and overtly brutal methods of intimidation, physical abuse, and humiliation to "scare the mojados away." The human rights and dignities
of immigrants are too easily taken away or compromised in today's insecure times.
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On the other hand, the stories of these well-entrenched, transnational migration systems that are so well documented in these four texts are
persuasive, hopeful, and positive because they narrate the triumph of people's creative and flexible responses to institutional rigidities, the
structural power of authorities, and the harsh competitive reality of global capital's march. Transnational migration certainly qualifies as a
"resistance from below" and a strategy for the less powerful and the less advantaged who seek a better future for themselves and/or for their loved
ones--for their children and their children's children.
REFERENCES
Lovato, Robert
2005 "Latinos in the Age of National (In)Security." NACLA Report of
the Americas 39 (3): 26-29 (November/December).
Massey, Douglas S., Jorge Durand, and Nolan J. Malone
2002 Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Era of
Economic Integration. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Dennis Conway
Indiana University, Bloomington
1. The reader should also refer to Douglas S. Massey, Jorge Durand, and Nolan J. Malone's Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in
an Era of Economic Integration, which establishes the contextual scene in which these cross-border systems of migration have evolved and
become embedded.
Conway, Dennis
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Conway, Dennis. "Evolving transnational migration systems: linking the Americas 'from below'." Latin American Research Review, vol. 42, no.
1, 2007, p. 215+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA161601415&it=r&asid=44c359639c58313e06bd431f10ce2359. Accessed 10 Apr.
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A161601415