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Global Migration
This new, fully updated edition of Global Migration provides students with a thorough and grounded understanding of multiple dimensions of migration, including labour markets, citizenship, border control, integration, and identity. Written by two geographers, the book incorporates insights from across the social sciences and is accessible to students in many disciplines. Providing a useful and timely introduction to migration, the textbook addresses migration in a holistic way and equips students with the tools they need to participate in contemporary debates about migration in sending and destination contexts. It conveys to students that the causes and effects of migration are geographically specific and contingent upon class, race, gender, and other markers of social difference. Rather than identifying simple solutions to migration ‘problems’, the book encourages students to think about unauthorized migration, asylum, refugee resettlement, labour migration, and other forms of mobility (and immobility) from different vantage points. Global Migration serves as the go-to book for teaching advanced undergraduate and Master’s-level students about the complexities of migration across nation-state borders.
262 pages, Paperback
First published February 11, 2013
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 25, 2023
Summary
I think the authors do a good job themselves in the final concluding section:
Things to Note
The political agenda behind this textbook is very transparently left-leaning. As a leftist myself, I was delighted by this slant, but I still think it's worth mentioning that despite being framed as a neutral learning tool, the authors' biases came through very strongly at points.
Overall Thoughts
I really enjoyed the experience of reading this textbook. Despite plowing through it as a self-teaching tool, I had no real trouble following the material as it was clearly designed for an intro level course on migration studies.
Each chapter felt comprehensive without being unweildy, and as is the case for many modern textbooks, the 'further reading' suggestions felt genuinely thoughtful, and the references throughout helped build each argument rather than weighing them down.
The first two chapters, 'Making Sense of Global Migration' and 'Global Migration in Historical Perspective,' are, on their own, worth the price of admission. I wish I could have been taught the information in these chapters starting back in middle school social studies class, but certainly some of this material should be taught in high schools. The background on human migration within the United States would be invaluable supplementary knowledge for any American History course.
The material, naturally, got rather dense in places, but the jargon-free, clean prose kept things moving at a brisk pace. The introduction and conclusion sections to each chapter lended themselves well to the activation of critical thinking when absorbing the information presented.
The number of referenced case studies from the US, Canada, and Britain (in that order) could sometimes feel top-heavy, but then Mavroudi et al. would zoom the lens back out to discuss more globally-oriented examples, which I appreciated (if for no other reason than to get a broader sense of issues of migration outside of just the 'Western,' English-speaking world).
I left few pages unhighlighted.
I think the authors do a good job themselves in the final concluding section:
In this chapter, as in other chapters, we have urged our readers to eschew simple models and formulas and to embrace instead the complexities and ambiguities of social relationships as they unfold over time and space. [...] Unfortunately, most of the media reports [...] tend to ignore all of this messiness. [...] These images aren't inaccurate, per se, but they greatly over-simplify who migrants are and the processes and relationships that shape their mobility and their experiences. (p.223)
Things to Note
The political agenda behind this textbook is very transparently left-leaning. As a leftist myself, I was delighted by this slant, but I still think it's worth mentioning that despite being framed as a neutral learning tool, the authors' biases came through very strongly at points.
Overall Thoughts
I really enjoyed the experience of reading this textbook. Despite plowing through it as a self-teaching tool, I had no real trouble following the material as it was clearly designed for an intro level course on migration studies.
Each chapter felt comprehensive without being unweildy, and as is the case for many modern textbooks, the 'further reading' suggestions felt genuinely thoughtful, and the references throughout helped build each argument rather than weighing them down.
The first two chapters, 'Making Sense of Global Migration' and 'Global Migration in Historical Perspective,' are, on their own, worth the price of admission. I wish I could have been taught the information in these chapters starting back in middle school social studies class, but certainly some of this material should be taught in high schools. The background on human migration within the United States would be invaluable supplementary knowledge for any American History course.
The material, naturally, got rather dense in places, but the jargon-free, clean prose kept things moving at a brisk pace. The introduction and conclusion sections to each chapter lended themselves well to the activation of critical thinking when absorbing the information presented.
The number of referenced case studies from the US, Canada, and Britain (in that order) could sometimes feel top-heavy, but then Mavroudi et al. would zoom the lens back out to discuss more globally-oriented examples, which I appreciated (if for no other reason than to get a broader sense of issues of migration outside of just the 'Western,' English-speaking world).
I left few pages unhighlighted.
Displaying 1 of 1 review