Rethinking Migration: New Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives

With the increasing worldwide problems of migration, research into its causes and effects become ever more urgent. This volume takes stock of recent advancements that social science research in both Europe and the United States has made to understanding central aspects of international migration. The focus is on conceptual, methodological, and theoretical contributions that have emerged out of empirical research with regard to state policies and interests toward migration, dual citizenship, incorporation, transnational ties, entrepreneurship, illegal migration, intergenerational incorporation, and religion. No other publication brings the scholarship together in a similarly comprehensive manner, showing how the different approaches on each continent complement and speak to one another, thus contributing to the internationalization of migration studies.

Alejandro Portes is Howard Harrison and Gabrielle Snyder Beck Professor of Sociology and director of the Center for Migration and Development at Princeton University. His current research is on the adaptation process of the immigrant second generation and the rise of transnational immigrant communities in the United States. One of his most recent books, co-authored with Rubén G. Rumbaut, is Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation and Ethnicities: Children of Immigrants in America (California 2001), winner of the 2002 Distinguished Scholarship Award from the American Sociological Association.

Josh DeWind has directed the Migration Program of the Social Science Research Council since 1994. From 1989 to 2002 was a Professor of Anthropology at Hunter College, City University of New York, where he initiated the college's Program on International Human Rights and directed its Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program. He has published numerous books, reports, and articles related to migration including The Handbook of International Migration: The American Experience, edited with Charles Hirschman and Philip Kasinitz (Russell Sage Foundation, 1999), which this current volume updates and provides an international perspective. He was a founding member of the Center for Immigrants Rights, National Coalition for Haitian Rights, and National Immigration Forum.