The Cultures of Economic Migration

This volume explores the processes of economic migration, the social conditions that follow it and the discourses that underlie research into it. Reflecting critically on economic migration and on the process of studying and creating knowledge about it, the contributors address the question of whether recent enquiries into modernity bring a newer and better comprehension of the nature of dislocation and movement, or whether these serve simply to replicate familiar modes of placing people and individuals. The book is organized into perspectives in and on specific continents - Europe, Asia and Africa - in order to explore notions regarding economic migration within and across regions as well as towards displacing the Eurocentrism of many studies of migration.

Suman Gupta is Professor of Literature and Cultural History and Director of the Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies at the Open University, UK, and is Principal Coordinator of the GIPSC project. He is the author of eight single-authored books, co-editor of five books and has published numerous scholarly papers. Tope Omoniyi is Professor of Sociolinguistics in the School of Arts, Roehampton University, UK. He has published widely in the field and held lectureships in Africa, Asia and Europe.

Contents: Preface; Introduction: socio-cultural attitudes to migration and the academic disposition of migration studies, Suman Gupta. Part I Europe: Open borders: the case against immigration controls, Teresa Hayter; Economic migrant or hyphenated British? Writing about difference in London's East End, John Eade; Outsourcing and migrational anxieties in discourse perspectives, Tope Omoníyi; Economic satisfaction and nostalgic laments: the language of Bulgarian economic migrants after 1989 in websites and electronic fora, Zhivko Ivanov; The immigrating Russian: the Bulgarian case, Irina Chongarova. Part II Africa: The transformative effect of transfer originating from migration on local Moroccan socio-economic dynamics, Taoufik Agoumy; 'Economic martyrs': 2 perspectives on 'lahrig', Taieb Belghazi; The cultural consequence of economic migration from Nigeria to the West, Efurosibina Adegbija; From homeland to hopeland? Economic globalization and Ogoni migration in the 1990s, Cyril I. Obi; Migrancy and Thabo Mbeki's African renaissance, David Johnson. Part III Asia: Emigration and sociocultural change in Iran, Taghi Azadarmaki and Mehri Bahar; Imaginary migrations in contemporary Chinese public culture, Yue Daiyun; Media representations in India of the Indian diaspora in UK and US, Subarno Chattarji; Globalizing Hunduism, Hinduizing India: the paradoxical purposes of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Tapan Basu; Negotiating the shifting boundaries of nativeness and modernity in immigrant South Asian women's clothes, Vinay Bahl; Index.