Labour Mobility and Rural Society


Book Description

Comprising seven edited pieces of detailed empirical work drawn from recent research, this title reveals the dynamics behind the movements of poor people in South and South East Asia and Africa.




International Labour Migration to Europe's Rural Regions


Book Description

International Labour Migration to Europe's Rural Regions brings together intimate descriptions, theoretical analyses, and policy recommendations for this novel phenomenon that has the potential to transform lives of international migrants and local communities in Europe's rural regions.




Let Their People Come


Book Description

In Let Their People Come, Lant Pritchett discusses five "irresistible forces" of global labor migration, and the "immovable ideas" that form a political backlash against it. Increasing wage gaps, different demographic futures, "everything but labor" globalization, and the continued employment growth in low skilled, labor intensive industries all contribute to the forces compelling labor to migrate across national borders. Pritchett analyzes the fifth irresistible force of "ghosts and zombies," or the rapid and massive shifts in desired populations of countries, and says that this aspect has been neglected in the discussion of global labor mobility. Let Their People Come provides six policy recommendations for unskilled immigration policy that seek to reconcile the irresistible force of migration with the immovable ideas in rich countries that keep this force in check. In clear, accessible prose, this volume explores ways to regulate migration flows so that they are a benefit to both the global North and global South.




Migration and Agriculture


Book Description

In recent years, Mediterranean agriculture has experienced important transformations which have led to new forms of labour and production, and in particular to a surge in the recruitment of migrant labour. The Mediterranean Basin represents a very interesting arena that is able to illustrate labour conditions and mobility, the competition among different farming models, and the consequences in terms of the proletarianization process, food crisis and diet changes. Migration and Agriculture brings together international contributors from across several disciplines to describe and analyse labour conditions and international migrations in relation to agri-food restructuring processes. This unique collection of articles connects migration issues with the proletarianization process and agrarian transitions that have affected Southern European as well as some Middle Eastern and Northern African countries in different ways. The chapters present case studies from a range of territories in the Mediterranean Basin, offering empirical data and theoretical analysis in order to grasp the complexity of the processes that are occurring. This book offers a uniquely comprehensive overview of migrations, territories and agro-food production in this key region, and will be an indispensable resource to scholars in migration studies, rural sociology, social geography and the political economy of agriculture.




Translocal Ruralism


Book Description

Rural areas are often viewed as isolated and stagnating areas and urban areas as their opposites. Against such a backdrop, this book seeks to unveil a set of dynamics that view rural areas as ‘translocal’ in the sense that they are ‘changing’ and ‘interconnected’. Social transformations take place in rural areas as the result of intense exchanges between different people, settings and geographies. Accordingly, rural-urban but also rural-rural interrelations on international and national scales are strongly contributing to rural change. Translocal ruralism is exemplified through the analysis of local and global migratory flows, the activities of rural firms in national and global arenas, the spread of different forms of transportation and dislocation, and the growing information society, which enables rural spaces to be connected to the world and improves new ways of interconnection and sociability practices. The book is structured into two parts, which intertwine the dynamics of rural spaces. The first part, ‘Linking nodes: people and networks connecting places’, is concerned with mobilities such as migration and commuting, and the establishment of national and global networks. The second part, ‘International mobilities: a tension between scales’, analyses the dynamics of international migration and mobilities in rural areas.




Migration, Agriculture and Rural Development


Book Description

This open access short reader looks into the dynamics which have reshaped rural development and human landscapes in European agriculture and the role of immigrant people. Within this framework it analyses contemporary rural migrations and the emergence of immigrants in relation to the incorporation of agrarian systems into global markets, the European agricultural governance (CAP), and the struggle of local territories as differentiated practices in constant stress between innovation and resilience. It specifically explores the case of immigrant shepherds to describe the reconfiguration of agriculture systems and rural landscapes in Europe following intense immigration and the related provision of skilled labour at a relatively low cost. Being written in a very accessible way, this reader is an interesting read to students, researchers, academics, policy makers, and practitioners.




Rationalizing Rural Area Classifications for the Economic Research Service


Book Description

The U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service (USDA/ERS) maintains four highly related but distinct geographic classification systems to designate areas by the degree to which they are rural. The original urban-rural code scheme was developed by the ERS in the 1970s. Rural America today is very different from the rural America of 1970 described in the first rural classification report. At that time migration to cities and poverty among the people left behind was a central concern. The more rural a residence, the more likely a person was to live in poverty, and this relationship held true regardless of age or race. Since the 1970s the interstate highway system was completed and broadband was developed. Services have become more consolidated into larger centers. Some of the traditional rural industries, farming and mining, have prospered, and there has been rural amenity-based in-migration. Many major structural and economic changes have occurred during this period. These factors have resulted in a quite different rural economy and society since 1970. In April 2015, the Committee on National Statistics convened a workshop to explore the data, estimation, and policy issues for rationalizing the multiple classifications of rural areas currently in use by the Economic Research Service (ERS). Participants aimed to help ERS make decisions regarding the generation of a county rural-urban scale for public use, taking into consideration the changed social and economic environment. This report summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.




Transnational Labour Migration, Livelihoods and Agrarian Change in Nepal


Book Description

Through the prism of a Nepali remittance village, this book critically examines poverty and livelihood dynamics remade through transnational labour migration and remittances, and their interrelationships with land, rural labour and agriculture. The concept of The Remittance Village emphasises rural people’s transnational mobilities as a key feature of contemporary dynamics in many parts of the Global South, which are reconfiguring rural social, economic and ecological textures. Sunam challenges complacent linear narratives that assume new opportunities such as transnational migration, and remittances provide better pathways for the rural poor to come out of poverty, as well as narratives that understate the importance of land and farming for the rural poor. He demonstrates both that new opportunities are inaccessible for many poor people and that accessing these opportunities often engenders increased precarity and vulnerability. In The Remittance Village, he finds that even those accessing new opportunities are successful only when their household member(s) are simultaneously engaged in in-situ (non-)agricultural activities. This book is a valuable resource for scholars and students from a range of interdisciplinary backgrounds, including human geography, anthropology of development, and sociology. It is also recommended reading for policy makers, international development agencies and I/NGOs working on rural development in the Global South. Chapter 3 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.




Poverty, Gender and Migration


Book Description

This volume studies the new migratory flows among Asian women, focusing particularly on poverty and the attendant issues of powerlessness that mediate women′s migration. While gender provides the conceptual tool for mapping differential experiences of social reality, by identifying poverty and migration as significant axes around which social relations and processes unfold, the volume unravels the complex layers of needs, networks and choices that come into play in poverty-driven migration.




South-South Migration


Book Description

This book seeks to explore the development and policy implications of South-South migration, specifically with regard to the role and challenges for social policy. It examines the linkages and impact of migration on gender and care regimes, human resource flows, remittances, poverty, and political organizations by or for migrants.