Migrancy, Culture, Identity


Book Description

In Migrancy, Culture, Identity, Iain Chambers unravels how our sense of place and identity is realised as we move through myriad languages, worlds and histories. The author explores the uncharted impact of cultural diversity on today's world, from the 'realistic' eye of the painter to the 'scientific' approach of the cultural anthropologist or the critical distance of the historian; from the computer screen to the Walkman and 'World Music'. Migrancy, Culture and Identity takes us on a journey into the disturbance and dislocation of culture and identity that faces all of us to explore how migration, marginality and homelessness have disrupted the West's faith in linear progress and rational thinking, undermining our knowledge, history and cultural identity.




Work, Culture, and Identity


Book Description

Work, Culture, and Identity offers a compelling narrative of the day-to-day life of migrant laborers in Mozambique and South Africa.




Edward Said's Concept of Exile


Book Description

Edward Said was an exiled individual – the 'out of place' Palestinian in the USA. He saw the consequences of the 1948 dismantling of Palestine and the establishment of Israel through his parents' experiences and through the collective statelessness imposed on the Palestinians. His own personal experience of exile intensified when he moved to the USA. Yet despite the significance of exile to Said's lifeand work, no scholarship has yet focused on this theme in his writings or traced its ongoing applicability and importance. Rehnuma Sazzad fulfils this pressing need in literary and cultural research by providing the first comprehensive definition of Said's theory of exile and reveals its legacy in relation to five Middle Eastern intellectuals: Naguib Mahfouz, Mahmoud Darwish, Leila Ahmed, Nawal El Saadawi and Youssef Chahine. By selecting a novelist, poet, feminist, filmmaker and essayist, Sazzad shows how, for Said, the ideal intellectual is a metaphorical exile, demonstrating a willing homelessness. This book creates a portrait of redoubtable intellectual practice and in the twenty-first-century context, when the frontiers of belonging are being constantly redrawn, Edward Said's Concept of Exile adds new depths to discourses of resistance, home and identity.




Alevis in Europe


Book Description

The Alevis are a significant minority in Turkey, and now also in the countries of Western Europe. Over the past century, many of them have migrated from rural enclaves on the Anatolian plateau to the great cities of Istanbul and Ankara, and from there to the countries of the European Union. This book asks who are they? How do they construct their identities – now and in the past; in Turkey and in Europe? A range of scholars, writing from sociological, historical, socio-psychological and political perspectives, present analysis and research that shows the Alevi communities grouping and regrouping, defining and redefining – sometimes as an ethnic minority, sometimes as religious groups, sometimes around a political philosophy - contingently responding to circumstances of the Turkish Republic’s political position and to the immigration policies of Western Europe. Contributors consider Alevi roots and cultural practices in their villages of origin; the changes in identity following the migration to the gecekondu shanty towns surrounding the cities of Turkey; the changes consequent on their second diaspora to Germany, the UK, Sweden and other European countries; and the implications of European citizenship for their identity. This collection offers a new and significant contribution to the study of migration and minorities in the wider European context.




Dialogues in the Diasporas


Book Description

The author stages a series of conversations with prominent writers and artists to assess how to define cultural identity in the modern world and age of mass media and global migration. His premise is that conventional cultural identity is not static.




Diasporic Ruptures


Book Description

Diasporic Ruptures: Globality, Migrancy, and Expressions of Identity lies at the intersections of various processes emerging from globalization: border-crossings, transnationalism, identity formations. Carefully selected and placed in two volumes, the essays here represent works of both well-seasoned scholars as well as emerging writers, academics and intellectuals. The volumes critically examine various manifestations of the trend now commonly known as globalization—manifestations that many diasporic communities, immigrants, and people from all walks of life experience. They also illuminate recent political, social, economic and technological developments that are taking place in a rapidly changing world. Volume One offers sophisticated insights into the nature of contemporary formations of diasporic life, internationalism, and hybrid identities. The volume asks bold questions around what it means to live in constantly shifting boundaries of nationality, identity, and citizenship. The type of methodological, discursive and experiential awareness promoted by this work helps us understand how millions of people face the challenge of living in a globalizing world; it also fosters a consciousness of how globalization itself functions differently in different environments. Volume Two (see Volume 7 in Transgressions: Cultural Studies and Education) addresses additional and more nuanced questions around culture, race, sexuality, migration, displacement and resistance. It also explores certain epistemological and methodological fallacies regarding conventional articulations of nation-state, nationalism, and the local/global nexus. The volume seeks to answer questions such as: What are the meanings and connotations of ‘displacement’ in a rapidly globalizing world? What are some dilemmas and challenges around notions of cultural hybridity, linguistic diversity, and a sense of belonging? What is the meaning of home in diaspora and the meaning of diaspora at home? Together, the volumes raise many topics that will be of immense interest to scholars across disciplines and general readers. While celebrating the increasing acknowledgment of difference and diversity in recent times, this work reminds us of the ongoing ramifications of dominant structures of inequality, relations of power, and issues of inclusion and exclusion. This work offers different ways of thinking, writing and talking about globalization and the processes that emerge from it.




Migration and Identity


Book Description

The theme of Migration and Identity is of special concern at a time both of massive worldwide migration and of apparently intensifying national, ethnic, and racial conflicts. Problems of migration and the resulting reconfigurations of social identity are fundamental issues for the twenty-first century. This volume spans the whole complex global web of migratory patterns with contributions linking Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North and South America, without losing the particularities of local and personal experience. This paperback edition in the Memory and Narrative series explores these issues and the sustaining or abandoning of memory and identity as people move between fundamentally different cultures, in a number of recent social settings, from a number of methodological perspectives. These focused "case studies" offer glimpses into the interior migration experiences, into the processes of constructing and reconstructing identity without forgetting that, both theoretically and empirically, the problem of identity is complex and multifaceted. All of the essays rely heavily on oral history and personal testimony, highlighting the experience of individuals and small groups, without ignoring the tension that exists between the local and the global. Memories of oppression or totalitarianism are one of the driving forces behind some of these migrations; and the transmission of memories and myths between family generations is one of the ways in which migrations are interpreted. In looking both backward and forward, Migration and Identity, offers an acute view of migratory patterns and their impact on the newcomers and the local cultures. It will be of interest to cultural and oral historians and researchers of concerned with migration and integration.




Mediterranean Crossings


Book Description

Through an interdisciplinary analysis of literary, musical, and visual works, this book proposes a cultural and historical reconfiguration of the Mediterranean.




Migration, Narration, Identity


Book Description

This book presents articles resulting from joint research on the representations of migration conducted in connection with the Erasmus Intensive Programme entitled -Migration and Narration- taught to groups of international students over three consecutive summers from 2010 to 2012. The articles focus on various aspects of the migrant experience and try to answer questions about migrant identity and its representations in literature and the media. The book closes with an original play by Carlos Morton, the Chicano playwright working in the United States."




Immigration, Cultural Identity, and Mental Health


Book Description

What will the ethnic, racial and cultural face of the United States look like in the upcoming decades, and how will the American population adapt to these changes? Immigration, Cultural Identity, and Mental Health: Psycho-social Implications of the Reshaping of America outlines the various psychosocial impacts of immigration on cultural identity and its impact on mainstream culture. Thoroughly researched, this book examines how cultural identity relates to individual mental health and should be taken into account in mental health treatment. In a time when globalization is decreasing the importance of national boundaries and impacting cultural identity for both minority and mainstream populations, the authors explore the multiple facets of what immigration means for culture and mental health. The authors review the concept of acculturation and examine not only how the immigrant's identity transforms through this process, but also how the immigrant transforms the host culture through inter-culturation. The authors detail the risk factors and protective factors that affect the first generation and subsequent generations of immigrants in their adaptation to American society, and also seek to dispel myths and clarify statistics of criminality among immigrant populations. Further, the book aims to elucidate the importance of ethnicity and race in the psycho-therapeutic encounter and offers treatment recommendations on how to approach and discuss issues of ethnicity and race in psychotherapy. It also presents evidence-based psychological treatment interventions for immigrants and members of minority populations and shows how psychotherapy involves the creation of new, more adaptive narratives that can provide healing, personal growth, and relevance to the immigrant experience. Throughout, the authors provide clinical case examples to illustrate the concepts presented.