Full Citation
Title: Reconstructing Migration
Citation Type: Journal Article
Publication Year: 2007
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Abstract: The Southern Diaspora, the second book from awardwinning author James N. Gregory, begins with a powerful quote that summarizes the current state of migration research. Gregory writes: “If historians have failed to adequately address the subject, social scientists have not done much better. Migration studies, once a cutting-edge enterprise for sociologists and economists, have been stuck for decades in dead-ends and stale formulations. Most of the work cannot get beyond the question of why migrations happen, the old push-pull conundrum” (9). He goes on to summarize the dominant theoretical perspectives on migration and concludes that “[a]ll of these perspectives see moving people as subject to history but not as its architects” (9). Scholars of migration should take this passage seriously. Perhaps we believe that we will gain information on the consequences of migration if we better understand the causes of migration. But Gregory is pushing us to move in a distinctly different direction, to one that shifts the focus from the individual consequences of migration toward the societal implications of large-scale population redistribution. The migrants, for Gregory, are not individuals per se but “architects” who collectively reshaped twentiethcentury America. The suggested shift in focus is a worthy objective and one that he expertly tackles.
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Authors: Curtis White, Katherine, J
Periodical (Full): Historical Methods
Issue:
Volume: 40
Pages: 167-169
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Migration and Immigration
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