Transnational Peasants: Migrations, Networks, and Ethnicity in Andean Ecuador (review)

Transnational Peasants: Migrations, Networks, and Ethnicity in Andean Ecuador.By David Kyle. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. 251 pp. Cloth, $45.00.

For some years now the transnational framework for researching and understanding migration has been in vogue, albeit not without its detractors. Over time the framework and its research methodologies have been refined. Early case studies full of detailed information about migrants' ties to their homelands still predominate the literature, but more comparative studies have been accomplished, which promise to yield a new depth of understanding. David Kyle's book, Transnational Peasants, in effect, brings the best of both methodological approaches to an understudied migratory population, namely, Ecuadorans.

Unlike most transnational studies to date, Kyle's study begins in Ecuador and examines the historical and contemporary factors that have influenced and patterned emigration from four communities of origin who migrate to New York and Europe. He selected these communities from two regions in Ecuador: Azuay in the southern highlands, where for generations people survived making Panama hats for sale and who primarily emigrate to New York; and Otavalo in the northern highlands, where people earned their living as weavers and, more recently, as Andean musicians who peddle their commodities all over the world, but most notably in Europe. His research design builds in two lower levels of comparative analysis as well: migration between two communities in each region that vary along demographic — particularly ethnic identity and class lines — and economic grounds. Last he contrasts migrants with nonmigrants and their households. This study design is deliberate, for Kyle's primary research question is "How has ethnicity, specifically ethnic identity, shaped the two divergent patterns [to New York versus to Europe] of transnational migration?" To answer this question he must do comparative research, but unlike other studies under way or recently finished that compare transnational migration between national groups, his comparisons are intranational. His investigation goes well beyond interviews with migrants and stay-behinds; he also conducts censuses of all the villages studied. And he does what no other transnational work I have seen to date does: he delves deeply, very deeply, into history. He traces the origins of Ecuadoran migration, ethnic divisions, and economic strategies back to pre-Inca times. Kyle's work stands out, then, not for the classic "thick description" of ethnographic studies, but for what might be characterized as "thick history." At least three of the book's seven chapters are almost purely historical — wonderful for Ecuadoran and Andean enthusiasts, but a bit of an overkill for those like me who would like to hear more about the contemporary migrants' lives. There are snippets of this ethnography sprinkled here and there, most notably a few sections on gender relations and the awful predicament stay-at-home wives are placed in because the emigrant men create a "code of silence" in which they "actively conspire to reveal as little information as possible to their wives and other female relatives regarding their activities abroad." Aside from his comparative and historical contributions, Kyle is also interested in testing the utility of various theories of migration to explain his data. Not surprisingly, he is most enamored of the historical-structural and network schools, for he situates the Ecuadoran migrations very meticulously in "multiple regional, national, and even global social structures and ideologies." The former is best for explaining the onset of migrations across borders and the latter for their perpetuation. He also deftly uses Granovetter's stong/weak tie paradigm to demonstrate the importance of how weak links — including those to anthropologists and Peace Corps workers — are idiosyncratic but nonetheless critical to the formation of large-scale emigrations.

What can we learn from this book about migration? We learn what a contribution deep history can make. Kyle could underscore this contribution more than he does; instead he uses his historical knowledge to critique the utility of migration theories. Readers should be aware that this book, despite its title, is...