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prefaCe This book began as a discussion between Cohen and Sirkeci regarding the meaning of migration. We started by email, talking about our work. Cohen had spent several years looking at the patterns of migration in rural southern Mexico, while Sirkeci had done the same in the Kurdish parts of Turkey. Later, we shared papers and began to compare the outcomes we had noted in these populations. Sirkeci also began Migration Letters, a journal focused on migration research from around the globe, and he invited Cohen to join him as co-editor. Our work with the many authors contributing to Migration Letters, as well as our ongoing investigations in two similar fields—anthropology and geography—suggested to us that there were strong parallel currents between the migration experiences of very different populations. The parallels in the patterns and processes we discovered among Mexican and Kurdish migrations have fueled an ongoing conversation about the meaning, scope, and outcomes of human mobility. Our work here is a part of that conversation, an attempt to frame migration in a way that builds upon earlier work but that also lays out what we see as a new foundation for continued analysis and debate. Specifically, we develop a cultural framework, or a culture of migration, that acknowledges the various ways in which migration decisions are made and that demonstrates how individual decisions are rooted in the social practices and cultural beliefs of a population. Put another way, we argue that the choice to migrate is not driven by economic need alone, nor is a desire to leave a natal home a sufficient catalyst for border crossing. Culture—in other words, the social practice, meaning, and symbolic logic of mobility—must be understood along with economics if we are to understand patterns of migration. We are certainly not alone in our belief that economics on its own is not an adequate explanation . This is widely accepted in migration literature. Thomas Faist x Cultures of Migration (2000a:17) describes the challenge facing migration research as the need to understand the meso-level effects of mobility, or the outcomes that take place in the social universe of the mover. Faist’s approach contrasts with micro-level analyses that focus on the psychology of the migrant and the desires, drives, and practices of movers (Bougue 1977; Douglass 1970; Gamio 1969; Koch 1989; Mahler 1995), on the one hand, and, on the other, macro-level analyses that define migration for a nation and a region (Taylor et al. 1996). Our focus on the meso-level is important for better understanding how migrants talk about and frame their experiences. Nevertheless, the decision to migrate is a profoundly personal one, and it reflects individual strengths and desires. Migrants make their sojourns to better themselves, to satisfy needs, and to care for their families and homes. They also migrate to escape undesirable conditions. For example, many Mexican women migrate to escape familial violence, turning their backs on homes and parents in an effort to find a safer environment in which to live. Kurds in the Middle East and many groups in Iraq also flee their homelands not simply to find prosperity, but to escape insecurity brought on by ongoing conflicts within these areas (Sirkeci 2005, 2006a, 2006b). Even the North African who is seeking economic opportunities unavailable at home moves for social, cultural , and political as well as economic reasons (Castles 2009). A focus on the migrant—or a micro-level analysis—runs the risk of ignoring macro-level as well as meso-level outcomes. First, while sojourns are personal decisions, they are also typically decisions made in response to economic troubles at home, social processes at home and abroad, and judgments concerning treatment abroad. Second, understanding the push and pull of local economic life and how local political ways frame the migrant’s negotiation of security is critical to understanding migration outcomes. Third, decisions are always bigger than the individuals involved. For example , personal choice does not fully explain why Filipinos are driven to join nursing programs and train to become caregivers in the United States. The reality is that children who join the program often do so in response to the insistence and direction of their parents (Kingma 2005). In a similar fashion, macro-level analyses that are focused on the national or global economic and political forces that drive migration outcomes do not account for social and cultural practices that can increase border crossing or sometimes check migration patterns.What...

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