Delmos J. Jones

Which Migrants? Temporary or Permanent?

The title of this workshop is Towards a Transnutwnal Perspective on Mtkatwn: Race, Chs, Etbnicity, and Nationalism Reconszdeved and the goal is to come up with a revised analytic framework for understanding a new form of international migration. The development of a new analytic framework is n o easy task, and it is not something that is achieved by one effort alone. Thus, I am going to limit my comments, but hope that they will generate some discussion about the topics under consideration. My goal is not to critique the papen, nor to discuss each one in any considerable detail. Rather it is to try to draw out common themes they address and point out problems that need to be further clarified. Let me first highlight a few of the factual conditions that all of these papers address. The first and most important condition is that the migrants maintain ties to their home society, and that families tend to remain functional across national boundaries. Communications are mentioned in this context: the hct that one can call, or FAX anything to almost anywhere, or receive television transmissions of programs almost anyplace is an important material fact that cannot be overlooked. The second conl t ion is that many transnational migrants do not establish permanent residency in the host society. I t is not revealed how many people remain for how long in the host society, and how many people return, at what point in time, to live in their country of birth. This point I will return to later. Another important theme that appears in all of these papers is that the migrants are upwardly mobile. Concern with social status is an important issue that emerges over and over again: people who are migrating and working in Western cities are doing so to improve their status in their home country. “The project of the great majority of U.S. migrants is a long-term one; to accumulate sufficient resources to return and sustain themselves and their families securely in the Dominican ‘middle class”’ (Georges 1992, this volume). I t may at some point be important to determine the proportion of these versus the proportion who would like to be successful in the United States.

The Anthropology of Lower Income Urban Enclaves

The goal of this essay is to address some general concerns about the anthropology of lower income urban enclaves. I will describe some of the theoretical and conceptual inadequacies involved in the study of the poor and offer some suggestions that may improve our understanding of lower income urban enclaves. Two related issues need to be placed at the center of any analysis of lower income urban enclaves. One is capitalism itself, and the other is the social and economic complexity that accompanies it. Poverty is not only a product of capitalism, as Oscar Lewis (1966) maintained, but capitalism continues to evolve and affect the poor. Lewis did note that poverty is a product of capitalism, but failed to note its continuing impact. What is missing from many discussions of the poor, including Lewis’ critics, is that many poor people themselves act in conformity with capitalistic principles. Much of the literature views the life of the poor as being guided by a different set of principles, such as informal exchange (Stack 1974). I have argued elsewhere that the most problematic aspect of the poor is not just their poverty, but their desire to be better off (Jones 1993). Thus, capitalistic principles d o not stop at the boundaries of lower income urban enclaves, but also influence how the poor interact with each other. Aspects of the informal and underground economy are not alternatives to formal economic processes. Instead they are alternative ways of participating in the economy. They are not just strategies of survival, they are also strategies of accumulation. While there is considerable debate over the issue of social differentiation and economic inequality among peasants, there is little consideration of this topic among the poor. The question must be asked, who profits from poverty and how? The answer should not exclude some of the poor themselves. It should also not

Job training and unemployment: Is Southwestern jiving me again?

Harland Padfield and Roy Williams. Stay Where You Were: A Study of Unemployables in Industry. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1973. xviii + 282 pp. Figures, tables, and appendix.

Think globally, act locally: Assessing the impact of community-based substance abuse prevention☆

7.50 (cloth),

Social Networks and Urban Neighborhoods in New York City

3.25 (paper).