[Discussion] "Anthropology and Migration: Essays on Transnationalism, Ethnicity and Identity

[Sule Tarakcioglu]

Caroline Brettell. Anthropology and Migration: Essays on
Transnationalism, Ethnicity and Identity. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press,
2003. xxi + 239 pp. Tables, references, index. $70.00 (cloth), ISBN
0-7591-0319-4; $26.95 (paper), ISBN 0-7591-0320-8.
*Reviewed by:* Steve Garner, School of Sociology, University of the West
of England, Bristol.
*Published by:* H-Migration <http://www.h-net.msu.edu/%7Emigrate>
(November, 2004)
Gendered Migration from the Bottom Up

Anthropologist Caroline Brettell has been writing on the Portuguese
diaspora since 1977, and in the course of her research has focused on
the themes of gender, ethnicity, the importance of place, the roles
played by return migration and the meanings attached by migrants to
their own stories. This book is a collection of essays published at
various times over the 1979-1996 period and is split into four thematic
sections: "Situating the Anthropological Perspective," "Return
Migration, Transmigrants and Transnationalism," "Cities, Immigrant
Communities and Ethnic Identity" and "Gender and Migration." Each
section contains two or three essays and is prefaced by short
introductory pieces placing them in context.

Bretell's approach is laid out in the first introductory essay. "An
anthropological approach to migration should emphasize both structure
and agency; it should look at macro-social contextual issues,
micro-level strategies and decision-making, and the meso-level
relational structure within which individuals operate. It needs to
articulate both people and process" (p. 7).

In "Migration Stories," Brettell posits that much can be learned about
migration from individual stories, since migration is as much a cultural
as a material phenomenon. This is a challenging methodological manifesto
to comply with, and one that might raise eyebrows among world systems
analysts for example. The distinction between the material and cultural,
or structure and agency, emerges as being as salient in anthropology as
in sociology, as does the need to bear in mind that actors do not
necessarily or very often see the bigger picture, or become aware of the
multiple process that set down parameters to their choices. Yet, on the
evidence of this collection, the author has managed, just about, to
maintain a balance between the two dimensions referred to. The tools
utilized range from engaging with the personal narratives of
contemporary migrant women in "Migration Stories," through historical
archive work on a Northern Portuguese village in "Emigration and
Household Structure in a Northern Portuguese Parish, 1850-1920," to an
analysis of the Portuguese ideology of return migration in "Emigrar para
Voltar," and a consummate blending of research instruments in "Women are
Migrants Too."

The specificity of the Portuguese case is forcefully argued from the
outset. "The emigrant," she maintains, is a "core symbol," in Portuguese
culture, metamorphosing from the navegador to the emigrante via the
colono to reflect the changing phases in the country's history (p. 16).
Moving on to the topic of return migration, Brettell highlights the
functional uses of migration. The Portuguese migrants she interviews,
"view the host society as a detoured route to social mobility and social
prestige within their own society" (p. 72).

While later essays introduce more (and sometimes gendered) ambivalence
about return, the theme that strikes me as a reader more familiar with
work on Irish and Caribbean emigration is the implied high actual level
of return and implementation of the planned return, presumably (going by
the date) even before Portugal's economy recovered to the point where it
became a net importer of labor.

Although women migrants are now receiving much more attention than they
did in the 1970s and 1980s, Brettell's work from this period assumes a
pioneering character. She conceptualizes women as individual workers
with their own agendas, rather than docile, one-dimensional appendages
to male labor migrants. Arguing this case in contemporary migration
studies might seem redundant, yet writers such as Eleanore Kofman,
Jacqueline Andall and Annie Phizacklea, for example, have all recently
urged their colleagues to do what Brettell was already doing in the
1980s.[1] She provides nuanced studies elucidating some of the criteria
required to answer the question of whether life as a migrant is better
or worse for women than in the country of origin. Portuguese women, she
maintains, have a long experience of separation and shared
decision-making, which may contrast with the experiences of other groups
and reduce the gap in autonomy (if not in material gain) between their
lives in Portugal and in their host societies.

The author's emphasis in the collection is on anthropology's unique set
of criteria for studying migration, but she might be pleasantly
surprised to see how much some methodologies within sociology, to just
cite my own discipline, overlap with hers. Reading Brettell alongside
Breda Gray's recent work on Irish women in the United Kingdom is a
rewarding exercise, not only because of the clear parallels between
Portugal and Ireland as mass exporters of people, but also in the way
women's voices can be dealt with so adeptly and placed at the center of
an intellectual endeavor in which the tensions between structure and
agency become so immediate.[2]

Last but not least, Portugal, as Brettell points out, is now a country
of net immigration. The countries of new migration in Europe--Portugal,
Spain, Ireland, Italy and Greece--are on the agenda for research as
places in transition between two ways of life, the country of emigrants
and the country of immigrants, each with their own sets of problems to
solve. Add to this the fact that they are all experiencing continued
emigration at the same time as both return migration and new
immigration, and Brettell's work becomes even more interesting in its
provision of insights into the process of return migration in the
European context, an area that has produced ludicrously little published
work so far.

While this is a fine book overall, I have one principal criticism. This
is to do with an overarching view. Maybe it is partly a sociologist's
unhealthy taste for theories, but I feel there was an opportunity here
to do something extra in the conclusion. The introduction is concise and
well-focused, yet the separation of the three levels of analysis
contained in it raises questions about the relationships between them.
While to some extent this emerges implicitly from particular essays, the
collection could really have benefited from a more heavyweight attempt
to draw this out and tie up the loose ends. The outlining of a
multi-dimensional methodological mission statement in the introduction
could have been satisfyingly responded to by a
"with-the-benefit-of-hindsight" concluding essay. However, the excellent
and engaging fieldwork is not supported by a concluding essay of
corresponding breadth, scope or quality. This is particularly
disappointing given the topicality of "transnationalism" as a research
paradigm that has recently thrown up a large-scale project funded by the
Economic and Social Research Council in the United Kingdom. Some of its
findings are summarized by that program's Director, Steven Vertovec, and
others in a special edition of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration
Studies.[3] There is plenty over the twenty-seven years since the
author's first publication to have got her teeth into, and it makes me
wonder whether she is planning the review that suggests itself from the
back-to-back reading of these articles. If she does get round to that
project, it might be a seminal piece.

Notes

[1]. E. Kofman, "Family-Related Migration: A Critical Review of European
Studies," Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 30, no. 2 (2002): pp.
243-262; Jacqueline Andall, "Introduction" in Ethnicity and Gender in
Contemporary Europe, ed. Jacqueline Andall (Oxford: Berg, 2003); A.
Phizacklea, "Gendered Actors in Migration,", in Andall, Ethnicity and
Gender, pp. 23-37.

[2]. B. Gray, Women and Migration (London: Palgrave, 2004).

[3]. Steven Vertovec, "Transnationalism and Identity," Journal of Ethnic
and Migration Studies, 27, no. 4 (2001), pp. 573-582.


Citation: Steve Garner. "Review of Caroline Brettell, Anthropology and
Migration: Essays on Transnationalism, Ethnicity and Identity,"
H-Migration, H-Net Reviews, November, 2004. URL:
http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=124501105025438.