Contemporary migration involves a dramatic paradox. Although much of
what is considered international or transnational migration today
transforms people of a wide range of social standings in the emigration
countries into laborers at the bottom social and economic ranks of the
immigration countries, millions of individuals worldwide seek to migrate
internationally. International Migration, Social Demotion, and Imagined
Advancement argues that this paradox cannot be explained for as long as
common preconceptions about immigrants' economic betterment thwart even
questioning why individuals who are not threatened by famine or war
willingly pursue their demotion abroad. Recognizing immigrants' decline
as such, this book proposes viewing contemporary migration as
socioglobal mobility. Revolving around an ethnographic study of the
Albanian "emigration" in Greece, International Migration, Social
Demotion, and Imagined Advancement finds that imaginaries of the world
as a social hierarchy might lie at the roots of much of the contemporary
international migration. As would-be emigrants perceive different
countries in terms of distinct social stations in a global order, they
resolve to put up with numerous social and material deprivations in the
hope of advancing internationally. Immigrants are typically thought of
as aliens in their de facto home societies, however, and that makes
genuine advancement all but impossible.
Erind Pajo is Assistant Researcher in Anthropology and Lecturer in
Social Sciences at the University of California, Irvine.
