Arising from the legacies of the twentieth century - unprecedented
worldwide migration, unrelenting global conflict and warring, unchecked
materialist consumption, and unconscionable environmental degradation -
are important questions about the toll of loss such changes exact,
individually and collectively. As large-scale and ubiquitous as these
changes are, their deep specificity re-inscribes the importance of place
as a critical construct. Attending to such specificity emphasizes the
interconnections between contexts and broader movements and remains a
prudent route to articulating critical interconnections among places and
peoples in complex times. This book of essays turns to such specificity
as a means to examine the inflections of migration on identity-
displacement, disorientation, loss, and difference- as sites of both
regression and possibility. Fusing autobiography and cultural analysis,
it provides a framework for a critical education attuned to such
concerns.