kemper by giray suli

This chapter is about migration and adaptation. The early studies of migration focused on mass movements . The mass movement in particular was the movement of people from europe to the new world in the late  19th and twenteeth centuries. Early research focused on large economic and social forces such as land shortages.

In the 60's anthropologists began to pay more attention to individual migrants and their decision making and coping strategies. Today migrants are less likely to be viewed pawns automatically responding to large structural forces than as active agents who understand  their situation and the alternatives  open to them. Poor mexican peasants for example whose lands  are neither large  enough nor fertile do not migrate to nearest large cities or north USA. They have a number of alternatives to consider which includes working their land as best they can and remain at home while commuting to nearby town to work and finally move to a large city, leaving some family members at home but return at weekends.

By 2005, half of the world's population was living in cities In 1900 that figure had been just 13 percent, rising to 29 percent in 1950. Much of the increase in urban population especially in developing countries is comprised of migrants leaving farms and villages  in search of better life in cities. Today about 12 percent of the US population were born in another country and immigrated to the US , with most having settled in cities.

In this chapter Kemper discusses types of adaptations that migrants make, how research on rural urban migration has been redirected to include a broader range of groups and issues than previously examined. He discusses how the concept of transnationalism is used to describe the interconnectivity and movement of migrants betweentheir homelands and host societies.