Long-distance engagement by migrants in the politics of their homelands is not a new phenomenon, but, as this book argues, politicians are increasingly looking beyond their national boundaries for electoral and political support. While migrants rarely cast decisive votes in homeland elections, they are not marginal to homeland politics. Based on in-depth research on state-migrant relations in four high-migration countries, Courting Migrants looks at howextraterritorial outreach by homeland states and parties alters the boundaries of political membership and intersects with migrant agency to transform politics at home.

Over the last decade, a new phenomenon has emerged within the international community: the Global Remittances Trend (GRT). Thereby, government institutions, international (financial) organisations, NGOs and private sector actors have become interested in migration and remittances and their potential for poverty reduction and development, and have started to devise institutions and policies to harness this potential. This book employs a gender-sensitive governmentality analysis to trace the emergence of the GRT, to map its conceptual and institutional elements, and to examine its broader implications. Through an analysis of the GRT at the international level, combined with an in-depth case study on Mexico, this book demonstrates that the GRT is instrumental in spreading and deepening specific forms of gendered neoliberal governmentality. This innovative book will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, international relations, sociology, development studies, economics, gender studies and Latin American studies.

Inquiries into marital patterns can serve as an effective lens to analyze social structures and material cultures not only on the question of sexuality, but also on the nature of a private citizen’s engagement with state and law. Through ethnographic research in courtrooms, community,and kinship spaces, the author outlines the transformations in material culture and political economy that have led to renewed negotiations on the institution of marriage in North India, especially in legal spaces. Tracing organically evolving notions of sexual consent and legal subjectivity, Courting Desire underlines how non-normative decisions regarding marriage become possible in a region otherwise known for high instances of honor killings and rigid kinship structures. Aspirations for consensual relationships have led to a tentative attempt to forge relationships that are non-normative but grudgingly approved after state intervention. The book traces this nascent and under-explored trend in the North Indian landscape.

It has been half a century since the Geneva Refugee Convention came into place, but there is still no comparable international regime which provides for the increasing phenomenon of mobile economic migrants. At a time of global mobility, when migration policies are constantly changing and the security and rights of migrants are called into question, there is clearly a need for strengthened international cooperation. This volume brings together an international team of authors to examine the prospects for improvements in such cooperation and for the establishment of a framework of basic global or regional norms of conduct. Issues addressed in the book include how to augment the development effects of migration for source countries, how to meet the security and rights interests of both states and migrants and how to improve the prospects for integration of migrants in destination countries. With its fresh, policy-focused and global approach, this volume will be of great value to both academics and policy-makers.

Since the early 2000s, Turkey has shown an unprecedented interest in its diaspora. This book provides the first in-depth examination of the institutionalisation of Turkey's diaspora engagement policy since the Justice and Development Party's rise to power in 2002, the Turkish diaspora's new role as an agent of diplomatic goals, and how Turkey's growing sphere of influence affects intra-diaspora politics and diplomatic relations with Europe. The book is based on fieldwork in Turkey, France and Germany, and interviews conducted with diaspora organisation leaders and policymakers. Diasporas have become transformative for relations at the state-to-state level and blur the division between the domestic and the foreign. A case study of Turkey's diasporas is significant at a time when emigrants from Turkey form the largest Muslim community in Europe and when issues of diplomacy, migration and citizenship have become more salient than ever.

NAMED A TOP 10 BOOK OF 2018 BY NPR and THE WASHINGTON POST WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE IN CURRENT INTEREST FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE NONFICTION AWARD The instant New York Times bestseller, "A must-read for anyone who thinks 'build a wall' is the answer to anything." --Esquire For Francisco Cantú, the border is in the blood: his mother, a park ranger and daughter of a Mexican immigrant, raised him in the scrublands of the Southwest. Driven to understand the hard realities of the landscape he loves, Cantú joins the Border Patrol. He and his partners learn to track other humans under blistering sun and through frigid nights. They haul in the dead and deliver to detention those they find alive. Plagued by a growing awareness of his complicity in a dehumanizing enterprise, he abandons the Patrol for civilian life. But when an immigrant friend travels to Mexico to visit his dying mother and does not return, Cantú discovers that the border has migrated with him, and now he must know the full extent of the violence it wreaks, on both sides of the line.

During the violent years of war marking Cuba's final push for independence from Spain, over 3,000 Cuban emigres, men and women, rich and poor, fled to Mexico. But more than a safe haven, Mexico was a key site, Dalia Antonia Muller argues, from which the expatriates helped launch a mobile and politically active Cuban diaspora around the Gulf of Mexico. Offering a new transnational vantage on Cuba's struggle for nationhood, Muller traces the stories of three hundred of these Cuban emigres and explores the impact of their lives of exile, service to the revolution and independence, and circum-Caribbean solidarities. While not large in number, the emigres excelled at community building, and their effectiveness in disseminating their political views across borders intensified their influence and inspired strong nationalistic sentiments across Latin America. Revealing that emigres' efforts were key to a Cuban Revolutionary Party program for courting Mexican popular and diplomatic support, Muller shows how the relationship also benefited Mexican causes. Cuban revolutionary aspirations resonated with Mexican students, journalists, and others alarmed by the violation of constitutional rights and the increasing conservatism of the Porfirio Diaz regime. Finally, Muller follows emigres' return to Cuba after the Spanish-American War, their lives in the new republic ineluctably shaped by their sojourn in Mexico.