“If justice had a Jericho trumpet, Chamoiseau would be it.”—Junot Díaz As migrants embark on perilous journeys across oceans and deserts in pursuit of sanctuary and improved living conditions, what is the responsibility of those safely ensconced in the nations they seek to enter? Moved by repeated tragedies among immigrants attempting to enter eastern and southern Europe, Patrick Chamoiseau assails the hypocrisy and detachment that allow these events to happen. Migrant Brothers is an urgent declaration of our essential interconnectedness that asserts the necessity to understand one another as part of one human community, regardless of national origin.

The deeply reported story of identical twin brothers who escape El Salvador's violence to build new lives in California—fighting to survive, to stay, and to belong. “Impeccably timed, intimately reported, and beautifully expressed.”—The New York Times NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW • WINNER OF THE RIDENHOUR BOOK PRIZE • SILVER WINNER OF THE CALIFORNIA BOOK AWARD Growing up in rural El Salvador in the wake of the civil war, the United States was a distant fantasy to identical twins Ernesto and Raul Flores—until, at age seventeen, a deadly threat from the region’s brutal gangs forces them to flee the only home they’ve ever known. In this urgent chronicle of contemporary immigration, journalist Lauren Markham follows the Flores twins as they make their way across the Rio Grande and the Texas desert, into the hands of immigration authorities, and from there to their estranged older brother in Oakland, CA. Soon these unaccompanied minors are navigating school in a new language, working to pay down their mounting coyote debt, and facing their day in immigration court, while also encountering the triumphs and pitfalls of teenage life with only each other for support. With intimate access and breathtaking range, Markham offers an unforgettable testament to the migrant experience. FINALIST FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE • SHORTLISTED FOR THE J. ANTHONY LUKAS BOOK PRIZE • LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/BOGRAD WELD PRIZE FOR BIOGRAPHY “[This] beautifully written book . . . can be read as a supplement to the current news, a chronicle of the problems that Central Americans are fleeing and the horrors they suffer in flight. But it transcends the crisis. Markham’s deep, frank reporting is also useful in thinking ahead to the challenges of assimilation, for the struggling twins and many others like them. . . . Her reporting is intimate and detailed, and her tone is a special pleasure. Trustworthy, calm, decent, it offers refuge from a world consumed by Twitter screeds and cable news demagogues. . . . A generous book for an ungenerous age.”—Jason DeParle, The New York Review of Books “You should read The Far Away Brothers. We all should.”—NPR “This is the sort of news that is the opposite of fake. . . . Markham is our knowing, compassionate ally, our guide in sorting out, up close, how our new national immigration policy is playing out from a human perspective. . . . An important book.”—The Minneapolis Star Tribune

The construction of a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border—whether to build it or not—has become a hot-button issue in contemporary America. A recent impasse over funding a wall caused the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, sharpening partisan divisions across the nation. In the Arizona borderlands, groups of predominantly white American citizens have been mobilizing for decades—some help undocumented immigrants bypass governmental detection, while others help law enforcement agents to apprehend immigrants. Activists on both the left and the right mobilize without an immediate personal connection to the issue at hand, many doubting that their actions can bring about the long-term change they desire. Why, then, do they engage in immigration and border politics so passionately? Divided by the Wall offers a one-of-a-kind comparative study of progressive pro-immigrant activists and their conservative immigration-restrictionist opponents. Using twenty months of ethnographic research with five grassroots organizations, Emine Fidan Elcioglu shows how immigration politics has become a substitute for struggles around class inequality among white Americans. She demonstrates how activists mobilized not only to change the rules of immigration but also to experience a change in themselves. Elcioglu finds that the variation in social class and intersectional identity across the two sides mapped onto disparate concerns about state power. As activists strategized ways to transform the scope of the state’s power, they also tried to carve out self-transformative roles for themselves. Provocative and even-handed, Divided by the Wall challenges our understanding of immigration politics in times of growing inequality and insecurity.

On the surface, John and George Esseff seem to have traveled very different paths in life: George as a successful scientist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist with a wife, children, and grandchildren; John as a celibate priest whose life has been spent mostly with the poor. But from their humble beginnings in Depression-era Wilkes-Barre, PA to this day, the Esseff brothers' lives have been very much intertwined. Their shared story takes us from the poorest places on the planet to the bastions of wealth and power, with these remarkable men touching and changing lives all along the way. Gripping and inspirational, this book is the story of faith made real in the lives of two men who are BROTHERS & FATHERS.

The book investigates what have become of Cameroonian transnational family and friendship ties in the age of the mobile phone and the internet that make people readily available and reachable. Most theoretical literature states that these tools of sociality cement transnational social relationships through instantaneous interaction. To capture the different experiences and impressions on the significance of these media in easing communication for migrants and non-migrants, Tazanu draws on ethnographic accounts based on his fieldwork in Freiburg (Germany) and Buea (Cameroon). He argues that it is mainly the migrants who maintain or are expected to maintain ties with non-migrants back in Cameroon through calls and material support. The main finding of the study is that cell phones and the internet have facilitated discontents, grudges, insults, fights, avoidance, arguments and estrangement of relationships much more than they have contributed to binding friends or families through direct mediation. Underlying these aspects of distanciation are the high expectations and sometimes contradictory motives for instant virtual interaction. Non-migrants accounts suggest that direct availability and reachability should lead to uninterrupted transnational interaction and also that the cultural practices of remittances from migrants are easily requested and coordinated. Such motives are generally contrary to migrants wishes, willingness or ability to support friends and families in Cameroon. These unexpected outcomes arising from rapid speed of interaction questions the advantages that are often associated with instant sociality across space and time. The finding is a call for the cultural background and life-world experiences of media users to be taken into consideration when theorising the significance of information technology in the debate on media globalisation.

This study explores the relationship between outmigration and gender roles in two villages in North Tapanuli, on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. In a symbolic sense, land and women have always represented security to Toba Batak men as they travelled in search of a livelihood. The main purpose of this study is to throw light on the options open to the women staying behind and the adjustments they make, as well as their reasons for making them. The approach followed is an anthropological one. It combines an analysis of actor-oriented perceptions and strategies with an insight into the structural forces that formed the context of migration as it developed from the late nineteenth century through the colonial period until today.

This book is a collection of mixed responses of academicians and researchers on the burning issues that emanate from the conditions created by the spread of Covid-19 Virus in India. Articles in this book are arranged in four parts viz. Covid and Coexistence: Conceptual Issues, Covid-19: Development Issues, Covid-19: Sectoral Issues, and Covid 19: Labour and Gender Issues. Contents and findings of research articles included in this book may be helpful for policymakers and institutions engaged in dealing with Pandemic conditions. We hope readers and scholars will find this book worth reading.