The Turbulence of Migration —— Globalization, Deterritorialization and Hybridity

My subject line says it all. The best part of the book is the ability of the author to convey sophisticated theories into readable and interesting way. This is really rare especially on the topic which has been made really flaky and abstract by scholars from postmodern cultural studies.

As a sort of disclaimer, let me say that this work proved really useful for theoretical discussions/criticisms on multiculturalism and the formation of identity. While the arguments are a little dated - the work was first published in 2000, and a good amount of work done in anthropology and sociology since then seems to have been informed by the criticisms that Papastergiadis gives - the author gives and criticizes multiple theoretically-informed viewpoints through which these concepts can be understood. That being said, I'm a student interested in migration, and only the first three chapters (one could argue for four, but with some difficulty) explicitly deal with migration. The other six (five) chapters are purely theoretical, and while informative, could (and do) apply to anthropology/sociology generally, and are not explicitly about migrants or migration. While one can grasp the general gist of how his argument applies to migration, I was disappointed that he leaves the reader to draw their own connections between the theories he presents and the topic the title of the work addresses.