Migration and Restructing in the United States: A Geographic Perspective FROM THE PUBLISHER
The United States in the last half century has undergone rapid and fundamental changes as economic restructuring, aging, and increasing cultural and ethnic diversity profoundly alter its national character. This groundbreaking book examines the links between migration and the ongoing economic and demographic revolution. Utilizing an explicitly geographic perspective, the contributors highlight the crucial role played by scale and spatial context in both immigration and internal migration. They show that the economic and demographic restructuring underway is a distinctly geographic phenomenon with immense variation over region and locale. Bringing together the leading migration scholars from geography, economics, sociology, and demography, this multidisciplinary collection represents the cutting edge in the field and explores important implications for future research.
Author Biography: Kavita Pandit is associate professor of geography at the University of Georgia. Suzanne Davies Withers is assistant professor of geography at the University of Washington.
SYNOPSIS
The United States in the latter part of the twentieth century has seen rapid and fundamental changes in the economic and demographic make up of the nation. Economic restructuring is exemplified by trends such as the decline of manufacturing jobs, the rise of the service economy, the downsizing of firms, and related re-skilling of the workforce. Changes in the demographic make-up of the country is seen in the changing age structure of the population, viz. its aging as well as in the increasing cultural and ethnic diversity of the nation. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that the economic and demographic restructuring underway is a distinctly geographic phenomenon with immense variation over region and locale. Migration is findamentally linked to the spatial processes of economic and demographic restructuring.
Internal migration patterns have contributed to as well as responded to the rise and fall of regional economies. At the same time, the aging of the society has meant that the factors driving migration and the choice of destinations is also being transformed. Immigration to the U.S. has similarly profound implications for the economic and demographic restructuring of society. Immigration has been responsible for the redirection of federal spending at the national level and has triggered economic changes at destination regions. On the social front, the ongoing patterns of immigration have sparked national debates on the nature of our society and the future assimilation of incoming migrants.
These changes, taken together, also suggest that migration scholars need to reexamine traditional research, that examine the interconnections between U.S. internal and external migration and the fundamental changes in our economic and demographic structures using a geographic/ spatial perspective. The papers were originally presented at a State-of-the-Art Conference entitled 'Migration and Restructuring in the U.S.' organized by Pandit and Withers are held at the University of Georgia in Athens on May 24, 1997. Assembled in this prospectus are some of the best papers from this conference, organized around three themes: Migration and Economic Restructuring, Migration and Demographic Restructuring, and Methodological Frontiers of Migration Research.
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