Doctoral Dissertation Research: Agricultural Drivers of Return Migration

回返移徙是指移徙者返回其原籍地，是移徙生命周期中的一个共同终点。虽然许多研究都集中在离家出走的原因上，但很少有人关注于了解是什么驱使人们在离家一段时间后返回家乡。因此，回返迁徙提供了一个重要的窗口，让我们了解从物质到象征的不同因素是如何推动建造家园的。这一博士论文研究项目聚焦于农业返乡移民，以揭示经济贫困地区家庭的动力因素。除了支持美国博士生在科学文化人类学方面的培训外，该项目还向学术、政策和普通受众广泛传播成果。这是一项多地点的人种学研究，对国内和海外的前移民进行了研究。研究人员在包括市政府、教堂和农场在内的农村社区中心进行访谈和参与者观察，以调查促使返回的因素以及这些因素在不同人群中变得突出的条件。对围绕农村移徙和土地使用的政治辩论进行的文字分析，以及对移徙者自己制作的多媒体材料的图像分析补充了这些调查结果，这些资料记录了他们在国内重新融入社会的努力。这项研究进一步发展了关于社会和经济汇款如何塑造社区的人类学理论，特别是人口流动如何改变城市和农村之间的关系，并改变农村生活和环境的发展。因此，这项研究通过考虑对居住在那里的人很重要的农村生活特征，提供了重新考虑移民与发展关系的框架，这些特征可能包括经济因素，但不一定限于这些因素。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Return migration, when migrants return to their original homes, is a common endpoint in the migration life cycle. Whereas much work has focused on the causes of migration away from home, less work has been focused on understanding what drives people to return home following stints away. Return migration thus offers an important window into understanding how the making of home is motivated by different factors, from material to symbolic. This doctoral dissertation research project focuses on agrarian return migration to shed light on factors that motivate home-making in economically disadvantaged regions. In addition to supporting the training of a U.S.-based doctoral student in scientific cultural anthropology, this project disseminates results broadly to academic, policy, and general audiences. This is a multi-sited ethnographic study of former migrants both at home and in the diaspora. The researchers engage in interviews and participant observation in rural community centers, including municipal governments, churches, and farms, to investigate the factors that motivate return and the conditions under which those factors become salient for different populations. These findings are complemented by textual analysis of political debates around rural migration and land use as well as image analysis of multimedia materials produced by migrants themselves as they document their efforts to reintegrate at home. This research furthers anthropological theory about how social and economic remittances shape communities, especially how the movement of people alters the relation between cities and countrysides and transforms the development of rural life and environments. As such, this research provides a framework for reconsidering the migration-development nexus by accounting for features of rural life that are important to the people who reside there, which may include economic factors but are not necessarily limited to them.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.