Doctoral Dissertation Research: Agricultural Drivers of Return Migration

回迁，即移民返回原来的家园，是移民生命周期中的一个常见终点。虽然很多研究都集中在移民离开家乡的原因上，但很少有研究集中在理解是什么驱使人们在离开家乡后返回家乡。因此，回归移民为理解从物质到象征的不同因素如何推动家园的形成提供了一个重要的窗口。本博士论文研究项目以农业回流人口为研究对象，旨在揭示经济落后地区家庭形成的动因。除了支持在美国培养一名科学文化人类学的博士生外，该项目还向学术界、政策制定者和普通受众广泛传播研究成果。这是一项针对国内和海外移民的多地点人种学研究。研究人员在农村社区中心（包括市政府、教堂和农场）进行了访谈和参与式观察，以调查激励回归的因素以及这些因素在不同人群中变得突出的条件。这些发现还得到了对围绕农村移民和土地使用的政治辩论的文本分析，以及对移民自己制作的多媒体材料的图像分析的补充，这些材料记录了他们在国内重新融入社会的努力。这项研究进一步深化了关于社会和经济汇款如何塑造社区的人类学理论，特别是人们的流动如何改变城乡关系并改变农村生活和环境的发展。因此，这项研究提供了一个框架，通过考虑对居住在那里的人很重要的农村生活特征，这可能包括经济因素，但不一定限于此，来重新考虑移民与发展的关系。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.