Immigration

Abstract

Anthropological studies of immigration foreground the experiences of migrants and examine migration as a historically contextualized process linking together sending and receiving regions. This entry examines three major anthropological contributions to migration studies, including: patterns of movement that predominate in contemporary global migration flows (such as regional flows, feminization of migration, and transnationalism), practices of migration (i.e., the role of networks in initiating and sustaining flows and changes in family dynamics), and power relations inherent to these patterns and practices (through regulatory processes defining citizenship categories and possibilities of social inclusion and/or integration in the nation‐state).