Advance Praise for Agrarian Change, Migration and Development
The authors skilfully and effectively destroy six common myths about the migration and development nexus that I found most revealing and enlightening. Instead they propose an alternative understanding of this nexus drawing on critical development theory. This text is an admirable addition to this multilingual book series that challenges the dominant neoliberal paradigm and its policies.
Cristbal Kay, International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague
This is an exciting book dealing with one of the most important issues of the day, namely why people migrate and what impact it has on sending and receiving societies. Delgado Wise and Veltmeyer have done a great job to clarify and explain the issues involved.
Ronaldo Munck, Head of Civic Engagement, President's Office, Dublin City University
This small book provides us with a big idea of how to critically examine the migration-development nexus from the perspective of political economy. It addresses with analytical acuity the three challenging research fields in one go, i.e., migration studies, development studies and agrarian studies.
Jingzhong Ye, Professor of Development Studies and Dean, College of Humanities and Development Studies, China Agricultural University
Agrarian Change and Peasant Studies: Little Books on Big Issues
Book Series Editors
Saturnino (Jun) M. Borras Jr., International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), The Hague
Ruth Hall, PLAAS, University of the Western Cape, South Africa
Christina Schiavoni, International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), The Hague
Max Spoor, International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), The Hague
Henry Veltmeyer, Autonomous University of Zacatecas, Mexico
International Editorial Committee
Gonzalo Colque, Fundacin Tierra, Bolivia
Alessandra Corrado, University of Calabria, Italy
Ral Delgado-Wise, Autonomous University of Zacatecas, Mexico
Shuji Hisano, Kyoto University, Japan
Koichi Ikegami, Kinki University, Japan
Xarles Iturbe, EHNE Bizkaia, Bilbao
Bernardo Manano Fernandes, Universidade Estadual Paulista, Presidente Prudente (UNESP)
Alexander Nikulin, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), Moscow
Joana Pereira Leite, University of Lisbon, Portugal
Laksmi Savitri, Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia
Sergio Schneider, Federal University of Rio Grande do SulUFRGS, Brazil
Teodor Shanin, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences
Chayan Vaddhanaphuti, Chiang Mai University, Thailand
Ye Jingzhong, China Agricultural University, Beijing
Practical Action Publishing Ltd
The Schumacher Centre, Bourton on Dunsmore, Rugby, Warwickshire, CV23 9QZ, UK
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Published in North America by Fernwood Publishing, Canada, 2016
This edition published by Practical Action Publishing Ltd, 2016
2016 Ral Delgado Wise, Henry Veltmeyer
The right of the authors to be identified as authors of the work has been asserted under sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
A catalogue record for this book has been requested from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-185339--917-6 Paperback
ISBN 978-185339-916-9 Hardback
ISBN 978-178044-917-3 Ebook
ISBN 978-1-78044-916-6 Library PDF
Citation: Delgado, Ral (2016) Agrarian Change, Migration and Development, Rugby, UK: Practical Action Publishing, < http://dx.doi.org/10.3362/9781780449166
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Cover photograph: Juan Garca Davish. From the series: The Deaths Route
Cover design by John van der Woude
Printed in the UK by Lightning Source
Agrarian Change, Migration and Development by Ral Delgado Wise and Henry Veltmeyer is the sixth volume in the Agrarian Change and Peasant Studies Series from ICAS (Initiatives in Critical Agrarian Studies). The first volume is Henry Bernstein's Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change, followed by Jan Douwe van der Ploeg's Peasants and the Art of Farming, Philip McMichael's Food Regimes and Agrarian Questions, Ian Scoones Sustainable Livelihoods and Rural Development, and Marc Edelman and Saturnino M. Borras Jr.'s Politics of Transnational Agrarian Movements. Together, these six books reaffirm the strategic importance and relevance of applying agrarian political economy analytical lenses in agrarian studies today. They suggest that succeeding volumes in the series will be just as politically relevant and scientifically rigorous.
A brief explanation of the series will help put the current volume by Delgado Wise and Veltmeyer into perspective in relation to the ICAS intellectual and political project. Today, global poverty remains a significantly rural phenomenon, with rural populations comprising three-quarters of the world's poor. Thus, the problem of global poverty and the multidimensional (economic, political, social, cultural, gender, environmental and so on) challenge of ending it are closely linked to rural working people's resistance to the system that continues to generate and reproduce the conditions of rural poverty and their struggles for sustainable livelihoods. A focus on rural development thus remains critical to development thinking. However, this focus does not mean de-linking rural from urban issues. The challenge is to better understand the linkages between them, partly because the pathways out of rural poverty paved by neoliberal policies and the war on global poverty engaged in and led by mainstream international financial and development institutions to a large extent simply replace rural with urban forms of poverty.