Courting migrants : how states make diasporas and diasporas make states /

Burgess (Fletcher School, Tufts Univ.) offers a richly informed study of the reciprocal relationships between homeland governments and increasingly organized migrant and diasporic communities. While the author is clearly aware of the cultural, social, and economic links between homelands and their diasporas, her commitment is to developing a theory of how their reciprocal relationships--"causal feedback loops"--shape not only the migrant communities but also the homeland's politics. The striking phrase "diasporas make states" and the less surprising "states make diasporas" recur throughout the text. Always informative and perceptive as it explores the Mexican, Filipino, Dominican, and Turkish migrant diasporas, the book is particularly persuasive in its presentation of the Turkish case. The analysis of the ways in which transnational political parties (and not just the State) act as mobilizing agents in migrant communities offers new insight. Burgess also offers suggestive if not always persuasive short accounts throughout of how a homeland's nationalism and degree of democratic governance, if any, alter as a result of the interactions with diasporas. While other scholars have explored important aspects of transnational diasporic politics (e.g., José Itzigsohn, Alan Gamlen, Luin Goldring), no one has offered the panoptic synthesis achieved here. An excellent, required text for upper-level courses in politics, international relations, and migration studies. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students. --Khachig Tololyan, emeritus, Wesleyan