Julie A. Clancy-Smith. Mediterraneans: North Africa and Europe in an Age of Migration, c. 1800-1900. (University of California Press, 2010)
Julie Clancy-Smith is a widely-respected historian and a pleasure to read. In Mediterraneans, she tackles issues related to migration during the rise of nation-states. In her words:
Population movements constitute the bedrock of world history and assume of a wide range of guises: epic wanderings, pilgrimage, pastoral nomadism, transhumance, voluntary relocation, forced expatriation, trade diaspora, travel, tourism, slavery, and labor mobility of many kinds. The critical elements in taxonomies of motion are the relative presence or absence of force, the motivations and objectives of those favoring departure over staying put, the duration and patterns of expatriation, and whether the place of exile became over time a space of belonging. To these considerations must be added variables such as gender, age and generation, social class, family structure, religion, and race, all of which determined how individuals or groups perceived their subjective situation at home and responded to the idea of temporary or permanent expatriation, however alluring of frightening that prospect might have appeared. These diverse manifestations of human mobility were not necessarily distinct; yet no matter how or why they departed, the people in motion brought wide-ranging social changes to their host societies and to those left behind. Fundamental to the nature, velocity, and direction of migratory processes in this period was the modern state's expanding regulatory reach (4, emphasis mine).
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