Nina Glick Schiller
Nina Glick Schiller
Contact Details
Telephone: 0161 275 7106
Email: nina.glickschiller@manchester.ac.uk
Research Themes: Transnational migration, cities, globalization, locality, religion and migration, methodological nationalism
Nina Glick Schiller is the Director of the Cosmopolitan Cultures Institute and Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester and Professor. She is an associate of the Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale Germany and a senior associate of the Max Planck Instiute for Ethnic and Relgious Diversity, an Emiritus Professor of Anthropology at University of New Hampshire, USA. In more than 70 articles, chapters, reports and three books Nina Glick Schiller developed a comparative and historical perspective on migration, transnational and diaporic processes and social relations. Her research has been conducted in Haiti, the United States, and Germany and she has worked with migrants from all regions of the globe. She has also critiqued the governmentality of regimes of truth including those reflected in research paradigms in migration, urban and health studies.
In migration and urban studies, her concern has been to explore differences of power within transnational social fields in relationship to the constitution of gender, race, class, status, poverty, the second generation, citizenship, and national identity. To foster publication from this perspective in 1992 she founded the journal Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power and edited it from 1992 to 2001. She is currently alos on the boards of Social Analysis, Anthropological Theory, African Diaspora, and Focaal.
Her current book projects develop migration theory by examining the relationship between the migrant and the city. These books contest the methodological nationalism of most migration studies that remain fixed within the comparative framework of individual nation-states and state policies. The first book, Locating Migration: Rescaling Migrants and Cities, co-edited with Ayse Caglar, (Cornell 2010) examines the relationship between the scalar positioning of cities and the pathways of migrant transnationality. The second book, Pathways: Placing Migration Theory, argues that the entire debate about immigration, assimilation, multiculturalism, transnationalism, and citizenship has very little to do with how persons of migrant background actually live their lives. Approaches the varying ways persons of migrant background participate in everyday forms of cosmopolitan sociability, she highlight and links variations in these practices to the relative positionality of cities.
Recent Publications and Links:
2009. "Old Baggage and Missing Luggage: A Commentary of Beck and Sznaider's 'Unpacking Comopolitanism for the Social Sciences: A Research agenda'" British Journal of Sociology 60th anniversary.
2009. "Towards a Comparative Theory of Locality in Migration Studies: Migrant Incorporation and City Scale", Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies,35 (2):177-2.
2009. Old and New Locality: Theorizing Transnational Migration in a Neo-Liberal World (to be translated into Spanish) Nuevos retos del transnacionalismo, OPI Ministerio de Trabajo y Asuntos Sociales.
2009. "Beyond Methodological Ethnicity and Towards the City Scale: An Alternative Approach to Local and Transnational Pathways of Migrant Incorporation," in Transnational and Global, L. Pries, ed. Routledge.
2009. "Theorizing About and Beyond Transnational Processes" in Caribbean Migration to the United States and Western Europe: Essays on Incorporation, Identity and Citizenship, E. Mielants, M. Cervantes-Rodriguez and R. Grosfoguel, eds., Temple UP.
2009. "'… The Land which the LORD your God Giveth you': Two 'African' Churches in Oststadt," in Christianity in Africa and the African Diaspora (with E. Karagiannis ), A. Adogame, R. Gerloff and K. Hock, eds., Continuum International.
2008. “Beyond Methodological Ethnicity: Local and Transnational Pathways of Immigrant Incorporation” Willy Brandt Series of Working Papers in International Migration and Ethnic Relations.
2006. “Beyond the Ethnic Lens: Locality, Globality, and Born-again Incorporation,” American Ethnologist. 33(4): 612-633.
2005. “Blood and Belonging: Long Distance Nationalism and the World Beyond” in Susan McKinnon and Sydney Silverman (eds) Complexities Beyond Nature and Nurture, The University of Chicago Press.
2005. "Transborder Citizenship: An Outcome of Legal Pluralism with Transnational Social Fields" in Franz von Benda-Beckmann, Keebat von Benda-Beckmann and Anne Griffiths (eds) Mobile People Mobile Law, Ashgate