Migration and Knowledge

East Carolina University, Greenville NC

Investigators

Abstract

Dr. David Griffith will undertake research on the effects that migration to the United States has on traditional knowledge systems in sending communities. Migrants from Latin America and the Caribbean to U.S. destinations continue to remit earnings to their natal communities for investment in productive regimes, house construction, and the enhancement of community infrastructure. Such behaviors explicitly bring global phenomena to bear on local settings, challenging local knowledge systems to accommodate new political economic conditions. The research proposed here will focus on the impacts of migration on local knowledge in one region in Veracruz, Mexico and one region in Olancho, Honduras. Using a battery of methods that complement long-term ethnographic research, investigators from three countries will compare migrant and non-migrant households, as well as migrating family members with non-migrating family members, regarding their knowledge of local production regimes. The research is important because it will contribute to social science theory that seeks to integrate close, long-term studies of local settings with multi-site, multinational studies done in the context of transnationalism and other processes that transcend communities. Local settings continue to exert powerful influence over human behavior, serving as life-long seats of identity, attracting significant investments in housing and land, and generating important knowledge bases about natural resources, ecological processes, and other features unique to specific ecosystems and production regimes. This research will combine insights from cognitive anthropology and local knowledge studies with insights from migration research. This investigation will thus draw together two important strands of social scientific inquiry to understand the complex relations between migrant-sending and immigrant-receiving regions in the Americas. The research also will foster collaboration among Mexican, Honduran, and U.S. scholars and graduate students.