Author: Christopher Dum File Type: pdf Residential motels have long been a place of last resort for many vulnerable Americansreleased prisoners, people with disabilities or mental illness, struggling addicts, the recently homeless, and the working poor. Cast aside by their families and mainstream society, they survive in squalid, unsafe, and demeaning circumstances that few of us can imagine. For a year, the sociologist Christopher P. Dum lived in the Boardwalk Motel to better understand its residents and the varied paths that brought them there. He documented how life in the motel affected their goals and dreams. As told through the voices and experiences of motel residents, Exiled in America paints a portrait of a vibrant community whose members forged identities in response to overwhelming stigma and created meaningful lives despite crushing economic instability. Dum witnessed moments of violence and conflict, as well as those of care and community. Throughout, he presents a powerful counterforce to the myths and stereotypes that often plague marginalized populations. In addition to chronicling daily life at the Boardwalk, Dum also follows local neighborhood efforts to shut the establishment down, leading to a wider analysis of legislative attempts to sanitize shared social space. He suggests meaningful policy changes to address the societal failures that lead to the need for motels such as the Boardwalk. The story of the Boardwalk, and the many motels like it, will concern anyone who cares about the lives of Americas most vulnerable citizens.

Author: Marco Armiero File Type: pdf In the age of climate change, the possibility that dramatic environmental transformations might cause the dislocation of millions of people has become not only a matter for scientific speculation or science-fiction narratives, but the object of strategic planning and military analysis. Environmental History of Modern Migrations offers a worldwide perspective on the history of migrations throughout thenineteenthandtwentieth centuries and provides an opportunity to reflect on the global ecological transformations and developments which have occurred throughout the last few centuries. With a primary focus on the environmentmigration nexus, this book advocates that global environmental changes are not distinct from global social transformations. Instead, it offers a progressive method of combining environmental and social history, which manages to both encompass and transcend current approaches to environmental justice issues. This edited collection will be of great interest to students and practitioners of environmental history and migration studies, as well as those with an interest in history and sociology. **Review At last, a careful look at the linkages between migration and environmental change in modern history! With an admirably international set of authors, this collection ranges far and wide, both geographically and conceptually. It should be a landmark in both global environmental history and the history of migration. J.R. McNeill, Georgetown University, USA All too often, studies that claim to be ground-breaking fail to live up to the brag. This stimulating and very timely collection of essays exploring the multiple and complex connections between human migration and biophysical environments represents a refreshing exception. In a study that is politically committed to the cause of socio-environmental justice as well as intellectually innovative, the authors engage with key notions such as corporeal ecology, environmental nativism, nativist environmentalism and the environmental refugeemigrant. Editors Marco Armiero and Richard Tucker, who remind us that migrants are themselves nature on the move, are to be congratulated for launching a new research area within environmental history of urgent contemporary importance internationally. Peter Coates, University of Bristol, UK This innovative and timely volume will surely change the way we think about the history of immigration. As these essays show, modern migrations are not only a social and political processes they also have important environmental dimensions. Covering a wide geographic rangefrom Polynesia to Siberia, from Brazil to China, the authors lay the groundwork for a new research agenda. Linda Nash, University of Washington, USA The editors have assembled an innovative group of contributors who challenge scholars of migration and environmental studies to develop a new analytical lensone that posits mobile humans as part of nature and nature as constitutive of mobile cultures and societies. A must-read. Donna Gabaccia, University of Toronto, Canada About the Author Marco Armiero is Director of the Environmental Humanities Laboratory at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, where he is also Associate Professor of Environmental History He is the author of A Rugged Nation. Mountains and the Making of Modern Italy (2011) and co-editor of A History of Environmentalism. Local Stories, Global Struggles (2014) and Nature and History in Modern Italy (2010). Armiero is a senior editor of Capitalism Nature Socialism and Environmental Humanities. Richard Tucker is Adjunct Professor in the School of Natural Resources, University of Michigan, USAHis earlier publications addressed the history of environmental change in the colonial and tropical world, including Insatiable Appetite The United States and the Ecological Degradation of the Tropical World (2000) and A Forest History of India (2010). His recent work addresses the environmental history of warfare.He is author of numerous essays and co-editor of several multi-author books on the subject, including Natural Enemy, Natural Ally Toward an Environmental History of War (2004).