Much migration research takes as its point of departure the migrant and the act of migration. In contrast, the Introduction foregrounds migrants and their families, treating migration projects like those at the heart of the book as domains of interaction between those who move and those who stay. It introduces and situates key concepts and topics, including ‘moral economies of transnational kinship’, imagination and distance, Christianity, and generation. The Introduction also discusses migrants’ arrival in the United Kingdom and the immigration context at the time, as well as the methodology used in conducting multi-sited fieldwork. It concludes with an outline of the book’s six chapters, which consider moral economies of transnational kinship from multiple perspectives and angles, from multiple social and geographic locations.

Volume 2 of The Cambridge History of Global Migrations presents an authoritative overview of the various continuities and changes in migration and globalization from the 1800s to the present day. Despite revolutionary changes in communication technologies, the growing accessibility of long-distance travel, and globalization across major economies, the rise of nation-states empowered immigration regulation and bureaucratic capacities for enforcement that curtailed migration. One major theme worldwide across the post-1800 centuries was the differentiation between “skilled” and “unskilled” workers, often considered through a racialized lens; it emerged as the primary divide between greater rights of immigration and citizenship for the former, and confinement to temporary or unauthorized migrant status for the latter. Through thirty-one chapters, this volume further evaluates the long global history of migration; and it shows that despite the increased disciplinary systems, the primacy of migration remains and continues to shape political, economic, and social landscapes around the world.