Peruvians Dispersed: A Global Ethnography of Migration

Peruvians Dispersed presents an anthropological study of transnational migration to the United States, Spain, Japan and Argentina. Karsten Paerregaard spent a total of one year living with Peruvian migrants in four continents which allowed him to make ethnographic in-depth descriptions of Peru’s many migrant communities and at the same time discuss how immigration and labor market policies in the Global North both thwart and spur migration from the Global South. The book also offers an innovative contribution to the methodological debate about multi-sited field research, which in recent years has become prominent among scholars studying processes of globalization, transnationalism and multiculturalism. Because of the wide span of social groups in Peru that migrate and the global dispersion of Peruvians in America, Asia and Europe; the study of the Peruvian migration offers a unique opportunity to rethink current attempts to theorize transnational and diasporic migration and develop the methodological and analytical framework for a global ethnography.