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This paper applies Marx’s concept of immiseration to the mining communities of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, in an attempt to conceptualise the consequences of de-industrialisation. We identify and explore a series of specific social, economic, historical, political and geographic circumstances that have militated against the radicalisation predicted by Marx, but nonetheless conclude that the concept of immiseration continues to have contemporary relevance. Economic hardship, out-migration on an unprecedented scale and a collapse of confidence at both an individual and collective level are the consequences of de-industrialisation and reveal the contemporary experience and purpose of immiseration. First, it is a process through which a geographically isolated population of workers have become conditioned either to accept poor work in terms of lower wages and conditions, or to become economic migrants. Second, it is a process through which new opportunities for profitability and investment are established for new investors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the different socio-economic consequences of migration for Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Cubans, Jamaicans and Haitians in the context of New York City. Migration outcomes are structured by a range of influences, including geopolitics, class selectivity, de-industrialization, ethnic niches and the timing of settlement. Emphasis is placed on the importance of variations in the household structures and gender strategies of these groups for understanding their different socioeconomic situations in the 1990s. Differences in the labor force participation patterns of the women in these communities and the employment traditions upon which they draw have significant consequences for the well-being of the five groups. These cases also question the common assumption that high rates of female headed-households inevitably lead to high rates of poverty, a pattern found among Dominicans and Puerto Ricans but not among Jamaicans and Haitians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review considers the following questions: Why is the city undertheorized in anthropology? Why is an anthropological voice rarely heard in the urban studies and urban policy discourse? Anthropological literature published since 1989 is reviewed, with an emphasis on contributions to urban theory and the locating of anthropological studies within the broader context of urban studies. The city is found not to be absent in anthropological theory, but it has had no major theoretical impact. The images of the ethnic city, divided city, deindustrialized city, and global city have been most influential, as has research in the areas of racism, migration, poststructural studies of conflict and resistance, and critiques of architecture and urban planning. The literature continues to focus on the links between the experience of individuals and sociopolitical and economic processes as well as on the cultural meaning of the urban environment. The newest areas of inquiry include the study of urban space and time, metropolitan knowledge, and ethnoaesthetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]