cultural geographies 2006 13: 625
631

reviews in brief

Emigrant homecomings: the return movement of emigrants 1600 2000. Edited

by Marjory Harper. Manchester. Manchester University Press. 2005. 276 pp. 55 ISBN
0 7190 7070 8 hardback.

Although studies of migration have become increasingly important within a wide range
of academic disciplines and debates, the significance of return movements have, to
date, received relatively little attention. While stressing this important point, Emigrant
homecomings also suggests that return migrants/return movements are an integral part
of the global diaspora. It is from this promising starting point that Emigrant
homecomings sets out to address the significance and complexities of return migration
through three key themes: motives, mechanisms and impacts. To my mind, a book that
opens up discussion about return migration in these ways, particularly when it also
promises to be in relation to current debates about identities and home, is a more than
welcome (and overdue) addition to the migration literature.
The first key theme, Motives, sees individual chapters drawing on a number of case
studies which stress that the reasons why people return home are often complex. The
second, Mechanisms, considers the maintenance of links between home and away
through personal letters and organised clubs. And the third is Impacts, where, in just
two chapters, the economic, social and cultural impacts of return on specific
communities is considered. Emigrant homecomings is mainly concerned with migrant
return to Ireland, Scotland and England from either Australia or Canada in the nine-
teenth and twentieth centuries. However, the chapters are diverse, offering a number of
different geographical and historical perspectives outside these predominant zones.
Although much of this book is interesting, it is disappointing that the majority of
contributors deal with these crucial issues with seemingly little reference to
contemporary theoretical discussions and agendas. The result is a telling of stories, a
series of anecdotes, which lack detail and focus, as well as analytical precision. Given
the increasing concern with global movements by scholars from a range of disciplines,
it was surprising that there was little (or no) critical consideration of notions of home
and belonging, domesticity or gender, or how such issues might be informed by, for
example, cultural studies, feminist or postcolonial theory. Equally intriguing in a book
fundamentally concerned with the links between return migration, the disruption of a
sense of national belonging and home, is the paucity of theoretical work on
transnationalism and transmigrants. However, some chapters are better informed
than others. Alistair Thomson, for example, offers some consideration of both gender
and home in his chapter on postwar return movement from Australia to Britain. And

# 2006 SAGE Publications 10.1191/1474474006cgj379xx

Reviews in brief

Bruce Elliott, in his chapter on return to rural Ireland from the United States, considers
transnationalism as well as discussing attempts to define various migrant movements.
Overall, then, Emigrant homecomings stresses the importance of return migrants/
return movements to processes of migration, and in this respect is a valuable text.
However, the book lacks critical engagement with the key themes in contemporary
studies of (trans)migration, including
despite its claims
the complexity of identity
and notions of home; and in this respect it was disappointing.

Canberra, Australia GEORGINA GOWANS

Manufacturing suburbs: building work and home on the metropolitan fringe.

Edited by Robert Lewis. Philadelphia. Temple University Press. 2004. 304 pp. $68.50
cloth; $24.95 paper. ISBN 1 59213 085 2 cloth; 1 59213 086 0 $24.95 paper.

The contributors to Manufacturing suburbs all question the conventional under-

standing of the North American suburbanization process as one led by the establish-
ment of dormitory spaces for the Anglo bourgeoisie outside the city alongside the
evolution of mass transportation allowing commuting to work. While this pattern of
residential suburbanization did occur, Manufacturing suburbs shows that it was
accompanied by more complex and varied sets of processes. The focus of the book is
industrial suburbanization between 1850 and 1950. It demonstrates how the
expansion of industry to the urban fringes often played an integral or primary role in
the development of suburbia from the start of this period, not remaining insignificant
until after the Second World War, as is customarily believed.
While many places and factors are discussed in this book, the main thrust of industrial
suburbanization involved housing following industry to the suburbs to accommodate
workers daily walk to employment. When transport did play a role in suburbanization,
it often concerned freight not people movement. Another interesting twist is recorded
in Heather Barrows chapter, which shows the influence of the Ford car business on
industrial (rather than residential) suburbanization in Detroit through its role as a profit-
making industry, not a producer of commuter vehicles. The rewriting of the role of
transport in the history of suburbanization challenges common narratives of the class
and home
work relations of suburbia.
The focus on industrial suburbanization provides a working-class history to
suburbanization in this period, thus also making visible the presence, influence and
labour of women and ethnic minorities in the development of a place seen
predominantly as an Anglo form embodying very particular gender relations.
Like the Detroit chapter, two others challenge the reality of seminal places linked to
modern suburbanization. Mary Beth Pudup shows how the conventional under-
standing of suburbia enshrined in the Chicago School model does not, due to its
ahistorical origins, even describe its Alma Mater. Similarly, Greg Hise questions the
accuracy of understandings of suburbanization learnt from the example of Los Angeles.

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