Here, There, and Elsewhere: The Making of Immigrant Identities in a Globalized World - Globalization in Everyday Life (Paperback)

"In this well-written and timely ethnographic study, Shams draws on her insider knowledge as a first-generation Bangladeshi-American woman to eloquently illustrate how different generations of South Asian Muslims navigate their identities as Muslims....Moving beyond a simple homeland-hostland binary, Shams' book is a welcoming intervention in both theories of assimilation and transnationalism." -- Cristine S. Khan and Van C. Tran * Social Forces *
"A significant body of contemporary migration research assumes that a dualistic focus on the country of origin and host society are appropriate for the creation of cutting-edge accounts of contemporary migration. In her study of South Asian Muslims and their descendants settling in California, Tahseen Shams challenges the adequacy of the homeland/hostland approach by demonstrating that depictions of events in migrants' countries of origin as well as those in regions to which these migrants have no connection-such as Syria, Palestine, Nigeria, and Western Europe-significantly influence their acceptance and adjustment. In so doing, Here, There, and Elsewhere advances our approach for understanding migration, resettlement, and transnational phenomena." -- Steven J. Gold * Michigan State University *
"[A] significant intervention in how we understand immigrants' lived experiences....Shams effectively uses examples from her fieldwork to convey the utility of the multicentered relational framework to various arenas of South Asian Muslim Americans' identity construction, while leaving analytical space for this concept to be further developed through additional case studies of other immigrant groups within and outside of the U.S.A. This is an important book." -- Adrienne Lee Atterberry * South Asian Diaspora *
"This brilliantly argued, beautifully written book pushes migration studies in an entirely new direction. Identifying a conceptual space located outside both countries of immigration and emigration and to which the immigrants have no direct connection, Shams provides an entirely novel demonstration of how conflicts stemming from the world's 'elsewhere' places shape the collective identity categories available to immigrants and their descendants. An important work, yielding lessons for both scholars and students to savor and ponder." -- Roger Waldinger * University of California, Los Angeles *
"This is a tour de force. Combining nuanced ethnography with multi-sited historical analysis, Shams shows how South Asian immigrants' lives in the U.S. are shaped not only by where they come from and where they go, but also by events in third places they have never been. The surprising centrality of these 'elsewheres' is a breakthrough insight in migration studies." -- David Scott FitzGerald * author of Refuge beyond Reach: How Rich Democracies Repel Asylum Seekers *