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This article addresses questions of difference, positionality, and belonging from the perspectives of international migrants living and working in rural communities in Iceland. With the recent integration of rural areas into the global economy, small villages and towns have undergone rapid social transformation. The development of new industries and growing tourism in these localities has attracted many international migrants. The share of migrants in the local populations oscillates between 10% to 50%, depending on the town, with the majority coming from Europe. Commonly, they make up the greater part of workers in service jobs and manual labour in rural towns and villages. This article builds on data from ethnographic field research over 15 months in five parts of Iceland located outside of the capital region. Based on the analysis of interviews with migrants, we examine different perceptions of affinity and belonging and explore their experiences of inclusion and exclusion. To what extent do migrants see themselves as part of local communities? How do they narrate their social positions in those places? The discussion highlights how social stratification and hierarchy affect migrants’ experiences of inclusion as commonly displayed in the interviews. Furthermore, we elaborate on how notions of relatedness and otherness reflect inherited ideas of Europe and contemporary divergent geopolitical positions.
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Prelude to a Grid
People in the Singida region of Tanzania have long utilized diverse energy sources for subsistence. The wind separates grain from chaff. The sun ripens the millet and dries it for storage. More recently, solar panels charge phones and rural electricity investments extend the national grid. Yet as an electric frontier, Singida remains only peripherally and selectively served by energy infrastructures and fossil fuels. This article sketches Singidans’ prospect from this space and time of energy transition. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted between 2004 and 2019, it asks: how do rural Singidans eke energy from their natural and social environment? How can ideas of the sun and of labour in Nyaturu cosmology inform understandings of energy? And how are new energy technologies reshaping Singida’s social and economic landscape? I theorize energy as a deeply relational and gendered configuration of people, nature, labour and sociality that makes and sustains human and natural life.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1853185
- PAR ID:
- 10212677
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology
- Volume:
- 38
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 0305-7674
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 71 to 87
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.3167/cja.2020.380206
