"Migration can no longer be viewed as simply a matter of individual choice but must be seen as part of a world-wide shift from a rural-agrarian base to an urban-industrial base, a process which has brought about major structural transformations - and in some cases severe dislocations in the economies of developed and Third World countries. Migration today is not limited to shifts of families from country to city but involves wholesale population movements within and across national boundaries into different cultures and economies. Moreover, the ethnic minorities created by this new form of migration are increasingly rejecting assimilation as a mode of adaptation, seeking instead to maintain their identity within a new pluralistic framework. Contributors to this volume seek to explore the implications for ethnic consciousness and political conflict of this new form of massive immigration. What are the political implications when population pressure, concentration of land ownership, or rural stagnation thrusts masses of rural inhabitants into urban centers as an unskilled, and thus largely unemployed, labor force? Confronted with a capital-intensive society geared primarily to the urban élite, and thus with flagrant social and economic inequality, do or can these masses become a politically effective force? These and related issues are discussed for a wide variety of societies and ethnic groups, including West Indian migrants, European migrants, immigrants to Israel, American Indians, and migrants in Africa and New Guinea. The volume contains valuable information not only for the anthropologist but also for students in related social sciences and applied disciplines such as urban planning and rural development". -- dust jacket