Integrating Strangers in Society, 1st ed. 2019
Perspectives from Elsewhere

This book provides a uniquely positioned contribution to the current debates on the integration of immigrants in Europe. Twelve social anthropologists??strangers by vocation??reflect upon how they were taken in by those they studied over the course of their long-term fieldwork. The societies concerned are Sinti (northern Italy), Inuit (Canadian Arctic), Kanak (New Caledonia), M?ori (New Zealand), Lanten (Laos), Tobelo and Tanebar-Evav (Indonesia), Banyoro (Uganda), Gawigl and Siassi (Papua New Guinea) and a township in Odisha (India). A comparative analysis of these reflexive, ethnographic accounts reveals as yet underrepresented, non-European perspectives on the issue of integrating strangers, enabling the reader to identify and reflect upon the uniquely Western ideals and values that currently dominate such discourse.

Jos D. M. Platenkamp is Professor of Social Anthropology in the Institute of Ethnology at the University of Münster, Germany.

Almut Schneider is Associate Researcher in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany.

Enables the reader to recognize the current European modes of dealing with immigrants (or “strangers”) in society

Provides a much-needed anthropological and non-European counterpoint to scholarly literature on migration

Explores the position of the anthropologist as a “stranger by vocation” during long-term fieldwork