Anne-Meike Fechter, Katie Walsh (eds.),  The New Expatriates: Postcolonial Approaches to Mobile Professionals  (Routledge, June 2012)

While scholarship on migration has been thriving for decades, little attention has been paid to professionals from Europe and America who move temporarily to destinations beyond ‘the West’. Such migrants are marginalised and depoliticised by debates on immigration policy, and thus there is an urgent need to develop nuanced understanding of these more privileged movements. In many ways, these are the modern-day equivalents of colonial settlers and expatriates, yet the continuities in their migration practices have rarely been considered.

The New Expatriates advances our understanding of contemporary mobile professionals by engaging with postcolonial theories of race, culture and identity. The volume brings together authors and research from across a wide range of disciplines, seeking to evaluate the significance of the past in shaping contemporary expatriate mobilities and highlighting postcolonial continuities in relation to people, practices and imaginations. Acknowledging the resonances across a range of geographical sites in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, the chapters consider the particularity of postcolonial contexts, while enabling comparative perspectives. A focus on race and culture is often obscured by assumptions about class, occupation and skill, but this volume explicitly examines the way in which whiteness and imperial relationships continue to shape the migration experiences of Euro-American skilled migrants as they seek out new places to live and work.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

David G. Ockwell, Alexandra Mallett (eds.),  Low-Carbon Technology Transfer: From Rhetoric to Reality  (Routledge, June 2012)

Low carbon technology transfer to developing countries has been both a lynchpin of, and a key stumbling block to a global deal on climate change. This book brings together for the first time in one place the work of some of the world's leading contemporary researchers in this field. It provides a practical, empirically grounded guide for policy makers and practitioners, while at the same time making new theoretical advances in combining insights from the literature on technology transfer and the literature on low carbon innovation.

The book begins by summarizing the nature of low carbon technology transfer and its contemporary relevance in the context of climate change, before introducing a new theoretical framework through which effective policy mechanisms can be analyzed. The north-south, developed-developing country differences and synergies are then introduced together with the relevant international policy context. Uniquely, the book also introduces questions around the extent to which current approaches to technology transfer under the international policy regime might be considered to be 'pro-poor'. Throughout, the book draws on cutting edge empirical work to illustrate the insights it affords. The book concludes by setting out constructive ways forward towards delivering on existing international commitments in this area, including practical tools for decision makers.

Tony Fielding,  Migration In Britain: Paradoxes of the Present, Prospects for the Future (Edward Elgar Publishing, May 2012)

Those who need to migrate the most – perhaps due to low paid or insecure jobs – tend to actually migrate the least, while those who need to migrate the least – for example those who have secure, well-paid jobs – tend to actually migrate the most. This is one of the many paradoxes about internal migration in Britain that are explored in this topical and timely book by Tony Fielding.

Migration in Britain takes a fresh look at the patterns of migration at both the regional and local levels and develops new theoretical frameworks and novel methods to explain these patterns. It anticipates British society and its internal migration flows fifty years hence in the absence of climate change, and comes to judgments about how and in what ways these migration flows might be affected by climate change.

Developing new approaches to explain migration patterns, this book will appeal to academics, researchers, postgraduate and undergraduate students of population migration, as well as businesses concerned with housing and utilities. Anyone with a general interest in migration issues including the impacts of, and adaptation to, climate change, will find much to interest them in this insightful book.

Russell King and Julie Vullnetari, Remittances, Gender and Development: Albania's Society and Economy in Transition  (I.B.Tauris, 2011).

Migration in the modern world, rather than being seen as a symptom or result of underdevelopment, is now understood more as a route towards development and a strategy for alleviating poverty. This study of Albania is particularly significant in this new debate on migration and development as, since the fall of communism, remittances have been a major supporter of the Albanian economy, sustaining many Albanian families, especially in rural areas. The authors thus focus on the socio-cultural context of remittances, and explore how gender emerges as a powerful facet in the processes of development. It will therefore be of interest to scholars and students in Migration Studies, Development Studies, Gender Studies, Geography and Anthropology, as well as offering vital analysis for policy-makers, donors and civil society activists engaged in development planning and migration management.

Ben Rogaly and Becky Taylor,  Moving Histories of Class and Community. Identity, Place and Belonging in Contemporary England (Palgrove, 2011).

White working class areas are often seen as entrenched and immobile, threatened by the arrival of 'outsiders'. This major new study of class and place since 1930 challenges accepted wisdom, demonstrating how emigration as well as shorter distance moves out of such areas can be as suffused with emotion as moving into them. Both influence people's sense of belonging to the place they live in.

Using oral histories from residents of three social housing estates in Norwich, England, the book also tells stories of the appropriation of and resistance to state discoruses of community; and of ambivalent, complex and shifting class relations and identities. Material poverty has been a constant in the area, but not for all residents, and being classed as 'poor' is an identity that some actively resist.

This paperback edition includes a Preface by Lynsey Hanley, author of Estates: An Intimate History, and a new Conclusion by the authors.

Charles Williams and Dominic Kniveton, African Climate and Climate Change: Physical, Social and Political Perspectives  (Springer, 2011).

Compared to many other regions of the world, Africa is particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change and variability. Widespread poverty, an extensive disease burden and pockets of political instability across the continent has resulted in a low resilience and limited adaptative capacity of African society to climate related shocks and stresses. To compound this vulnerability, there remains large knowledge gaps on African climate, manifestations of future climate change and variability for the region and the associated problems of climate change impacts. Research on the subject of African climate change requires an interdisciplinary approach linking studies of environmental, political and socio-economic spheres. In this book we use different case studies on climate change and variability in Africa to illustrate different approaches to the study of climate change in Africa from across the spectrum of physical, social and political sciences. In doing so we attempt to highlight a toolbox of methodologies (along with their limitations and advantages) that may be used to further the understanding of the impacts of climate change in Africa and thus help form the basis for strategies to negate the negative implications of climate change on society.

Simon Rycroft, Swinging City. A Cultural Geography of London 1950–1974  (Ashgate, 2011).

This book works with two contrasting imaginings of 1960s London: the one of the excess and comic vacuousness of Swinging London, the other of the radical and experimental cultural politics generated by the city's counterculture.  The connections between these two scenes are mapped looking firstly at the spectacular events that shaped post-war London, then at the modernist physical and social reconstruction of the city alongside artistic experiments such as Pop and Op Art. Making extensive use of London's underground press the book then explores the replacement of this seemingly materialistic image with the counterculture of underground London from the mid-1960s. Swinging City develops the argument that these disparate threads cohere around a shared cosmology associated with a new understanding of nature which differently positioned humanity and technology. The book tracks a moment in the historical geography of London during which the city asserts itself as a post-imperial global city. Swinging London it argues, emerged as the product of this recapitalisation, by absorbing avant-garde developments from the provinces and a range of transnational, mainly transatlantic, influences.

Russell King, Richard Black, Michael Collyer, Anthony Fielding and Ronald Skeldon, The Atlas of Human Migration: Global Patterns of People on the Move  (Routledge, July 2010).

Migration has provided millions with an escape route from poverty or oppression, ensuring the survival, even prosperity, of individuals and their families. New currents of human migration, triggered by ethnic cleansing or climate change or economic need, are appearing all the time and immigration has become one of today's most contested issues.

This compelling new atlas maps contemporary migration against its crucial economic, social, cultural and demographic contexts. Drawing on data from one of the largest concentrations of migration research, the atlas traces the story of migration from its historical roots through the economic and conflict imperatives of the last 50 years to the causes and effects of flight today.  Issues covered include: Refugees and asylum seekers; Diasporas; Remittances; The 'brain drain'; Trafficking; Student, retirement and return migration.

Tim Burt, Robert Allison (eds), Sediment Cascades: An Integrated Approach  (Wiley, March 2010)

Sediment Cascades: An Integrated Approach provides a comprehensive overview that addresses the transport of sediment through the landscape. Suitable for academic researchers, industry practitioners, research students and advanced level undergraduates, seeking detailed knowledge and an up-to-date review of the recent research literature. The emphasis is on contemporary sediment system dynamics with relevance both to landscape management and landform development.

Sediment Cascades: An Integrated Approach begins with an explanation of the need for an integrated approach to sediment delivery systems and introduces the main themes of sediment production, delivery, storage and transfer. Further chapters then focus on specific environments from mountains, through floodplains, to estuaries and the continental shelf.

• Focuses on contemporary sediment system dynamics and current research
• Covers a sequence of environments from steep mountains to the continental shelf
• Highlights the continuity of the subject by linking each component area with its adjacent elements

Richard Black, Godfried Engbersen, Marek Oklski, Cristina Pantru (eds), A Continent Moving West? (Amsterdam University Press, 2010).

A Continent Moving West? explores the expansion of migration from countries in Eastern Europe following their accession to the European Union. Fifteen expertly authored chapters address head-on what the consequences of large-scale migration have been since 2007. The analysis is conducted for both origin countries, notably Poland, Romania and Bulgaria, and destination countries, including the UK, the Netherlands and Norway. Particular attention is given to labour market impacts, while also discussing migration policies emerging throughout the continent. Overall, this book testifies to how many of the migration patterns so far generated are temporary, circular or seasonal, thus warranting the label 'incomplete' or 'liquid'. Yet, the fluid nature of such movements is expected to continue, making forecasts for future migration - and its repercussions - highly unreliable. One thing is clear. Conventional notions of migration as a one-way, permanent or long-term process are increasingly becoming wide of the mark. Authors Marta Anacka, Richard Black, Venelin Boshnakov, Krisztina Csedo, Jan de Boom, Stephen Drinkwater, John Eade, Godfried Engbersen, Jon Horgen Friberg, Michal Garapich, Izabela Grabowska-Lusinska, Pawel Kaczmarczyk, Eugenia Markova, Vesselin Mintchev, Joanna Napierala, Krzysztof Nowaczek, Wolfgang Ochel, Marek Oklski, Cristina Pantru, Swanie Potot, Dumitru Sandu, Erik Snel, Paulina Trevena.

This book is available to read and download, free of charge, as an electronic version

Jon C. Lovett , David G. Ockwell, A Handbook Of Environmental Management (Edward Elgar, 2008).

A Handbook of Environmental Management presents a range of case studies that demonstrate the complementary application of different social science techniques in combination with ecology-based management thinking to the natural environment.

Contemporary environmental management is characterised by an increasing awareness of the need for interdisciplinary approaches. This requires managers to effectively combine insights from both the natural and social sciences in order to ensure sustainable outcomes. This eloquent and unique Handbook provides a broad overview, complemented by specific case studies and techniques that are used in environmental management from the local level to international environmental regimes.

With contributions from leading authorities in the field, this innovative volume provides a valuable teaching aid for students, as well as an insightful and practical reference tool for environmental practitioners with no background in the social sciences. Environmental managers and policymakers attempting to learn about, and integrate thinking from, the social sciences should also not be without this important resource.

Russell King and Nicola Mai, Out of Albania (Berghahn Books, 2008).

Analysing the dynamics of the post-1990 Albanian migration to Italy, this book is the first major study of one of Europe’s newest, most dramatic yet least understood migrations. It takes a close look at migrants’ employment, housing and social exclusion in Italy, as well as the process of return migration to Albania. The research described in the book challenges the pervasive stereotype of the “bad Albanian” and, through in-depth fieldwork on Albanian communities in Italy and back in Albania, provides rich insights into the Albanian experience of migration, settlement and return in both their positive and their negative aspects.

Russell King is Professor of Geography at the University of Sussex and Director of the Sussex Centre for Migration Research.

Nicola Mai is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of European Transformations, London Metropolitan University. Both together and individually, they have published widely in the field of migration studies, specialising in Italy, Albania and other Southern European and Balkan countries.

Brian Short, Charles Watkins and John Martin (eds), The front line of freedom: British farming in the Second World War (British Agricultural History Society 2007)

Farmers served the country well during the Second World War. Food supplies on the home front were maintained and countrysides were transformed from the dismal conditions of the 1930s. And later there was a national sense of gratitude and a determination not to let the sector slip back into a low price regime. The post-war settlement determined the future of farming for half a century and on terms which were handsomely favourable to farmers.

But was everything as rosy as the post-war writers claimed? This book, drawing together the work of 15 scholars, is the first attempt to discover what really happened during the war. The front line of freedom shows just how closely directed agriculture and individual farmers were in wartime, and the determination with which uncooperative or ‘failing’ farmers might be dispossessed. It describes the tensions between agriculture and the military: how the war effort was aided by machinery but how close it came to being derailed by a lack of labour: so it pays proper attention to the recruitment of the Women’s Land Army and prisoners of war. It shows how science was used to aid farming, and the advocacy of silage. And even whilst the war was being fought, a vision was being developed about the role of agriculture in the post war world.

Crucially, The front line of freedom asks whether the war years saw a revolution in farming. Were there real productivity gains? Or did government merely throw money at farmers who were only too delighted to do its bidding at its expense?  In the end The front line of freedom finds the evidence for a wartime revolution in agriculture unconvincing, but it is indisputable that the war years were pivotal in the acceptance of state-directed agriculture. This revelatory book challenges received wisdom about farming in wartime. It is essential reading for all interested in the evolution of twentieth-century farming.

David Lambert and Alan Lester (eds.), Colonial Lives Across the British Empire: Imperial Careering in the Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2006).

This volume uses a series of portraits of 'imperial lives' in order to rethink the history of the British Empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It tells the stories of men and women who dwelt for extended periods in one colonial space before moving on to dwell in others, developing 'imperial careers'. These men and women consist of four colonial governors, two governors' wives, two missionaries, a nurse/entrepreneur, a poet/civil servant and a mercenary. Leading scholars of colonialism guide the reader through the ways that these individuals made the British Empire, and the ways that the empire made them. Their life histories constituted meaningful connections across the empire that facilitated the continual reformulation of imperial discourses, practices and cultures. Together, their stories help us to re-imagine the geographies of the British Empire and to destabilize the categories of metropole and colony.

Anastasia Christou, Narratives of Place, Culture and Identity: Second Generation Greek-Americans Return Home (Amsterdam University Press, 2006).

Christou explores the phenomenon of return migration in Greece through the settlement and identification processes of second-generation Greek-American returning migrants. She examines the meanings attached to the experience of return migration. The concepts of home and belonging figure prominently in the return migratory project which entails relocation and displacement as well as adjustment and alienation of bodies and selves.

Furthermore, Christou considers the multiple interactions (social, cultural, political) between the place of origin and the place of destination; network ties; historical and global forces in the shaping of return migrant behaviour; and expressions of identity. The human geography of return migration extends beyond geographic movement into a diasporic journey involving (re)constructions of homeness and belongingness in the ancestral homeland.

Brian Short, England's landscape: the South East (Collins for English Heritage 2006)

This is the most detailed description of why the countryside ofEnglandnow looks the way it does, covering the geology, archaeology and history of each area and what effects each has had on the landscape we see today. It includes: landscapes of power and control; environment and the landscape; culture and topography; regional patterns in an ancient landscape; the peopling of the South East and the evolution of settlement patterns; changing ways of life and the landscape; urban living, urban landscapes; London lives, landscapes and reactions; landscapes and the creative imagination; and the theatre of the South East.