Themes on Circulation in the Third World

Abstract

This article focuses upon circulation, or reciprocal flows of people, with specific reference to Third World societies. The many forms of circulation in Third World societies have lead to a profusion of terms, which efforts at constructing typologies have attempted to codify. Such attempts have underlined the lack of in-depth and longitudinal data to test classificatory frameworks. Explanatory models are similarly numerous: The partial nature of such explanations, as well as the lack of scholarly attention to circulation within rural areas, stresses the need for integrated theory and for data to be collected simultaneously at several levels of enquiry both through and across time. The broader contribution of Third World studies of circulation lies in the transfer of methods and concepts to societies and populations different from those from which they initially evolved and in which they were first tested.