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Matt BakkerGraduate Student
Phone: 752-0894 |
Education:
Ph.D. Candidate, University of California, Davis, Sociology, Expected June 2010
M.A. University of California, Davis, Sociology, December 2006
M.S. University of California, Davis, Community Development, June 2003
B.A. University of California, Santa Cruz, Community Studies (Honors), June 1995
Research and Teaching Interests:
International Migration; Globalization and Transnationalism; Political Sociology; Economic Sociology; Contemporary Theory; Race and Ethnicity; Qualitative Methods; Community and Urban Sociology
Dissertation Research:
Neoliberal Coalitions and Migrating Subjects: An Examination of the Remittances-to-Development Agenda in North America
This project draws on a multi-sited and transnational ethnographic method to explore the construction and the content of a complex of migration-related policy instruments designed by international financial institutions and the United States and Mexican governments. These policies attempt to channel the resources generated through U.S.-bound Mexican migration toward developmental purposes in Mexico in the hope that such “development” may put an end to future migration. My findings suggest that the discursive formation underlying these policies is deeply stained with neoliberal ideology, its celebration of “the market,” and its vilification of government as a hindrance to economic processes. This neoliberal ideology is inconsistent with the actual policies put into practice by policymakers, as these require government officials and their policies to play a significant role in both facilitating migrant investment in their hometowns and in “educating” migrants and their family members about the value of formal financial institutions and the products they offer. Finally, I attempt to show the incapacity of this neoliberal ideology and these policy instruments to fully transform migrant practice and put an end to future migration, as these confront a transnational habitus deeply engrained in the inhabitants of migrant-sending regions and fail to recognize and attend to the continuing relevance of localized networks of political and economic power within sending regions.
Publications:
Books
Michael Peter Smith and Matt Bakker, Citizenship Across Borders: The Political Transnationalism of “El Migrante.” Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 2008.
Referred Articles
Matt Bakker, “El discurso de las remesas como impulsoras del desarrollo y la agencia colectiva del migrante colectivo,” Migración y Desarrollo, 9, 2007.
Michael Peter Smith and Matt Bakker, “The Transnational Politics of the Tomato King: Meaning and Impact,” Global Networks, 5 (2), April 2005.
Matt Bakker and Michael Peter Smith, “El Rey del Tomate: Migrant Political Transnationalism and Democratization in Mexico,” Migraciones Internacionales, 2 (1), 2003.