ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book underlines the folly of assuming that strong bonds necessarily generate social capital. The fate of any given migration network is shaped by political and economic structural conditions. Few on the Left would have seen it as such in the 1970s, but Fordism now appears a brief interlude of relative dignity for foreign workers in Europe. Migration is returning to its historically precarious roots: physical harm and death, pain, loss and disappointment were well known in the 19th century, the first modern age of mass international labour flows. Italian migrants in the Americas lived frugally, going without meat, decent food, the care of their families and sexual contact with spouses for long periods of time. Of the proliferating mosques in Newham and elsewhere in Europe, where asexualised migrant communities flock to communal public prayers in search of meaning in an increasingly commodified, capitalised existence.
