Karen Richman, Migration and Vodou (2005)

Karen Richman, Migration and Vodou (2005) Overview Migration and Vodou is a landmark ethnography of Haitian transnational life, based on Karen Richman's fieldwork conducted primarily between 1983 and 2003 in two linked communities: Ti Rivyè (a pseudonym for a village in the Léogane plain, source community) and Palm Beach County / Fort Pierce, Florida (destination community). The book documents how Vodou — specifically the obligations binding Haitian peasants to their inherited lwa — does not simply stay behind when people migrate. The lwa travel with their "horses," intervene in migrants' capacity to earn wages abroad, and require ongoing ritual feeding funded by remittances sent home.