THIS ISSUE OF THE Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies is devoted to papers presented at a conference held by the institute in Amman, Jordan on 11-14 October 1999. Entitled “Migration and Culture Contact: Patterns of Confrontation and Coexistence in a Changing World,” the conference was conceived and organized by Dr Gerald Obermeyer of the Department of Anthropology at Boston University with the assistance of Ms Rawda Qarden and attended by scholars from Europe, North America, the Middle East and Africa. Participants were invited to consider migration as a tactic for survival practiced by individuals or families, as a governmental policy for controlling national politics and as an intercultural process affecting both ethnic and international relations. More specifically, they were asked to focus upon the cultural dynamics of migration, giving special attention to the concepts, behaviours and structures that emerge as strategies for coping with new social environments.

            On the basis of their own research, participants addressed the way in which culture contact shapes the relationship between migrants and hosts and their changing constructions of reality, how it acts to promote conflict and cooperation within and between migrant and host groups, and the way it influences politics at the national level. While approaches differed, with some scholars considering the question from perspectives that were largely theoretical or demographic, the majority presented anthropological, political, or cultural case-studies that have implications for academics and policy-makers alike.

            What follows, then, is a selection of eight of the papers presented at the 1999 conference, as well as abstracts taken from the remainder. Because of the generally high quality of these papers, we regret that space constraints limited the number that could be published at this time; however, we hope to include at least some of them in an issue forthcoming in 2001.