Jose C. Moya’s Cousins and Strangers is a remarkable effort. It is, as Nora Faires writes, really “three notable works: a detailed, probing social history . . . a shorter, provocative foray into the theoretical thicket . . . and a historiographical tour de force.” Moya’s “foray” into the question of individual agency is particularly provocative, comparing fruitfully with recent works by Rebecca Scott and Lara Putnam.
Moya rejects the premise that immigrants were “helpless pawns” moved about by “deterministic forces.” But as his research developed, his central concern shifted: “I became less interested in stressing the immigrants’ role as volitional actors in the drama,” he writes, “and more intrigued by how structural parameters limited and shaped that volition.” He discovers that while individuals had their personal reasons for going, other factors led them to move when they did: the European population explosion, the mechanization of agriculture, and the rise of political liberalism, among others. Moya is not impressed by the role of government in this wave of migration, which, aside from keeping the borders open, “proved to be superstructural and even superfluous.”
Like Moya, Lara Putnam downplays the role of individual governments and companies in her study of transnational labor in Costa Rica. Whereas Moya uses quantitative analysis to interrogate more qualitative sources (such as oral histories), however, Putnam does the opposite, finding that “aggregate statistics” mask the “personal ties” and complex movements of individual migrants. Perhaps she would agree with Moya’s thesis about the limits placed on microsocial decisions by macrostructural factors, but her study is primarily concerned with the “myriad intimate encounters” of male and female laborers.
Rebecca Scott seems to agree with Moya’s formulation when she concludes that “neither structures nor struggles could fully determine” the shape of post-emancipation societies in Cuba and Louisiana. Former slaves in both places exhibited courage, ingenuity, and persistence as they pursued their freedom. But their paths diverged at the question of suffrage, a fact that points to the significance of the government in shaping individual agency. In Cuba, former slaves retained influence because they managed to keep the right to vote; in Louisiana, blacks faced the defiance of the white supremacist state government and a national government reluctant to intervene.
These comparisons suggest not only the power of using both qualitative and quantitative data, but also the need to allow each to interrogate the other. Historians must adapt both their methods and theories to the specific historical material at hand.
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