Narmala Halstead is a Research Associate at the University of Sussex. Previously, she was a Reader in Anthropology at the University of East London (UEL) and also held a permanent lectureship at Cardiff University. Her research focuses on Guyana and Caribbean migrants and diaspora in New York, and currently she is working on digital personhood, rights, and debates in cities across three countries. She is the editor of the Journal of Legal Anthropology.

"This book looks at the phenomenon of Guyanese migration with elegance and sensibility, bringing to light the intricate relationship between intimate affects and broader socio-economic issues. Competing Power is timely, well-written, and engaging." Federica Guglielmo, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine"This is a highly original study... The reader learns about individual and group, formal and informal, and regular and innovative means of dealing with power, often never explored and exposed in such compelling detail." Judith Okely, University of Oxford

• AcknowledgementsIntroduction: Competing Power: Landscapes of Violence, Migration and the StateChapter 1. Amidst Illegality and Violence: Flight and the StateChapter 2. Illegality and Big Ones: Disengaging Structural ViolenceChapter 3. Local Others: Residents, Bandits, MigrantsChapter 4. Local Lives, Global Selves: New Local Imaginaries and 'Go and Come'Chapter 5. Re-presencing the LocalChapter 6. Co-occupying Public Power: Challenges, Abuse and Structural ViolenceChapter 7. Materializing a Strange-familiar Local: Individuals, Migrants' Experiences, and Strategies of GovernanceChapter 8. In and Out of the Local: Blame-sharing, Faulty Persons and the StateConcluding RemarksAnnex: Research ParticipantsGlossaryBibliographyIndex