Book Reviews : Politics and the Migrant Poor in Mexico City. By WAYNE A. CORNELIUS. (Stan ford: Stanford University Press, 1975. Pp. 319. $12.50.)

What, then, is the thesis of this book? That there was an elite in Zambia that was formed because of the high wage differentials created because of the mining industry? There is nothing unique in the existence of the elite, nor its cause: some countries without multinational corporations have them. Sklar quite rightly hints at the uniqueness that resulted from the geographical separation of this elite from the rest of the population by virtue of the existence of mining townships where only miners and their families live. Unfortunately he does not develop that theme. And to suggest that the institution of migrant labor blocked the formation of an incipient proletariat is to ignore the other, more important effects : the urban-rural interaction that was generated by this forced interchange. And there is one more glaring contradiction; if there is such an enormous wage differential between the mining industry and the rest of the economy, then it seems odd that the mining industry and government (one and the same since 1971) would be losing local skilled labor to private enterprise. Government statistics just do not bear this out