Moving Lives by Kathy Burrell

Author:Kathy Burrell [Burrell, Kathy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Emigration & Immigration
ISBN: 9781351916547
Google: _FtBDgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-03-02T03:25:18+00:00

Debating Transnationalism

As Ludger Pries acknowledges, in the past decade the field of migration research has moved beyond the standard theoretical approaches to studying migration.41 Emphasis has shifted from reasons for migrating to what happens after migration has occurred. Central to this is the recognition that movement away from the homeland does not result in the divorce of migrants from their national territory. As Basch, Glick Schiller and Szanton Blanc assert, ‘today, immigrants develop networks, activities, patterns of living, and ideologies that span their home and the host society’.42 Thus we have transnationalism, ‘the process by which immigrants forge and sustain multi-stranded social relations that link together their societies of origin and settlement’, and ‘a process by which migrants, through their daily life activities and social, economic and political relations create social fields that cross national boundaries’.43 Thomas Faist even suggests that transnationalism, and the ‘transnationalization of migrants’ activities’ is the second phase of the migration process, a natural post-movement development.44 Particular recognition is given to the role of contemporary technology in facilitating these activities, from Skrbis’ plain speaking affirmation that ‘physical distance nowadays neither removes visual images of the homeland (because of media hi-tech), nor does it prevent physical interaction (because of transport)’, to Benedict Anderson’s observation that ‘the communications revolution of our time has profoundly affected the subjective experience of migration’.45 As Robert Smith comments, ‘today’s travel and telecommunications technology make it possible to simultaneously carry on significant public lives in more than one place’.46 In a globalised world, the mechanisms for migrants to retain a territorial connection with the homeland are vast; technology can bring the homeland closer, and the survival of national identity is clearly given a helping hand by continuous access to the national territory. Furthermore, technology has enabled transnational activities to become fixed in the everyday lives of migrants, a normal part of the daily routine. As Robins notes, transnationalism has become, like nationalism, ‘banal’.47

Transnationalism is clearly not a new phenomenon, but simply facilitated and intensified by globalisation. As Morawska argues, migrants have always been able to stay close to their homelands. At the beginning of the twentieth century migrants in America were also constructing transnational networks:

The back and forth flow of migrants and densely circulating letters… created an effective transnational system of communication, social control and household management, travel and employment assistance that extended both forward from the (im)migrants’ native places in Europe into the United States and backward from America to their original homes.48

How far new technologies have enhanced these transnational networks, however, is an area of debate. Has the breakdown of national boundaries and the creation of virtual communities rendered the concept of a physical national territory almost obsolete, leaving instead a ‘deterritorialized’ version of the nation which can be accessed independently from anywhere in the world?49 Or, on the other hand, are transnational connections themselves bound and shaped by their local contexts, characterised more by local territory than national territory, leading ultimately to be understood as ‘translocal’ rather than transnational networks?50

The

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