The Volume and Dynamics of International Migration and Transnational Social Spaces by Thomas Faist

Author:Thomas Faist [Faist, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sociology
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2000-03-12T00:00:00+00:00

7. Bridging Function of Social Capital: Transnational Social Spaces

The people who first built a path between two places performed one of the greatest human achievements. (…) This achievement reaches its zenith in the construction of a bridge. Here the human will to connection seems to be confronted not only by the passive resistance of spatial separation but also by the active resistance of a special configuration. By overcoming this obstacle, the bridge symbolizes the extension of our volitional sphere over space. Only for us are the banks of a river not just apart but ‘separated’; if we did not first connect them in our practical thoughts, in our needs and in our fantasy. then the concept of separation would have no meaning. But natural form here approaches this concept as if with a positive intention; here the separation seems imposed between the elements in and of themselves, over which the spirit now prevails, reconciling and uniting.

(Georg Simmel, ‘Bridge and Door’, in Spatial and Urban Culture , 171)

The interests, passions, and ideas undergirding and the resources inherent in social and symbolic ties can traverse nation-state borders for decades. As we have seen, migrant and migration networks help sustain international migration, even superseding initiating factors. They explain the quantitative leap from ‘why so few out of so many places?’ to ‘why so many out of so few places?’ These processes of critical mass also induce a qualitative leap: transnational networks precipitate full-fledged transnationalization, predisposing locally bound social spaces to further border-crossing transitions.

Examples are plentiful: Muslims from Morocco and Algeria who reside in France exchange religious instructors with the countries of origin. These imams contribute to a pluralization of the French religious landscape (Wihtol de Wenden 1997 ). Kurdish organizations in Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden are trying to influence Turkish politics. Politicians from Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti campaign in Los Angeles and New York City for national elections (Guarnizo 1994 ). Their prospective voters are permanent (p.196) residents or citizens of the USA. And quite tellingly, some migrant groups engage in recurrent international migration. Nurses from Jamaica work in New York City hospitals while their mothers rear the children in the Caribbean. The children, in turn, spend some of their childhood in the Big Apple (Brown 1997 ). Moreover, the second generation sometimes traverses borders to transfer their syncretist practices. The German-based and now disbanded rap group ‘Cartel’, made up of children of Turkish contract workers in Germany, toured Turkey in the summer of 1995 and replaced Michael Jackson as number 1 in the Turkish hit charts.

All these examples point towards circular, regular, and sustained flows of persons, goods, information, and symbols that has been triggered and reinforced by international labour migration and refugee movements. These spaces of flows include not only the bodily circulation of people but also multiple transactions of ideas, monetary resources, goods, symbols, and cultural practices (M. Smith and Guarnizo 1998 : 19). In a first step, we need to establish the reality of transnational social spaces.

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