Transnational Communities: Examining Migration in a Globally Integrated World

Abstract

Researchers in a variety of disciplines have concluded that contemporary international migration is fundamentally unlike that of previous periods. As an alternative to the settler-sojourner model, they have advanced an approach called 'transnationalism'.1 Stressing the globalization of political, economic, social, institutional and cultural life, the speed and low cost of modern communication and transportation, the rights revolution that has opened opportunities for incorporation and self-determination among the women and men of formerly excluded ethnic and nationality groups, and the acceptance of expatriates in the polity of many nations, the concept of transnationalism emphasizes the various networks and links (demographic, political, economic, cultural, familial) that exist between two or more locations. From this perspective, migration is not a single, discrete event involving movement from one geographically and socially bounded locality to another. Instead, transnational communities embody and exchange concerns, relationships, resources and needs immersed in multiple settings. Transmigrants take actions, make decisions and develop subjectivities and identities embedded in networks of relationships that connect them to two or more nation-states.'2 In this frame, human migration is not simply a reactive or economically driven pattern of human action. Rather, migrants are seen as maintaining their own agendas, goals, outlooks and communities. While social science and common sense models consider immigration to be a permanent movement, migrants themselves generally do not plan to live the rest of their lives in a new setting. Often, 73 Aulakh et al. (eds.), Rethinking Globalization(s) © Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2000 P. S.