(Dis)connecting migration: transnationalism and nationalism beyond connectivity

Abstract

Transnationalism as a perspective that scrutinizes localities in more than one nation-state has helped to illuminate those aspects of lives of migrants that remain hidden when migration is seen through the lens of conventional migration theory. Social connectivity provides a context in which effects of migration can be studied. Yet reducing transnationalism to connectivity is unproductive for understanding current-day sociality as possibly distinct from a national one. This paper proposes to consider how nationalism is embedded in migrants’ ‘deep stories’, and how these stories are altered in migration. It exemplarily analyses narrations from interviews with Polish migrants in England. The paper argues that connectivity and social context are equally important for transnationalism, but transnationalism cannot be reduced either to one or the other. In turn, we must define transnationalism as outcome of multiple belongings, practise and dispositions coming together.