Latin American Transnational Political Engagement: Steering Civic Movements and Cultural Repertoires from the Global City of Brussels

Abstract

Migrants are active civic agents participating in transnational social movements. They create, transform, and exploit transnational networks to engage in political movements in both their homeland and the hostland. In this chapter, we demonstrate that migrants accumulate political and cultural knowledge, symbols, emotions of hope, nostalgia, and political practices as a result of their emigration experience. Using empirical examples of Latin American migrants living in Brussels, we argue that social remittances shape the way migrants: (1) develop their political and cultural repertoires of contention; (2) constitute their social identities and networks influencing their political behavior; and (3) embody the ideologies, ideas, and norms of their homeland, while being influenced by the multiple cities in which they have lived. We conclude that Latin American migrants have managed to develop and sustain transnational fields of social and political mobilization to defend their politi-cal struggles and ideals from Brussels itself.