Negotiating race and place in the Garifuna Diaspora: Identity formation and transnational grassroots politics in New York City and Honduras

This paper is an exploration of the relations between the politics of identity and the socio‐economic and political processes of the current era of globalization. Using ethnographic material from the transnational grassroots organizations of the Garinagu—an Afro‐Indigenous population living in transnational communities between Central America and the US—I show the multiple ways that they articulate their identity between and among the tropes of “autocthony,” “blackness,” “Hispanic,” “diaspora,” and “nation.” This construction and negotiation of identity is intimately connected to the negotiation of rights vis‐à‐vis nation‐states and international political bodies, where ideologies of race, ethnicity, nation, and citizenship carry with them different implications for rights and belonging. I argue that the complexities of this case point to the uneven processes of globalization, within which the power to define the ideological terrain of economic and political struggles is still profoundly unequal.     

Negotiating cultural boundaries: Confucianism and trans/national identity in Korea 1

Abstract

This essay looks to the complex intercultural relations of China and Korea to highlight two important issues in political theory and international relations: the transnational nature of world politics and the limits of analytical binaries such as East‐West and tradition‐modernity. Discussions of international politics in East Asia characteristically address issues of security and development studies. More recently, Confucianism has been mobilized as part of the clash of civilizations of Asia with the West. This essay will consider how cultural boundaries are negotiated within the region via an analysis of the workings of the transnational discourse of Confucianism in the construction of Korean identity. While many make truth claims about what ‘Confucianism’ means in Korea, this essay examines the discursive economies of ‘Confucian events’ in three overlapping social spaces: official, mass media, and academic. This essay will show the diversity of Confucianism within East Asia, and underline how rather than being a simple orthodoxy, the shape of Confucianism is an active political issue. While many try to define a core ‘Korean Confucianism’, I argue that we should use Confucianism as an analytical tool to understand something else, citing how some scholars are using Confucianism for the specific project of building democracy in Korea.     

Olympic and world sport: making transnational society?

This paper introduces the special issue of the British Journal of Sociology on the subject of the transnational aspects of Olympic and world sport. The special issue is underpinned by the perspective that because sport provides a space for the forging of transnational connections and global consciousness, it is increasingly significant within contemporary processes of globalization and the making of transnational society. In this article, we examine in turn eight social scientific themes or problems that are prominent within the special issue: globalization, glocalization, neo-liberal ideologies and policies, transnational society, securitization, global civil society, transnational/global public sphere, and fantasy/imagination. We conclude by highlighting five 'circles' of future research inquiry within world sport that should be explored by social scientists.     

Soft Sovereignty,Rising Powers,and Subnational Foreign Policy-Making: The Case of India

Abstract

The rise of ‘new powers’ in international politics has been frequently associated with a re-emergence of traditional notions of sovereignty as a backlash against the weakening of nation-state sovereignty related to globalization. We argue that the coexistence of these trends has led to new forms of ‘soft sovereignty’. Soft sovereignty means that rising powers both gain and lose authority: From above, their freedom from interference within the international state system is strengthened due to their new status and influence. At the same time, rising powers’ governments are losing authority due to the rise of a multiplicity of sub and transnational actors from below. We apply the concept of soft sovereignty to the analysis of foreign policy-making in India as a least-likely case of a weakening of sovereignty from within a sovereignty-oriented rising power. The analysis of India's relations with Bangladesh and Sri Lanka reveals the huge impact that subnational governments have had on India's policies towards its South Asian neighbours over the past years. The dynamics observed in the case of India reflect many of the traits of current globalization processes, from regionalization to identity politics to the multiplication of actors in the conduct of foreign politics.     

Negotiating conflict within the constraints of social hierarchies in Korean American discourse

This paper provides an interactional account of conflict negotiation strategies in Korean American discourse. With specific attention to the sociolinguistic phenomenon of codeswitching among Korean Americans, I argue that speaking Korean at particular moments evokes ideologies of social hierarchy that serve to mitigate potential conflicts. The Korean social ideology of relative status has a major influence on how bilingual Korean Americans interact with one another, regardless of whether they are using Korean or English. The use of codeswitching, among other mitigating strategies in discourse, serves to instantiate these hierarchical relationships and introduces particular social norms that guide the observable actions used in navigating meaning and social relations. The data analyzed here show how the evocation of Korean social ideologies may serve as an identifiable characteristic of Korean American discourse.     

“Inequality in Work Time: Gender and Class Stratify Hours and Schedules,Flexibility, and Unpredictability in Jobs and Families”

Work time is deeply stratified by gender and class. In this review, we first summarize the research discussing the number of hours that people work, the scheduling or timing of those hours as well as the flexibility and unpredictability of work time, discussing the ways all three are stratified. Second, we examine research on the ways work time is mandated, negotiated and contested. This part focuses on the processes, institutions and relations that explain inequality in hours and schedules—beginning with a discussion of relations at the work place, then turning to relations outside the workplace, especially family dynamics, and finally examining policies and politics about work time.     

Transnational households and ritual: an overview

In this article we introduce five papers, all by social anthropologists, all concerned with transnational households and ritual. Despite wide–ranging research on transnational migration and diasporas, many aspects have been accorded less consideration than they deserve. The transnational practices of migrant families, other than remittances and other economic activity, remain under–investigated. Some thought has been given to the transnational dimension of religious belief systems, notably Islam, but the micro–politics of religion has been largely ignored, and there has been little discussion of transnational religious practices (rituals) at the level of households and families, especially those performed by migrants back in their countries of origin. Household–level analyses of the performances of and meanings attributed to life–crisis rituals and consideration of what Salih has called the ‘transnational division of ritual space’ offer a valuable route to understanding relations between place, culture, ethnicity and gender among migrants in a transnational world, and illuminate contemporary processes of globalization.     

THE TRANSNATIONAL GEOGRAPHIES OF IMMIGRANT POLITICS: Insights from a Comparative Study of Migrant Grassroots Organizing1

Greater global interconnectedness produces a transformation in the ways in which groups constitute and interpret the boundaries of community formation and political practice. This article considers the ways in which a group engages (or not) with the possibilities for transnational identity formation and border‐crossing politics granted by the changing structures of the global order. A comparative analysis identifies similarities and differences in the patterns of community formation and political engagement of Salvadoran migrants settled across different urban centers of North America. Variations in the territorial orientation and scales of immigrant political practice are explained by the national and city‐level contexts of immigrant reception, the institutional opportunity structure in which migrant groups are embedded, and the nature of relations between migrants and their migrant and nonmigrant institutional interlocutors in places of settlement and their country of origin.     

Transnationalizing the ‘Asian’ family: imaginaries,intimacies and strategic intents

Abstract In this introductory article, we emphasize the significance of considering the politics and practices of transnationalism as they impinge on the social morphology of transnational ‘Asian’ families. Three strands of work in this arena are discussed. First, transnational families draw on ideologically laden imaginaries to give coherence to notions of belonging despite the physical dispersal of their members; these imaginaries may in turn act as a conservative force exerting control over particular female members, an increasing salient issue given the feminization of various streams of labour migration. Second, transnational families are also realized through lived experiences, where variants and degrees of intimacy are negotiated across transnational spaces with both ‘regular’ members and ‘irregular’ others. In the process, social identities may be reinforced or reconfigured. Third, families may assume transnational morphologies with the strategic intent of ensuring economic survival or maximizing social mobility. In this context, children's education has emerged as a particularly important project which provides strong impetus for families to go transnational.     

Intimate mobilities—International (transnational) marriage and migration: Japanese marriage migrants floating between Japan and Korea

In the past decade, intense mobility within Asia has led to increased international marriage (kokusai kekkon) in the region. A growing number of scholars have explored this phenomenon—called the intimate part of Asia—with a focus on foreign brides from emerging economies. Concerning international marriage between Japanese and Koreans, most research focuses on the Korean wives of Japanese husbands who reside in Japan, and little research has been conducted on the Japanese wives of Korean husbands. In this study, the postmigration experiences of Japanese marriage migrant women in South Korea are explored. Semistructured interviews were conducted in Korea with 13 participants. Drawing on the interview data, this article elucidates the trajectories of Japanese marriage migrants, focusing on subjective elements. The participants' accounts demonstrate that their experiences were intertwined with the media, politics, gender roles, parenting ideologies, and family relations. Their various emotional responses underline the ways such factors have shaped their lives.     

Political cultures and transnational social fields: Chileans,Colombians and Canadian activists in Toronto

We offer an institutional analysis of Chilean and Colombian transnational politics in Toronto to account for cross‐group variation in transnational political practices and the formation of different types of transnational social fields of political action. The article is based on interviews conducted with Chilean and Colombian community activists and Canadian refugee rights and social justice activists. We use the concept of political culture to account for differences in Chilean and Colombian transnational politics and to explain the different kinds of relationships the two groups have developed with non‐migrants. We introduce the concept of activist dialogues, understood as patterns of strategic political interaction between groups, to characterize how migrants and non‐migrants read and navigate their interlocutors' ways of doing politics. We argue that variation in the character of activist dialogues results in different types of transnational social fields of political action. Chilean–Canadian activist dialogues reflect a convergence of political cultures and strategies of action; Colombian–Canadian activist dialogues are marked by a relationship in which there is a divergence of strategies of action. Convergent dialogues produce thicker and more stable transnational social fields. Divergent dialogues are associated with a series of ad hoc initiatives, the absence of stable and strongly institutionalized partnerships, and a thinner transnational social field of political action.     

Transnational women’s activism in Japan and Korea:the unresolved issue of military sexual slavery

This article is about the transnational links formed between the Korean and Japanese women‘s movements in their campaign on behalf of the victims of ‘military sexual slavery’ during the Second World War. There is a growing literature that examines such networks. Yet, a deeper understanding of the emergence and activities of transnational advocacy networks is needed, particularly in the context of political opportunity structures. Social scientists who have developed the concept of political opportunity structures have, however, not provided a gender‐specific analysis of these. Of particular interest is the exploration of the role played by gender in an international human rights discourse as a political opportunity structure for women’s groups in Korea and Japan. This article, thus, explores the ways in which the feminist movements in Korea and Japan have made use of transnational legal means in politicizing and popularizing the issue of ‘military sexual slavery’ at both regional and global scales.     

Development,the state,and transnational political connections: state and subject formations in Latin America

Focusing on the processes of making and sustaining transnational political ties between actors, international actors and states, this paper reviews recent work from a number of disciplines on globalization and politics, and outlines an agenda for future research. Rather than seeing transnational political linkages merely as forerunners to the loss of local sovereignty, the paper argues for a wider conceptualization of transnational connections, embedded within processes of state formation in Latin America. Using a variety of examples, it is argued that transnational networks are associated with a wide range of meanings and a variety of responses by diverse actors. Drawing on recent work in political science, post‐structuralism and anthropology, it is suggested that geographical concepts ‐ related to scale, process and networks ‐ offer a means through which to analyze and ‘map out’ these transnational political processes.     

Transnational social movements and changing organizational fields in the late twentieth and early twenty‐first centuries

Recent decades have seen dramatic changes in the global political arena, including shifts in geopolitical arrangements, increases in popular mobilization and contestation over the direction of globalization, and efforts by elites to channel or curb popular opposition. We explore how these factors affect changes in global politics. Organizational populations are shaped by ongoing interactions among civil‐society, corporate and governmental actors operating at multiple levels. During the 1990s and 2000s, corporate and government actors promoted the ‘neoliberalization of civil society’ and the appropriation of movement concepts and practices to support elite interests. Not all movement actors have been passive witnesses to this process: they have engaged in intense internal debates, and they have adapted their organizational strategies to advance social transformation. This article draws from quantitative research on the population of transnational social movement organizations (TSMOs) and on qualitative research on contemporary transnational activism to describe changes in transnational organizing at a time of growing contention in world politics. We show how interactions among global actors have shaped new, hybrid organizational forms and spaces that include actors other than states in influential roles.     

Transnational South Korea as a site for a sociolinguistics of globalization: Markets,timescales, neoliberalism1

This special issue seeks a new direction for the sociolinguistics of globalization in the process of transnationalism, using as a case study new modes of Korean migration that are changing the face of Korean transnationalism, including short‐term early study abroad and return migration. Through a discussion of the historical and sociolinguistic context of South Korea, this paper demonstrates how transnational Korea is a relevant site for refining, reframing, and reconsidering the current sociolinguistics of globalization. We identify two important interventions into the theoretical considerations of language and globalization brought forward by the Korean case: (1) a heightened attention to multiple timescales and markets; and (2) a more serious engagement with and critique of neoliberalism. ? ???? ????? ???? ?????? ??? ?? ??? ??? ??? ????, ????? ??? ? ??? ????? ??? ????? ??? ?? ???? ? ??? ????. ??? ???, ?????? ??? ?? ??? ??, ? ??? ? ??? ????? ???? ?? ?????? ??? ??? ????? ??? ????? ? ? ??? ????. ??? ??? ??? ???? ??? ?? ??? ??? ??? ??? ?? ? ??? ????: (1) ????? ???? ???? ??? ?? ?; ??? (2) ?????? ?? ? ??? ??? ?? ?. [Korean]     

Singlish or Globish: Multiple language ideologies and global identities among Korean educational migrants in Singapore1

South Korean early study abroad students and their parents in Singapore negotiate and redefine the values of Mandarin, English, and Singlish used in Singapore in an attempt to forge their own transnational identities. In this process, these Korean migrants tend to place more emphasis on metapragmatic discourses; that is, how to speak the languages appropriately. They then use such metapragmatic evaluations to justify their use of the local varieties and practices of language in Singapore. Their discourses are based on two language ideologies –pragmatism and sociolinguistic competence – which are examined here as alternative forms of language legitimacy that coexist with the dominant notion of legitimate language. These multiple language ideologies provide the basis for Korean migrants’ emerging notions of the ‘Asian global,’ a desirable transnational subject who is more practical and sociocentric than the conventional image of high‐ranking elites, with greater adaptability to various local situations. ????? ?? ????? ???? ??? ????, ???? ??? ???? ???? ????, ??, ???, ????? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ???. ??? ??? ?? ????, ??? ???? ????? ??? ?????? ??, ? ?? ??? ??? ? ??? ???, ??? ??? ????? ???? ?????? ?? ?? ????, ??? ??? ??? ???? ??? ???? ??? ????? ? ????? ????? ?? ??? ??. ??? ??? ????? ??? ????? ????? ??? ???? ? ?? ???????? ?? ????, ??? ??? ???????? ?? ???? ???????? ???? ??. ??, ??????? ??? ?? ?? ???????? ??? ??? ???? ‘???? ???’? ??, ? ??? ??????? ?? ???? ?? ???? ????? ??, ?? ??????? ???????, ??? ??? ???? ???? ? ??? ? ?? ???? ???? ??? ??? ????. [Korean]     

Limits to expansion: transnational corporations and territorial embeddedness in the Japanese temporary staffing market

Recent changes to employment legislation have combined with shifting macro‐economic conditions to drive dramatic growth in Japan's temporary staffing industry. Leading transnational staffing agencies have sought to capitalize on this growth as part of their wider globalization strategies but have faced substantial challenges both in entering the market and in their subsequent attempts at expansion. In this article, we explore the ways in which the particularities of the Japanese host market regulatory and institutional environment combine with the inherent characteristics of the temporary staffing business model to challenge the expansionary strategies of these firms. We argue that while transnational firms have sought to adapt their business practices and strategies to the Japanese case, the attributes of the Japanese staffing market mean they have been unable to make significant inroads into the dominant market shares held by their domestic rivals.     

Diasporic Memberships in Historical Perspective: Comparative Insights from the Mexican,Italian and Polish Cases1

This article compares the evolution of diaspora‐sending state relations for Mexico, Italy, and more briefly, Poland during their peak periods of out migration. I argue that sending‐state diaspora relations evolve through the state's changing relations with the global system, their domestic politics, and migrants' ability to act politically with respect to the homeland. This research shows the state helping to create diasporic or transnational space. It also contributes to the analytical work of fleshin out examples of transnational life in history, and examines a case (the Polish one) where the global system and other conditions combine to overwhelm transnational life.