Local attachments and transnational everyday lives: second‐generation Italians in Switzerland

Many descendants of migrants grow up in the context of lively transnational social relations to their parents' homeland. Among southern Italian migrants in Switzerland, these relations are imbued with the wish to return among the first generation, a dream fostered since the beginning of their migration after the Second World War. Second‐generation Italians have developed different ways of negotiating the transnational livelihoods fostered by their parents on the one hand, and the wish for local attachments on the other. In this article I discuss how the children of Italian migrants have created their own cultural repertoires of Italianità and belonging within Switzerland and with co‐ethnic peers, and how, for some, this sense of belonging evokes the wish for ‘roots migration’, the relocation to the parents' homeland. With the example of two trajectories of local attachment and transnationalism among members of the second generation of the same origin, I question existing work on the second generation that assumes commonalities among them on the grounds of ethnicity and region of origin.     

Territorial bounds to virtual space: transnational online and offline networks of Iranian and Turkish–Kurdish immigrants in the Netherlands

Abstract In this article we question a central trope of transnationalism and new media – deterritorialization – and its application to border crossing Internet usage by Iranian and Turkish‐Kurdish migrants in the Netherlands. Their Internet usage indicates the extent to which territoriality channels these groups' online practice. We found Dutch‐Iranian sites reflected correspondingly sparse offline community networks and state boundaries moulded their transnational ties, while regionally specific transnational dynamics were evident in Turkish‐Kurdish website surfing. These cases indicate that transnationalism and new media need not broaden or dissolve geographical identity or connectivity, but may reinforce it. Finally, we address the relations of territoriality with generation (first and second) and network medium (web forums versus conventional sites). Whereas first‐generation migrants' life online often reveals extensions of offline networks, the online practice of the second generation frequently reflects these networks in subtler ways, forming partially sovereign online communities that pivot on hyphenated identities. However, the relations of generation and network medium differ for Turkish Kurds and Iranians in the Netherlands.     

Transnational connections of later-life migrants

In this paper a transnational perspective is used to explain whether and how older migrants construct and sustain their social networks. The paper uses a transnational viewpoint on older migrants' lives by analysing their engagement with their former homeland, and the intensity and habitualness of those engagements in old age. The aim of this article is to study the transnational connections of later-life migrants'. Attention is especially paid to the features of old age while maintaining these connections. These considerations are based on analyses of transnational networks in the everyday lives of later-life migrants from the former Soviet Union residing in Finland. The data were collected from 11 later-life migrants.It is found that transnational relationships are a vital part of the everyday lives of older migrants, and that they are sustained in varied ways. These connections mean a concrete source of help, family affiliations, the sharing of emotions, and a larger social network. Economic limitations affect the frequency and type of communication, and various physical limitations may also cause inability to maintain contacts across borders. In these circumstances, family members or other close relatives or friends are needed to deliver messages on the older person's behalf. Old age and immigration status affect the amount and direction of communication across borders, thereby shaping these networks.     

Making Global Society: Friendship Networks among Transnational Professionals in the Building Design Industry

Abstract Little is currently known about the nature and wider implications of transnationalism among professionals, despite the fact that companies are increasingly establishing overseas business links, seeking foreign contracts and obliging professional employees to work overseas for long periods of time. Focusing on the research generated by a small study of mainly architects and engineers who had worked abroad at some time in the building design industry in this article I explore their transnational experiences and the factors that enabled them to construct viable friendship networks extending over time and into global life. These experiences are briefly contrasted with the social processes constructed by migrants and others operating in transnational social space. Though professionals appear to lack the clear sense of collective unity, the pre‐existing identity and/or the same sense of membership and organization as other types of transnational communities may exhibit, these networks nevertheless demonstrated a high degree of sociality and affectivity and a capacity to generate further transnational relationships. They also revealed a strongly postnational orientation arising from the conjunction of a unique combination of shared factors especially age, emotional deprivation, location and the nature of overseas work.     

Grandparents on the move: a multilevel framework analysis to understand diversity in zero‐generation care arrangements in Switzerland

Among the various forms of transnational grandparenting is the engagement of the so‐called zero generation – the transnationally mobile parents of adult migrants – in caring for their grandchildren abroad. It constitutes a distinct kind of intergenerational solidarity within transnational families. By taking migrant families in Switzerland as a case in point, in this article we attempt to broaden the existing research by adopting a comparative, qualitative approach towards understanding the commonalities and differences of childcare organization involving grandparental support in European and non‐European transnational families. By taking into account the main objective and the temporality of grandparents' visits in Switzerland, we identify six different types of childcare arrangements. While these arrangements are shaped by the discriminatory Swiss migration regime, several other institutional, familial, and individual factors help to promote or impede them, or to change their dynamics. Thus, we introduce an innovative, multi‐level, analytical approach towards studying the various ways in which the parents of adult migrants of different nationalities take part in the transnational circulation of care.     

Post‐return experiences and transnational belonging of return migrants: a Dutch—Moroccan case study

In this article we explore the links between return migration, belonging and transnationalism among migrants who returned from the Netherlands to northeast Morocco. While transnationalism is commonly discussed from the perspective of a receiving country, this study shows that transnationalism also plays a vital role in reconstructing post‐return belonging. Return migration is not simply a matter of ‘going home’, as feelings of belonging need to be renegotiated upon return. While returnees generally feel a strong need to maintain various transnational practices, the meanings they attach to these practices depend on motivations for return, gender and age. For former (male) labour migrants, transnational practices are essential for establishing post‐return belonging, whereas such practices are less important for their spouses. Those who returned as children generally feel uprooted, notwithstanding the transnational practices they maintain. The amount of agency migrants are able to exert in the return decision‐making process is a key factor in determining the extent to which returnees can create a post‐return transnational sense of home.     

Transnational practices of Albanian families during the Greek crisis: unemployment,de-regularization and return

The outbreak of economic crisis in Greece in 2010 and the austerity measures adopted have dramatically altered the economic and social conditions throughout the country and consequently deeply impacted the migrant families. With Albanian regular migrants losing the legal status and lapsing back into irregularity due to the high unemployment rates, the reverse process of de-regularization and social disintegration has emerged. As a result, many migrants drew on family and social networks to pursue work opportunities either back home or elsewhere, while maintaining their formal ties/residence in Greece. This article explores the impact of the Greek crisis and de-regularization phenomenon on the transnational practices among Albanian families. Our aim is to go beyond the general theories on transnationalism and look at what exactly is the impact of the crisis on the families, as well as individuals' dilemmas of return and negotiations between transnational mobility and staying put, between different levels of belonging and their orientation to the present and future. The empirical analysis is based on in-depth interviews with 70 Albanians of first and second generation living in Greece.     

Unsettling connections: transnational networks,development and African home associations

With the transnational turn in the social sciences attention has now turned to ‘global civil society’, ‘transnational civil society’, ‘transnational networks’ and, most recently, ‘migrant’ or ‘diasporic civil society’. Claims are being made about the developmental potential of these new configurations of civil society, and the global connections forged by migrant and diaspora associational life have been reified into things called ‘networks’ for the purpose of enrolling them into development policy. In this article, we challenge the network model through an analysis of transnational Cameroonian and Tanzanian home associations. The idea of a network suggests an overly robust and ordered set of linkages for what are in effect often loose and transient connections. African home associations draw attention to the historically‐embedded and mundane ways in which forms of associational life can be ‘transnational’ outside the formalized structures and Eurocentric development hierarchies created by international NGOs and other development institutions. Although they form largely invisible connections operating outside these hierarchies, African home associations unsettle assumptions about the geography of civil society and its relationship with development. Close attention to the histories and geographies of African home associations reveals that power and agency more often lie with migrants and elites within Africa than with the transnational diaspora.     

Leveraging symbolic capital: the use of blat networks across transnational spaces

In this article, we contribute to debates on how social networks sustain migrants' entrepreneurial activities. By reporting on 31 interviews with Eastern European migrants in the UK, we provide a critical lens on the tendency to assume that migrants have ready‐made social networks in the host country embedded in co‐ethnic communities. We extend this limited perspective by demonstrating how Eastern European migrants working in the UK transform blat social networks, formulated in the cultural and political contours of Soviet society, in their everyday lived experiences. Our findings highlight not only the monetarization of such networks but also the continuing embedded nature of trust existing within these networks, which cut across transnational spaces. We show how forms of social capital based on Russian language use and legacies of a shared Soviet past, are just as important as the role of ‘co‐ethnics’ and ‘co‐migrants’ in facilitating business development. In doing so, we present a more nuanced understanding of the role that symbolic capital plays in migrant entrepreneurial journeys and its multifaceted nature.     

Salvadoran economic transnationalism: embedded strategies for household maintenance,immigrant incorporation,and entrepreneurial expansion

This article presents a case study of the transnational economic practices linking two Salvadoran settlements in the United States and El Salvador. It considers the relationship between economic transnationalism, immigrant settlement and economic development in the country of origin. Four processes are examined including: (1) the creation of border‐spanning social networks by migrants and their home country counterparts; (2) the construction of transnational economic activities and institutions; (3) the broader transnational social formations in which these are embedded; and, (4) the cumulative and unintended consequences of economic transnationalism for migrant households, the immigrant community, and El Salvador. The article applies the concepts of social network, social capital, and embeddedness, to explain the sources and determinants of individual‐ and community‐level variation in types of transnational economic practices. The conclusions drawn are that economic transnationalism is both part of a transnational settlement strategy and holds potential for economic development in the country of origin.     

Free floating in the cosmopolis? Exploring the identity‐belonging of transnational knowledge workers

In this article I explore what I call the ‘identity‐belonging’ of transnational knowledge workers, a diverse group of serially migrating career professionals who have spent extended periods of time in at least three countries, usually following career opportunities. Unlike most recent writing on transnationalism, which focuses on enduring connections of migrants with their ‘home’ countries/places, here I explore a transnationalism that may transcend the national, and generally the territorial, principle, with repercussions for identity‐belonging. In this context, how transnational knowledge workers position themselves towards belonging to a nation and towards the idea of cosmopolitanism is of particular interest. From data collected through in‐depth interviews in Australia and Indonesia, I conclude that their globally recognized profession forms the central axis of their identity‐belonging, alongside a weak identification with their nation of origin. The feeling of belonging to and identifying with particular locales and local communities was articulated flexibly and instrumentally in association with professional and wider social networks, while no primordial territorial attachments could be identified.     

A global sense of migrant places: towards a place perspective in the study of migrant transnationalism

Contemporary transnational migrants have complex social lives in that they live in a number of different cross‐border social networks at the same time. Most transmigration scholars try to grasp this social complexity of migrant transnationalism by using a network lens. In this article, I argue in favour of adding a place lens to the analytical tool kit of transmigration scholars. Although a network lens works well for studying the internal complexity of cross‐border social networks, a place lens is more useful for gaining an understanding of their external complexity, in other words the ways these networks interrelate. By drawing on geographical and anthropological literature on open and relational understandings of place, and especially on the work of Doreen Massey and Arjun Appadurai, I shall show that interrelating migrant networks are visible in place in two ways. On the one hand, migrant places are meeting places of social networks, and on the other hand they are sites (translocalities) where transmigrants can reach out to people in other places.     

Determining the Causes and Durability of Transnational Labour Migration between Mexico and the United States: Some Empirical Findings

While the field of transnational migration studies is expanding, one important challenge is to broaden research from a mainly qualitative approach proving the existence of transnational migration phenomena toward efforts to quantify transnational migration and pay more attention to analysing its internal dynamics and interrelationships with other (ideal) types of migration. Based on a qualitative and quantitative empirical study of (trans)migrants moving between Puebla (Mexico) and the New York City region focused on the life and work trajectories of 648 individuals and on biographical life history interviews with about 40 Mexican migrants, the article is focused on analysing and explaining the number of trips as an important indicator for transnational migration (even if transmigration could be predominantly a subjective perception and practice without constant physical movement between countries). In order to establish the empirical existence of the transmigration phenomenon, a typology for distinguishing between different types of migrants is advanced and applied to those migrants captured in the survey. The influence of personal, familial, time‐, job‐, and community‐related factors on their decision‐making processes and the number of country trips are analysed. The empirical findings will be complemented by qualitative interview material to present the case of a transnationally organized family. This case study serves, first, to demonstrate that research on transmigrant household decision‐making strategies is complicated by the complexity of social and family networks, which make it difficult to clearly identify household units; second, it helps address the issue of the durability of the transmigration phenomenon by showing that transnational strategies can be adopted by family members over several generations, depending on individuals' changing needs and desires.     

Multiple Migration and Use of Ties: Bangladeshis in Italy and Beyond

This article analyses previous multiple migratory trajectories of Bangladeshi first generation migrants before their arrival in Italy and within Italy. It also uncovers the role of social networks and transnational ties in their multiple migrations. The findings show that their first international migration was mainly shaped by their family’s socio-economic condition and transnational kinship networks. They already had someone from their family or close relatives in the preferred country with whom they were connected. Their onward relocations until arriving in Italy, in most cases, was to achieve the socio-economic success and legal status that they had failed to attain in their first and subsequent destinations, but the transnational connections with friends or acquaintances are a key resource facilitating these remigrations. Bangladeshis who arrived in Italy from various countries mostly had networks, either with someone from their local district in Bangladesh or with their earlier fellow migrants who moved to Italy before them.     

Migrants' social networks and weak ties: accessing resources and constructing relationships post‐migration

Within migration studies literature there is a tendency to assume that migrants have ready access to kin and friendship networks which facilitate the migration and settling processes. Through tight bonds of trust and reciprocity, these networks are considered to be sources of social capital, providing a counter‐balance to the disadvantages that migrants may encounter in the destination society. This paper argues that more attention is needed to the ways in which migrants access, maintain and construct different types of networks, in varied social locations, with diverse people. I suggest that the often simplistic dichotomy of bonding and bridging capital needs to be re‐appraised and instead offer an alternative way of thinking about these social ties. The distinction between them tends to be understood on the basis of the ethnicity of the people involved – bonding involves close ties with ‘people like us’ while bridging involves links beyond ‘group cleavages’. Insufficient attention has been paid to the actual resources flowing between these ties or the kinds of relationship developing between the actors involved. The nature of these social networks may be better understood by focusing on the relationship between the actors, their relative social location, and their available and realisable resources. Data from a qualitative study of Polish migrants in London is used to illustrate this approach.     

A home far away? Religious identity and transnational relations in the Iranian diaspora

Abstract In this article, I address the influence of religious identity on the discourses of national belonging that traditionally dominate transnational discussions. Many of the children of the Iranian diaspora live in a state of exile from contemporary theocratic Iran. Living at a temporal and physical distance from the homeland has resulted in differential long‐distance imaginings mediated by the diasporic context. Through the reflections of the children of Iranian migrants on the desire to ‘return’, a picture is painted of differing transnational trajectories divided along religious lines within the Iranian diaspora. For many of the second generation from a Muslim background their centrality in the discourses of national belonging, typified through the conflated ‘Muslim Iranian’ of media representations, feeds a desire for return. In contrast, for many second‐generation Baha ‘is their positionality as a minority, in both the homeland and the diaspora, combines with an eschatological problematizing of national belonging, to lead them away from Iran. In this article I draw on discussions about email communication in the diaspora(s) carried out as a part of research with the Iranian communities of London, Sydney and Vancouver.     

Labour market integration and transnational lived citizenship: Aspirations and belonging among refugees in Germany

Transnational lived citizenship has gained prominence as a means to analyse mobility and foreground activist notions of citizenship over legal status. I argue that lived citizenship and transnational movements are strongly intertwined with aspirations and belonging. I use the material example of labour market integration as the space of enactments of citizenship and analyse the patterns of belonging those create and contest. I develop my argument through the empirical example of labour market integration of refugees in Germany. I demonstrate how such integration transforms social, and more importantly, economic location and in turn creates complex and often contradictory forms of transnational allegiances. I ultimately argue that lived citizenship can in important ways advance aspirations of refugees and migrants. At the same time, transnational lives and multiple allegiances are often hindered by state-based citizenship and the rights this confers. Legal status thus remains an important marker of citizenship.     

Social embeddedness in a harmonized Europe: the social networks of European migrants with a native partner in Belgium and the Netherlands

Although intra‐European migration is often considered relatively easy to realize given European citizens' right to freedom of movement, settlement in another European country can still be experienced as socially disruptive. Insights in the insertion processes of European migrants, nevertheless, remain rather scarce. In this study, we analyse the social networks of European nationals with a native partner in Belgium and the Netherlands. The analysis is based on survey data from the EUMARR project (n = 576). First, we study the size and composition of European migrants' local family and friendship networks, and the frequency of contact with these networks. Second, we connect intra‐EU movers' insertion routes to investments in transnational networks in their home country. The results reveal how size, composition and contact with the local and transnational network change over time. Children help to maintain contact with both the local and transnational family network and form a bridge for parents to meet own friends in the host country. Moreover, having own friends and own family around matters for contact frequency with the local networks.     

Managing the permanent temporariness of prolonged migration: The role of local and transnational care circulation among Argentine temporary migrants in Australia

In the past two decades, Australia has shifted from being a settler nation that promoted state-supported permanent migration to one where the scale and relative importance of temporary migration schemes have grown significantly. In 2017, Australia was the second largest issuing country of temporary visa permits after the United States, with temporary migrants applying, on average, for 3.3 temporary visas and spending 6.4 years in this multi-step visa journey to achieve permanent residency . As part of a broader research project on the social implications of temporary migration programs, we examine how Argentine temporary migrants exchange care to navigate temporary visa restrictions and the permanent temporariness in which they live. Our central argument is that transnational and local expressions, practices, and processes of care are co-constituted in particularistic temporary migrant care configurations that facilitate prolonged migration projects and continuity of care over time, despite the precarity that permanent temporariness brings. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork among Argentine temporary migrants, we illustrate the dynamics in which economic, accommodation, personal, practical, emotional and moral care is exchanged. The findings reveal the central role that transnational economic and practical as well as local, including local virtual, proximity care has in the everyday lives of Argentine temporary migrants. Ironically, their fragile temporariness may be an incentive to develop local support networks or maintain strong transnational ties to survive living in limbo.