Learning to be Palestinian in Athens: constructing national identities in diaspora

In this article I focus on constructions of diasporic national identities and the nation as active and strategic processes using the case study of Palestinians in Athens. I seek, thereby, to contribute to debates on national identity, the nation and long‐distance nationalism, particularly in relation to those in diaspora with a collective cause to advocate. I explore how first‐ and second‐generation Palestinians in Athens construct and narrate Palestinian national identities, the homeland and political unity. I argue that the need to ‘choose’ to be Palestinian, often for political reasons, highlights that the nation is not a ‘given’ entity. This can be a difficult process for those in diaspora to deal with, as there may be tensions between constructions of political unity and attachment to the homeland and feelings of ambivalence and in‐between‐ness that may be seen as politically counterproductive. However, I stress that ‘messy’ and contradictory narratives and spatialities of diasporic national identities that come about as a result of cross‐border or transnational (dis)connections do not necessarily lead to apathy and, therefore, can be important.     

Introduction to the special theme: theorizing transnational labour markets

In this introduction to the special themed section, ‘Theorizing transnational labour markets: economic‐sociological approaches’, I introduce the reader to the topic and give an overview of the four contributions. The terms ‘global labour market’ and ‘transnational labour market’ are broadly used to account for contemporary social phenomena as diverse as the ever‐closer integration of China or India, with their huge labour forces, into the world economy, the off‐shoring of specific operations of MNCs to countries with cheap labour, or cross‐border labour migration. In most of these cases, the existence of global or transnational labour markets is taken for granted by the media, consulting agencies and other economic actors. However, scholars in labour market research and cross‐border migration alike have largely ignored the categories of global or transnational labour markets. Thus far, it remains unclear what these terms really mean and how we should address them theoretically. The aim of this themed section, therefore, is to view cross‐border labour migration through an economic‐sociological lens and thus bring into dialogue migration and labour market scholarship. By introducing a transnational perspective into labour market research, we hope to make a useful contribution towards theorizing on cross‐border labour markets and thereby overcome the methodological nationalism that seems to have crept into this area of scholarship.     

From FOB to cool: Transnational migrant students in Toronto and the styling of global linguistic capital

Globalization and the rise of ‘Korean cool’ provide middle‐class Korean yuhaksaeng (visa students) in Toronto with resources they can mobilize as strategies of distinction. In their construction of themselves as new transnational subjects with hybrid identities that are simultaneously global and Korean, yuhaksaeng deploy re‐valued varieties of Korean language and culture as stylistic resources in the globalized new economy. In this process, yuhaksaeng contest their marginal positions as ‘FOBs’ (Fresh‐Off‐the‐Boats) and ‘Nerds’ in dominant Western racial discourse, and construct themselves as wealthy, modern, and cosmopolitan ‘Cools’vis‐à‐vis long‐term immigrants in local Korean diasporic communities as well as Canadians. The stories of yuhaksaeng illustrate how notions of ‘global’ and ‘local’ linguistic resources are transformed under the material conditions of globalization and its structures of inequality. ???? ‘??? ?’? ??? ???? ???? ??? ?? ????? ???? ?? ???? ?? ??? ????. ????? ???? ?? ??? ?????? ??? ????? ?? ??? ???, ???? ??????? ??? ???? ??? ???? ?? ??? ???? ??? ?????? ?? ???? ????. ? ???? ????? ??? ??? ?? ?????? ‘FOBs’ (Fresh‐Off‐the‐Boats) ? ‘Nerds’ ? ?? ??? ???? ????, ???? ???? ???? ?????? ??? ??? ??????? ????, ???? ???? ???????? ‘?’? ???? ????. ? ?? ??? ????? ???? ???? ??? ??? ? ???? ?? ??? ????? ???? ???? ??? ?????? ??? ????. [Korean]     

So near yet so far: blocked networks,global links and multiple exclusion in the German–Polish borderlands

Abstract The building blocks of global society are conventionally thought of in terms of ‘flows’, ‘scapes’, ‘key nodes’, and ‘global cities’, to name a few. We rarely consider borders and border regions. However, state borders provide a crucial component of a globalizing society in transition. Exhibiting a structural ambivalence, borders can be seedbeds of cosmopolitanism, sites of cultural closure, or often both simultaneously. To understand cross‐border interaction we have to engage with a complex configuration of global and sub‐global dynamics. In this article I argue that borders are revealing analytical tools that must be included in any grounded theory of global change. I draw on fieldwork conducted in the German‐Polish border region, mostly in the German‐Polish twin city Guben/Gubin. Here we are confronted with the simultaneous processes of globalization, European integration and post‐socialist transformation.     

Beyond deportation: researching the control of outward mobility using a space of flows logic

Manuel Castells (1996) famously argued that human processes are increasingly operating according to the logic of flows and it has now become commonplace to analyse movements of people, information and commodities in terms of flows. However, scholars have been slow to capture the dynamics of border enforcement practices in these terms. In this article, we argue that ‘deportation’ can best be understood, not as a discrete practice that is unidirectional, territorial and wholly controlled by individual states, but as a range of diverse practices used by states (and sometimes undermined by other parties) to try to control the circulation of people within a dynamic supra‐national space. By focusing on ‘mobility control continuums’ operating in selected countries at the peripheries of Europe, we capture the dynamics of state intervention in trans‐border flows and thereby contribute towards developing concepts and methodologies for the criminological study of border controls that are ‘sensitive to the complexities of the global’ (Aas 2007).     

Non‐state authoritarianism and diaspora politics

Diaspora politics has been celebrated as a form of transnationalism that can potentially challenge authoritarian regimes. Arguably, opposition groups and political activists can mobilize beyond the territorial limits of the state, thus bypassing some of the constraints to political organization found in authoritarian states. The literature on transnational and extraterritorial repression complicates this model, for it shows that states can use strategies of ‘long‐distance authoritarianism’ to monitor, intimidate and harass diasporic populations abroad. Yet, non‐state actors in the diaspora also sometimes use such repressive strategies to mobilize internally, gain hegemony within the diaspora, and marginalize or eliminate internal rivals. This raises the question of whether such activities can be understood as non‐state forms of authoritarianism. Cases of diasporic politics pertaining to Turkey and Sri Lanka are briefly explored with a view to examining how state and non‐state forms of transnational repression can, under some conditions, result in the dynamics of competitive authoritarianism within a diaspora. In such cases, ‘ordinary’ members of the diaspora may become caught between multiple forms of transnational repression in addition to potentially experiencing marginalization and securitization in their new home.     

Transnational politics at the edges of sovereignty: social movements,crossings and the state at the US–Mexico border

This article documents the history of border crossings among a group of social movement activists located in southern Arizona. By comparing two types of US–Mexico border crossings separated ten years apart, the article explores how political groups become ‘transnationalized’ and in relation to what kinds of ‘states’. By contrasting the shift from a state‐centric movement to a transnational coalition, the case study analyses why, in the later period, political activists were no longer able to identify the same kind of state. In chronicling the disappearance of one kind of state formation and the emergence of a transnational one, this research argues that globalization—rather than simply reflecting a decline of the nation state—is a process entailing not only new forms of transnational political activism but also new forms of the state.     

Transformations of Old Colony Mennonites: the making of a trans‐statal community

Through an analysis that combines the historical development of the Old Colony Mennonites, which covers their migrations from sixteenth‐century Europe to late twentieth‐century Latin America, with ethnographic field work in Bolivia and Argentina, I examine the genesis and maintenance of a religiously based trans‐statal community. I argue for the conceptual maintenance of a clear distinction between transnational and trans‐statal processes in understanding the cross‐border practices of Old Colony Mennonites. Mennonites do not move in and out of nations but between the territories over which different states claim sovereignty. I further show that the trans‐statal practices of Old Colony Mennonites are a strategic means of outmanoeuvring states in their imposition of national identities within a context of nation‐states being the dominant political formation. The case contributes to the call for a shift in emphasis from nations to faith communities in transnational and trans‐statal studies.     

Photographer as researcher in the project ‘Under Gods: Stories from Soho Road’

‘Under Gods’ explores the contemporary circumstances of diasporic urban faith communities along Soho Road in Birmingham, the site of some 30 religious centres and home to over 90 different nationalities. The project photographically traces the quotidian spiritual and material practices, as well as the communities, religious organisations, networks and transnational flows that shape this one street.     

Migration and Community Formation under Conditions of Globalization

This article sets out to rethink the dynamics of the migratory process under conditions of globalization. Two main models of migration and incorporation dominated academic and policy approaches in the late twentieth century: first, the settler model, according to which immigrants gradually integrated into economic and social relations, re‐united or formed families and eventually became assimilated into the host society (sometimes over two or three generations); second, the temporary migration model, according to which migrant workers stayed in the host country for a limited period, and maintained their affiliation with their country of origin. Globalization, defined as a proliferation of cross‐border flows and transnational networks, has changed the context for migration. New technologies of communication and transport allow frequent and multi‐directional flows of people, ideas and cultural symbols. The erosion of nation‐state sovereignty and autonomy weakens systems of border‐control and migrant assimilation. The result is the transformation of the material and cultural practices associated with migration and community formation, and the blurring of boundaries between different categories of migrants. These trends will be illustrated through case‐studies of a number of Asian and European immigration countries. It is important to re‐think our understanding of the migratory process, to understand new forms of mobility and incorporation, particularly the emergence of transnational communities, multiple identities and multi‐layered citizenship.     

‘Journey to the future’: imaginaries and motivations for homeland trips among diasporic Armenians

This article highlights diasporic migrants' transnational linkages with and trips to their homeland. Second and later generations of diasporic Armenians, predominantly from the USA and Canada, claim to travel to the ancestral homeland in Armenia not as heritage tourists to see the holy Mount Ararat but to invest in local development through social work. Based on ethnographic research, in‐depth interviews with volunteers and text materials, this article identifies those specific features of the contemporary diasporic ‘sacred journey’ that differ from conventional return migrations. This new inter‐continental migratory path between North America and Armenia has a temporary character. By analysing the range of reasons why young professional Armenian‐Americans and Armenian‐Canadians should choose to travel the long distance to offer their services, this article provides insight into the decision to become a volunteer in Armenia and the ways non‐profit diasporic organizations channel and mobilize this transnational activity. The study shows that ‘ethnic’ volunteers are highly conscious of the modern understanding of mobility as being a marker of personal social status within the society in which they grew up. The study of a variety of imaginaries among members of a paradigmatic diasporic group, such as Armenians, shows how second and later diasporic generations take advantage of their multi‐cultural background to become transnational global actors.     

Home,city and diaspora: Anglo–Indian and Chinese attachments to Calcutta

This article is about the city as home for people living in diaspora. We develop two key areas of debate. First, in contrast to research that explores diasporic homes in relation to domestic homemaking and/or the nation as home or ‘homeland’, we consider the city as home in diaspora. Second, building on research on transnational urbanism, translocality and the importance of the ‘city scale’ in migration studies, we argue that the city is a distinctive location of diasporic dwelling, belonging and attachment. Drawing on interviews with Anglo–Indian and Chinese Calcuttans who live in London and Toronto, we develop the idea of ‘diaspora cities’ to explore the importance of the city as home rather than the nation as ‘homeland’ for many people living in diaspora. This leads to an understanding of the importance of migration and diaspora within cities of departure as well as resettlement, and contributes a distinctively diasporic focus to broader work on comparative urbanism.     

Diasporic youth culture of K-pop

This study examines how diasporic Korean youth engage with the recent global circulation of South Korean pop music (‘K-pop’). It explores how young diasporic Koreans negotiate K-pop as an ethnic and/or global cultural form in their transition to adulthood. Drawing on interviews with young people of Korean heritage in Canada, the study addresses how a diasporic sound, which connects the nostalgia for the ancestral homeland and the global mediascape, is appropriated for young people’s identity work. By examining diasporic Korean fans’ consumption of K-pop, this study suggests a perspective for understanding the recent K-pop phenomenon as a diasporic youth cultural practice.     

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.     

Global Identifications: The Social Identity Behind the Globalised Sociocultural Anthropologist

My social identity as a diasporic Korean American male sometimes engendered doubts about my competency as a cultural anthropologist of South Korea. Such ethnonational gatekeeping by my ‘native’ Korean colleagues laid bare broader critiques of ‘the West’. Paradoxically, they also prompted re-entrenchments of nativeness (and implicitly, non-nativeness) by my colleagues despite their increasingly ‘non-native’ transnational identities. These embodied cultural boundaries are less visible (and arguably less consequential) to those viewed as recognisably non-native Asian (for example, white, Euro-American) or native Asian. But they are markedly visible and relevant to diasporic subjects who fit less comfortably within both boundary-enforcing classifications. The figure of the diasporic anthropologist reveals presumed racialised and gendered markers of difference—chiefly the unmarked but organising role of whiteness—conveniently subsumed under categories of ‘the West’ and ‘Asia’. Consequently, recent calls for ‘global anthropology’ against ‘Euro-American academic hegemony’ that fail to address this essentialising tendency, although important, remain inadequate.     

The diasporic pursuit of home and identity: dynamic Punjabi transnationalism

This paper examines the pursuit of home within a diasporic British Indian Punjabi community. It is argued that the British Asian transnational pursuit of home is significantly shaped by the dynamic social context of South Asia as well as social processes within Britain and across the South Asian diaspora. Drawing upon a decade of original, transnational, ethnographic research within the UK and India, I analyse the rapidly changing social context of Punjab, India, and the impact of this upon the diasporic Punjabi pursuit of home. I particularly argue that increasing divisions between the UK diasporic group studied and the non‐migrant permanent residents of Punjab, which are intrinsically related to processes of inclusion and exclusion within Punjab, especially the changing role and significance of land ownership and changing consumption practices therein, in turn connected to the increasing influence of economic neoliberalization and global consumer culture within India, significantly shapes the (re)production of home and identity amongst the Punjabi diaspora. Recent manifestations of these social processes within Punjab are threatening the very lived Indian home of some diasporic Punjabis, their Indian ‘roots’.     

‘Spatializing’ knowledge communities: towards a conceptualization of transnational innovation networks

In this article we seek to move beyond existing conceptualizations of innovation systems in two key respects. First, we identify the need for a shift away from research that focuses on discrete scales as the locus for understanding innovation towards that which places more emphasis on network relationships operating between and across different scales. Second, we illustrate the need for approaches that recognize the significance of innovative networks that extend beyond firms and, in particular, those associated with the movement of knowledgeable individuals. By synthesizing recent insights from three literatures on ‘communities’ of varying kinds — namely communities of practice, knowledge communities and transnational communities — we propose a conceptualization of transnational innovation networks based around three overlapping and mutually constitutive domains. In addition to the much‐studied ‘corporate‐institutional’ domain, we also identify ‘social network’ and ‘hegemonic‐discursive’ domains that may be important components of transnational innovation networks operating across different localities.     

Ambiguities of global and transnational collective identities

As traditional categories of collective identity are in decline and brought into question, the process of defining shared perceptions of ‘us’ and ‘them’ by new markers and new mechanisms seems more important than ever. In the article, I summarize basic aspects of collective identity formation in the ongoing processes of globalization and transnationalization and discuss the basic challenges of collective identity in the twenty‐first century. I present different ideal types of border‐crossing collective identities in terms of the patterns of their spatial reach. Two of these types of collective identity –‘global humanism’ and ‘transnational collective identities’– are discussed in more detail, especially concerning their ambiguities of universal and/or particularistic character. I conclude that the global collective identity of ‘humanism’ is not as global as it appears at first glance, and that transnational collective identities usually refer to the authority of a stated global collective identity. Given these genuine interrelations between global humanism and transnational (and other spatial patterns of) collective identities, the future seems destined to be shaped by an intertwined ‘as‐well‐as’ relation rather than an ‘either–or’ relation between the different types of collective identities.     

Searching for wages and mothering from Afar: The case of Honduran transnational families

This article draws on data from a 2‐year two‐country study that included 157 people to explore the survival strategies of poor Honduran transnational families. I argue that transnational families, defined as those divided between two nation‐states who have maintained close ties, depend on a cross‐border division of labor in which productive labor occurs in the host country and reproductive labor in the home country. This article bridges the literatures on transnationalism and families. The transnationalism literature tends to focus on macro processes, whereas the literature on families assumes proximity. This research helps fill the gap in both literatures, exposing the ways in which processes of economic globalization have radically altered family form and function.     

Marriage Migration Policy in South Korea: Social Investment beyond the Nation State

This article seeks to contribute to understandings of South Korea's approach to marriage migration. Situating our analysis of marriage migration policy specifically within the recent emergence of a social investment approach to welfare, we bring together two bodies of literature that due to the methodological nationalism of much welfare state scholarship are usually treated separately. Through an examination of the policy framework governing marriage migration ‐ so‐called ‘multicultural family policies’ ‐ we find that successive Korean governments have actively sought female marriage migrants to perform various social reproductive roles as a means to secure the reproductive capacity of the nation, just as feminist scholars have argued the care work of citizen‐mothers can be understood. Our analysis also suggests that marriage migration policy in Korea constitutes a distinctly transnational dimension to its overall social investment approach, which is strongly motivated by concerns to reproduce the next generation of human capital.