Transnational lives,transnational marriages: a review of the evidence from migrant communities in Europe

Abstract Whom do migrants marry? This question has become a popular topic of research, and existing studies identify a common trend: most of the non‐European, non‐Christian migrants in Europe marry someone from their country of origin. The motivations for such practices are to be found in the characteristics of transnational spaces and in the social structures that emerge in such spaces. Based on a review of research from several European countries, three such constellations are discussed: first, the obligations to kin, especially when migration regulations become more restrictive, and marriage becomes the last route by which to migrate to Europe. Second, new forms of global inequality, between the metropolitan centre and countries of the global periphery, give migrants in Europe improved status and standing in their society of origin and therefore excellent opportunities on the marriage market there. Third, gender relations have started to shift in both host society and migrant families. Men and women alike are trying to rebalance power relations within marriage and to shift them in their favour. In this process marriage to a partner from the country of family origin may promise strategic benefits. The article ends with suggestions for future research.     

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.     

Voting here and there: political integration and transnational political engagement among immigrants in Europe

In this article, I examine voting patterns in origin and receiving country national elections among immigrants in Europe. The existing scholarship on transnational political engagement offers two competing interpretations of the relationship between immigrant integration and transnational engagement, which I classify as the resocialization and complementarity perspectives. The resocialization perspective assumes that transnational political engagement gradually declines as immigrants become socialized into the new receiving society. Conversely, the complementarity perspective assumes that immigrant integration increases transnational political engagement. I test these competing perspectives with survey data collected between 2004 and 2008 for 12 different immigrant groups residing in seven European cities. The analysis examines how immigrant political and civic participation in receiving countries affect their proclivities to vote in homeland elections. I also analyse the effects of receiving and origin country contexts on immigrant voting behaviour in homeland elections. While my findings support both the resocialization and complementarity perspectives, they also highlight the ways in which a set of origin‐country contexts shape immigrant propensities to engage in transnational electoral politics. I observe a degree of complementarity among immigrants with resources who are motivated and eligible to participate in both receiving and origin‐country elections.     

Sport and globalization: transnational dimensions

Abstract The aims of this special issue are to both raise the social scientific status of sport and to advance understanding of transnational processes through the role of sport in global change. The Introduction argues that sport, like globalization, can be understood in transdisciplinary terms, and the papers included contributions informed by sociology, anthropology, political sciences and history. As well as placing the issue in the context of recent studies of sport and globalization, the Introduction outlines the seven papers. Placed together they move from analyses of broader globalizing and multi‐sport issues towards consideration of how transnational processes impact upon individual sports – with examples from cricket, baseball and association football – ending with regional and national dimensions.     

Reframing transnational engagement: a relational analysis of Afghan diasporic groups

In recent years, there have been repeated calls to refocus studies of diasporic engagements, especially their conceptual underpinnings, underlying assumptions and units of analysis. Based on a qualitative case study of Afghan diasporic groups in Britain and Germany, I propose a refined approach to such engagements. I combine the distinction between different spheres of engagement with key concepts from relational sociology. Afghans in both countries participate in a plethora of transnational engagements, which vary according to the extent of their orientation towards the public or private sphere. At the same time, clearly delineated groups of people undertake engagements observed in different spheres, which different aims and objectives drive. Although informants' attachments to their home country are important, they are not the only basis on which they act. My conceptual angle seeks to inspire critical, nuanced and theoretically rich research on diasporas as social actors and transnational civic engagement in a wider sense.     

Religious transnationalism,development and the construction of religious boundaries: the case of the Dera Sachkhand Ballan and the Ravidass Dharm

In this article, I examine the general assumption that transnationalism is creating new divisions and iniquitous social hierarchies. For caste‐based religious centres like the Dera Sachkhand Ballan (DSB), which is engaged in modes of subaltern religiosity among Ravidassias, transnationalism can be a powerful agent of religious and social change. By nurturing transnational networks, especially in the United Kingdom, the DSB has now emerged as the main driver of Ravidassia identity in Punjab. The material support of overseas followers has made this achievement possible for religious and social institutions in Punjab, and has enabled overseas Ravidassias to demonstrate to higher castes a sense of collective achievement. Transnationalism is thus central to the process of differentiating between the followers of the DSB and Sikhism. It also provided critical support for the birth of a new religion in 2010, the Ravidass Dharm.     

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.     

Transnational parenting and the well‐being of Angolan migrant parents in Europe

Studies on the transnational family highlight the emotional difficulties of migrant parents separated from their children through international migration. This article consists of a large‐scale quantitative investigation into the insights of transnational family literature by examining the well‐being of transnational parents compared with that of parents who live with their children in the destination country. Furthermore, through a survey of Angolan migrant parents in both the Netherlands and Portugal, we compare the contexts of two receiving country. Our study shows transnational parents are worse off than their non‐transnational counterparts in terms of four measures of well‐being – health, life satisfaction, happiness, and emotional well‐being. Although studies on migrant well‐being tend to focus exclusively on the characteristics of the receiving countries, our findings suggest that, to understand migrant parents' well‐being, a transnational perspective should also consider the existence of children in the migrant sending country. Finally, comparing the same population in two countries revealed that the receiving country effects the way in which transnational parenting is associated with migrant well‐being.     

Renegotiating religious transnationalism: fractures in transnational Chinese evangelicalism

In this article, I question to what extent future generations of immigrants will engage in practices of religious transnationalism through their ethnic institutions. I examine how leaders of the next generation of English‐speaking Chinese Canadian evangelicals made sense of their participation in the Chinese Coordination Centre of World Evangelism, a movement that rallies behind both a pan‐Chinese identity and the belief that the Chinese have a special role in evangelizing the world. I argue that the call to religious mobilization grounded in Chinese ethnicity stands on tenuous ground and propose that linguistic, geographical, generational and ideological fractures may diminish the participation of future generations of the Chinese diaspora in ethnically‐based transnational religious organizations. I conclude that these developments would push ‘negotiated transnational religious networks’ into a state of ‘renegotiation'.     

Reflexive particularism and cosmopolitanization: the reconfiguration of the national

In this article we examine the cosmopolitanization of national memory cultures as a matter of reflexive particularism, referring to negotiations over ‘the national’ driven by the endogenization of European norms and discourses. Reflexive particularism emerges from a historically specific memory imperative that issues two demands – first, that national polities reckon with the Other, and second, that they engage with, critique and challenge exclusionary or heroic modes of nationalism. Our findings, based on the analysis of official discourse and 60 open group discussions conducted in Austria, Germany and Poland, suggest that reflexive particularism is manifested in an ongoing negotiation between variable modes of national belonging and cosmopolitan orientations toward the supranational or pan‐European. More specifically, reflexive particularism is expressed in co‐evolving articulations of Europeanness and shared European memory practices that include: affirmative and ambivalent perspectives; sceptical narratives about nationhood (for example those that emphasize legacies of perpetratorship); and a disposition to (ex)change perspectives and recognize the claims of Others.     

Family and nation: Brazilian national ideology as contested transnational practice in Japan

Studies of Brazilian Nikkeis (Japanese emigrants and their descendants) living in Japan tend to conceptualize ‘family’ and ‘nation’ as two distinct entities. Such distinctions are filtered through mutually exclusive discourses and understandings of national and ethnic identity. In this article, however, I view national attachments and migrant experiences in Japan through the lens of ideology, embodied experience and kinship relations. Treating national ideology as lived process sheds fresh light on the dynamics of state—society relations in transnational social spaces. I suggest that the ability of Brazilian state actors to impose social, moral and economic regulation on its citizens in Japan is compromised by the extent to which such discourses are ontologically grounded in the social relations of migrant family life. It is through these kin ties, I argue, that people set the tone and rules of play for state interests to encroach or otherwise on their everyday lives in these transnational social spaces.     

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.     

Virtualizing diaspora: new digital technologies in the emerging transnational space

Since new distributed ledger technologies hold out a promise to restructure cross‐border flows of people and material resources, they affect globalization and alter transnational spaces. Their capacity to facilitate secure and disintermediated value transfer through crypto‐code and smart contracts enables novel forms of remittance transfer, resource management and digital identity verification – and may also generate new vulnerabilities. In this article, we examine the use of emerging blockchain applications in various migration and diaspora related initiatives in the emerging economies of Africa, Asia and Europe. By building on existing social networks of mutual obligation and quasi‐ethnic affinities, blockchain technologies may facilitate the ability to enlarge the scope of diasporas and change the nature of belonging, sovereignty, migration and statehood. Through exploring the selective foregrounding of mutuality and materiality in such alternative value transfer systems, we seek to explain the dynamics of trust and agency that these networks generate to extend commitments and loyalties in the transnational space.     

The transnational turn,Houston Baker's new southern studies and Patrick Neate's Twelve Bar Blues

Abstract

This article considers Houston Baker's take on the 'new southern studies' in Turning South Again (2001) in relation to the transnational turn in American studies and Paul Gilroy's theory of the 'Black Atlantic'. The article begins by pointing out that the vision of 'the South' formulated in southern (literary) studies during and after the 1950s frequently cut against the nationalism and exceptionalism central to the development of American studies in the same period. However, southern literary critics and writers (both white and black) developed their own exceptionalist and nativist models of identity, including Donald Davidson's 'autochthonous ideal' and the 'Quentissential fallacy' – in William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!, Quentin Compson's claim that 'you would have to be born' in the South to understand it. A transnational turn displaces such southern exceptionalism and nativism. However, Baker's 'new southern studies' approach to African-American experience (from slavery to 'United States black modernism') proceeds through a predominantly regional-national framework and privileges 'the South' and his own native southern authority. From a transnational perspective, Baker's approach becomes problematic when it facilitates the 'Quentissential' repudiation of Gilroy's Black Atlantic. The article concludes by discussing the transnational South of Patrick Neate's novel, Twelve Bar Blues, with reference to Gilroy and songs by Billie Holiday and Eric B and Rakim.     

Diasporas and transitional justice: transnational activism from local to global levels of engagement

Scholarship on transitional justice, transnational social movements, and transnational diaspora mobilization has offered little understanding about how memorialization initiatives with substantial diaspora involvement emerge transnational and are embedded and sustained in different contexts. We argue that diasporas play a galvanizing role in transnational interest‐based and symbolic politics, expanding claim‐making from the local to national, supranational, and global levels of engagement. Using initiatives to memorialize atrocities committed at the former Omarska concentration camp in Bosnia and Herzegovina, we identify a four‐stage mobilization process. First, initiatives emerged and diffused across transnational networks after a local political opportunity opened in the homeland. Second, attempts at coordination of activities took place transnational through an NGO. Third, initiatives were contextualized on the nation‐state level in different host‐states, depending on the political opportunities and constraints available there. Fourth, memorialization claims were eventually shifted from the national to the supranational and global levels. The article concludes by demonstrating the potential to apply the analysis to similar global movements in which diasporas are directly involved.     

Cross‐border,cross‐ethnic,and transnational networks of a trapped minority: Israeli Arab citizens in Tel Aviv‐Jaffa

In this article, I provide a framework for studying the transnational networks of minority members as a political phenomenon. I make two claims. First, it is necessary to take into account the state and its capacity to limit transnational networks if one is to capture, analytically, the full range of such networks. Second, it is important to extend the theoretical framework of transnationalism to include populations other than migrants and to account for networks established by national minority members whose loyalty to the state can be challanged. I offer a typology of networks organized along two major axes – the state in‐border–cross‐border axis and the ethnic or religious identity axis. These two axes yield different types of in‐border and cross‐border, intranational and transnational networks. I base these claims on an analysis of four case studies of cross‐border and cross‐ethnic networks maintained by Israeli Palestinian citizens in Tel Aviv‐Jaffa.     

The transnational lives and third space subjectivities of British Nigerian girls

Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in 2012 on British Nigerian young women who have gone to boarding school in Nigeria and returned to attend university in the UK, I use the concept of third space as a heuristic device for understanding their transnational subjectivities and practices. I argue that, for some, this third space is a transgressive one in which they can craft alternative subjectivities and narratives about African culture and political economy. Applying insights from decolonial theory, I seek to build on the transgressive nature of this third space. In positioning themselves variously as Londoners, Nigerians, dual and post‐nationals, they express key features of contemporary transnational European subjectivities. Yet, parental expectations that they marry Nigerians and members of the Nigerian diaspora serve to reproduce the racial distinctions and nationalist rhetoric of colonial modernity that their third space subjectivities contest.     

Transnational childrearing and the preservation of transnational identity in Brazzaville,Congo

Drawing on ethnographic research conducted at two ends of an intra‐Africa migration flow (Mali and the Republic of Congo), in this article I examine the role of childrearing practices in the maintenance of transnationalism. I consider different approaches to transnational childrearing by migrant parents and their reasons for adopting them, and delineate three common modes. The most widespread and socially validated approach is to send children home from Congo to their parents’ places of origin, where child fostering is widespread, to be raised by relatives for long periods; this approach increases the durability of transnational ties. I use childrearing approaches as an analytical lens to demonstrate the complementarity of multiple forms of domestic organization, mobility and settlement in the inter‐generational production and transmission of durable transnational identities. By arguing for greater focus on phenomena such as transnational childrearing, I seek to promote a broader conceptualization of transnationalism.     

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.     

Intimate circuits: modernity,migration and marriage among post‐Soviet women in Turkey

The study of migration too often ignores the ways that labour migrants' emotional entanglements and complicated personal relationships factor into their experiences of being people on the move. In examining post‐Soviet migrant women's relationships with Turkish men and the ways these are regulated in Turkey, in this article I consider how intimate practices of marriage and performances of ‘love’ have emerged as key aspects of transnational mobility. These intimate practices both enable long‐term transnational circuits between post‐Soviet homelands and Turkey, and attest to the way global capitalism is redefining personal lives.