The transnational politics of the Tomato King: meaning and impact

Abstract In this article we deploy transnational ethnography to explore the transnational electoral politics by which Andrés Bermúdez, a successful tomato grower and labour contractor from Winters, California, who came to be called ‘the Tomato King’, was elected mayor of the municipality of Jerez in the Mexican state of Zacatecas. We seek to explain the meaning of his transnational electoral victory and its impact on the role of ‘the migrant’ as a new social actor in Mexican political development. We thus situate the Bermudista phenomenon in the context of the literature on migrant transnational politics. We hope to move the literature on migrant political transnationalism forward by advancing an agency‐oriented perspective that incorporates both the politics of representation of ‘el migrante’ in transnational electoral campaigns and the emerging dynamics of transnational coalition politics. Our approach underlines the need to carefully historicize the relationship between transnationalism and citizenship ‐ namely, to map the contingency and agency underlying the changing practices of states, migrants, and transnational institutional networks vis‐à‐vis questions of transnational citizenship. This is best done by paying close attention to the actual social and political practices whereby human agents pursue historically specific political projects that extend the practices of citizenship across borders.     

The Politics of Migrants' Transnational Political Practices

This article critically examines transnational political engagement of migrants and refugees in local, national and global political processes. Based on inductive reading of existing scholarship and in particular the author's own research on Turks and Kurds in Europe, the article discusses key concepts and trends in our understanding of why, how and with what consequences migrants engage in transnational political practices. These practices, this article suggests, are influenced by the particular multilevel institutional environment, which migrant political actors negotiate their way through. This environment includes not only political institutions in the sending and receiving country, but also global norms and institutions and networks of other nonstate actors. Finally, the article argues for critical examination of the democratic transparency and accountability of migrants' transnational networks in any analysis of their long and short‐term impact on domestic and global politics.     

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 religion: Hindu and Muslim movements

In this article I deal with transnational Hindu and Muslim movements. I reject the common assertion that migrant communities are conservative in religious and social matters by arguing that ‘traditionalism’ requires considerable ideological creativity and that this significantly transforms previous practices and discourses. I suggest that religious movements, active among migrants, develop cosmopolitan projects that can be viewed as alternatives to the cosmopolitanism of the European Enlightenment. This raises a number of challenges concerning citizenship, integration and political loyalty for governmentality in the nation‐states in which these cosmopolitan projects are carried out. I suggest that rather than looking at religious migrants as at best conservative and at worst terrorist one should perhaps pay some attention to the creative moments in human responses to new challenges and new environments.     

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.     

Ambivalent citizenship and extraterritorial voting among Colombians in London and Madrid

In this article, we explore the nature of extraterritorial voting among Colombian migrants in the 2010 elections in London and Madrid. To address the neglected issue of why voter turnout from abroad has been so low, we take into account the views of voters and non‐voters alike to show that, while the external vote privileges the professional and well educated, this does not mean that migrants are not interested in politics back home. Drawing on Bauman (1991), we conceptualize ambivalent citizenship as the paradoxical manner in which, through the external vote, states impose hegemonic notions of citizenship from above, which people embrace in an ambivalent manner from below. We show that the workings of the state make voting a difficult process; they create structural ambivalence for migrants who, even if they practise their citizenship in other ways, exercise individual ambivalence because they find it difficult to engage with a political system back home that they do not trust. The conceptualization of ‘ambivalent citizenship’ therefore encompasses the contradictory complexities inherent in the provision of external voting rights that actively privilege and exclude migrants in mutually constitutive ways.     

Migrant Mobilization for Homeland Politics: A Social Movement Approach

From the campaign of Chilean exiles all over the world to overthrow the regime of Augusto Pinochet in the 1970s to the contemporary mobilization of the Kurdish diaspora in Western Europe, various cases demonstrate the persistence of homeland ties among migrants, especially those who experienced repression and displacement by the government in their countries of origin. Diverse frameworks and concepts in both the humanities and the social sciences have been deployed to explain the involvement of migrants in politics in their home countries, from “long‐distance nationalism” to “transnational activism.” Each points to different dynamic processes and causal mechanisms. In recent years, scholars have advocated the use of a social movement framework in the analysis of migrant mobilization, despite the marginalization of such studies in theory development. In this article, I examine the concepts put forward by the political process model (PPM) as they apply to the analysis of migrants' involvement in politics in their native land. I propose ways for PPM to be useful in the explanation of the dynamics and processes of homeland‐oriented migrant mobilization.     

Towards a Political Theory of Migrant Transnationalism

Political transnationalism covers a wide range of phenomena and can be studied using a variety of approaches. In migration research the focus is mostly on migrants' networks and activities that involve them in politics oriented towards their country of origin. The article argues for a wider conception of political transnationalism from a political theory perspective. It proposes a terminological distinction between international, multinational, supranational and transnational relations and phenomena. What is specific about migrant transnationalism is that it creates overlapping memberships between territorially separated and independent polities. In this understanding, political transnationalism is not only about a narrowly conceived set of activities through which migrants become involved in the domestic politics of their home countries; it also affects collective identities and conceptions of citizenship among the native populations in both receiving and sending societies. Within this general framework the article suggests a set of hypotheses for an explanatory and normative analysis of sending country relations to their emigrants, a task that has hitherto been neglected in political theory.     

The multiplicity of citizenship: transnational and local practices and identifications of middle‐class migrants

In this article we focus on local and transnational forms of active citizenship, understood as the sum of all political practices and processes of identification. Our study, conducted among middle‐class immigrants in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, indicates that the importance of active transnational citizenship should not be overstated. Among these immigrants, political practices are primarily focused on the local level; political practices directed to the home country appear to be quite rare. However, although transnational activities in the public sphere are rather exceptional, many immigrants do participate in homeland‐directed activities in the private sphere. If we look at processes of identification, we see that a majority of the middle‐class immigrants have a strong local identity. Many of them combine this local identification with feelings of belonging to people in their home country.     

Citizenship struggles in Soviet successor states

"The breakup of the Soviet Union has transformed yesterday's internal migrants, secure in their Soviet citizenship, into today's international migrants of contested legitimacy and uncertain membership. This transformation has touched Russians in particular, of whom some 25 million live in non-Russian successor states. This article examines the politics of citizenship vis-a-vis Russian immigrants in the successor states, focusing on the Baltic states, where citizenship has been a matter of sustained and heated controversy." The author concludes that "formal citizenship cannot be divorced from broader questions of substantive belonging. Successor states' willingness to accept Russian immigrants as citizens, and immigrants' readiness to adopt a new state as their state, will depend on the terms of membership for national minorities and the organization of public life in the successor states." Data are from a variety of published sources.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Transnational migration: taking stock and future directions

Increasing numbers of sending states are systematically offering social and political membership to migrants residing outside their territories. The proliferation of these dual memberships contradicts conventional notions about immigrant incorporation, their impact on sending countries, and the relationship between migration and development in both contexts. But how do ordinary individuals actually live their lives across borders? Is assimilation incompatible with transnational membership? How does economic and social development change when it takes place across borders? This article takes stock of what is known about everyday transnational practices and the institutional actors that facilitate or impede them and outlines questions for future research. In it, I define what I mean by transnational practices and describe the institutions that create and are created by these activities. I discuss the ways in which they distribute migrants’ resources and energies across borders, based primarily on studies of migration to the United States.     

The making and unmaking of a “transborder nation”: South Korea during and after the Cold War

The burgeoning literature on transborder membership, largely focused on the thickening relationship between emigration states in the South and the postwar labor migrant populations and their descendants in North America or Western Europe, has not paid due attention to the long-term macroregional transformations that shape transborder national membership politics or to the bureaucratic practices of the state that undergird transborder claims-making. By comparing contentious transborder national membership politics in South Korea during the Cold War and Post-Cold War eras, this article seeks to overcome these limitations. In both periods, the membership status of colonial-era ethnic Korean migrants in Japan and northeast China and their descendants was the focus of contestation. The distinctiveness of the case—involving both a sustained period of colonial rule and a period of belated and divided nation-state building interwoven with the Cold War—highlights the crucial importance of three factors: (1) the dynamically evolving macro-regional context, which has shaped transborder national membership politics in the region in distinctive ways; (2) the essentially political, performative, and constitutive nature of transborder nation-building; and (3) the role of state registration and documentation practices in shaping the contours of transborder national membership politics in the long run. By incorporating Korea—and East Asia more broadly—into the comparative study of transborder nation-building, this article also lays the groundwork for future cross-regional comparative historical studies.

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Migrant Transnationalism and Modes of Transformation1

Much of the literature on migrant transnationalism focuses on the ways that specific sociocultural institutions have been modified in the course of being stretched across the globe. Yet migrant transnational practices are involved in more deep‐seated patterns of change or structural transformation. Such modes of transformation concern: 1) an enhanced ‘bi‐focality’of outlooks underpinning migrant lives lived here‐and‐there; such dual orientations have considerable influence on transnational family life and may continue to affect identities among subsequent post‐migration generations; 2) heightened challenges to ‘identities‐borders‐orders’stemming from migrants' political affiliations in more than one nation‐state; these particularly arise around questions of dual citizenship and nationality; and 3) potentially profound impacts on economic development by way of the sheer scale and evolving means of remittance sending; money transfer services, hometown associations and micro‐finance institutions represent three kinds of remittance‐related organizations currently undergoing significant forms of adaptation with significant consequences for development. These modes of transformation, and the practices of migrant transnationalism surrounding them, both draw from and contribute to wider processes of globalization.     

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 political practices and the receiving state: Turks and Kurds in Germany and the Netherlands

This article examines how the social and political contexts in receiving countries affect the transnational political practices of migrants and refugees, such as their mobilization around political events in their homeland. The case study explores the political participation of Turks and Kurds in Germany and the Netherlands in its full complexity, that is in both the immigration country and in homeland politics. The findings suggest that transnational political practices should not be reduced to a function of the political opportunity structures of particular receiving countries for two main reasons: (a) more inclusive political structures, which provide for more participation and co‐operation on immigrant political issues, may at the same time, and for that very reason, serve to exclude dialogue on homeland politics; (b) homeland political movements may draw on a different range of resources than their immigrant political counterparts, including those outside the local political institutional context.     

Transnational lived citizenship turns local: Covid-19 and Eritrean and Ethiopian diaspora in Nairobi

This paper analyses how migrant community practices of transnational lived citizenship were altered by both, COVID-19 and the policy response from the Kenyan government. It is based on interviews with members of the Eritrean and Ethiopian diaspora residing in Nairobi. The paper demonstrates how policies introduced because of the pandemic caused migrant communities to lose local and remittance income. More than the loss of material resources, however, they were impacted by the elimination of social spaces that enable diaspora lives. These two dynamics have intensified a trend that may have been present before the pandemic, a local turn of transnational lived citizenship. By focusing on lived experiences and how they have been re-assessed during the pandemic, the paper argues that transnational lived citizenship is always in flux and can easily become reconfigured as more localized practices. The concept of transnational lived citizenship is demonstrated to be a useful lens for analysing shifting migrant livelihoods and belonging.     

Dual citizenship or dual identity? Does ‘transnationalism’ supplant ‘nationalism’ among returning Trinidadians?

In this article we focus on the dual identities of relatively young Trinidadians who have decided to return to the island of their birth, or of their parents, while still in their thirties and forties. Highly‐educated professional transnational migrants mostly make up our sample of 36; 26 possess dual citizenship. We focus on our informants’ narratives about their transnational experiences, self‐appraisals of their dual identities and how they value dual citizenship. More generally, we ask, does transnationalism supplant nationalism among our returning informants? Unsurprisingly, the diverse responses we document do not support the commonly held explanatory relationship between return adaptations, ‘national belonging’ and the expected dominance of ‘transnational belonging’. Family relations intervene significantly, both to encourage transnationalism and to strengthen nationalism. Feelings of national belonging often accompany transnationalism. Notably, we view dual citizenship strategically and pragmatically as advantageous to the continuation of transnational practices.