The Benefits of in-betweenness: return migration of second-generation Chinese American professionals to China

In an era of growing transnational practices, this paper considers the trend of second-generation Chinese Americans who have ‘returned’ to the People's Republic of China (PRC) to work. Previous studies of return migration to China have focused on issues of ethnic and racial identity that arise during temporary homeland trips undertaken by those seeking to connect with ancestral and cultural origins. Accordingly, most research has highlighted the sense of cultural ‘in-betweenness’ experienced by Chinese Americans whose travels in the ancestral homeland bring an uncomfortable realisation that they are considered neither fully Chinese nor fully American. By contrast, my in-depth interviews with 52 second-generation Chinese American professionals in Beijing and Shanghai suggest that this liminality can be particularly useful in the workplace. I argue that first-world Chinese co-ethnics who work on a long-term basis in the PRC can uniquely leverage Western training with their assumed knowledge of Chinese culture to create personal economic advantage: a practice that I refer to as ‘strategic in-betweenness'. Nonetheless, while participants described distinct career-related benefits to being Chinese American in the PRC, they also feared they would soon be replaced by high-skilled, Western-educated Chinese natives who are moving back to their home country in large numbers.     

全球化时代移民回流研究理论模式评述

在大量文献分析的基础上,分析了全球化时代移民跨国回流所展现出来的新特征,介绍了学术界近20年来新出现的三大移民研究理论模式:三角模式、人才环流和跨国主义,比较了移民回流研究方面的成就和不足,并对回流研究的理论价值进行了评价。三大理论模式为重新梳理和深入剖析现时代的移民回流现象提供了新的研究视角。     

Migrants: keeping a foot in both worlds or losing the ground beneath them? Transnationalism and integration as experienced in the everyday lives of Polish migrants in Belfast,Northern Ireland

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses transnationalism and integration as processes entangled in the everyday lives of Polish migrants. It acknowledges that the co-existence of transnationalism and integration can present an array of choices and enable migrants to lead a fulfilling life in the receiving country while they continue to maintain a foothold in their original homeland. Yet, it might also create a feeling of disjuncture, discontinuity of relations, and ceaseless negotiation between inclusion and exclusion. It is, thus, important to bear in mind that migration is a process involving individuals with all their unique life experiences, complexities and consequences of their choices, sacrifices, ambiguities and hopes associated with the move. All of these have a profound impact on changes in migrants’ perception of, and attitude to, their place of origin, the specificities of destination setting and interpersonal relations between the two milieux. The empirical grounds for this discussion originate in biographical narrative interviews with Polish migrants in Belfast, Northern Ireland. These narratives portray transnationalism and integration as multiple trajectories, emphasising the co-existence of non-linear relations between the time and the intensity/frequency of migrants’ connections to the two settings. These will be examined using the theoretical framework of interpretative sociology, viewing individuals as constantly engaged in the task of interpretation, which is intrinsically rooted in the processes of interaction.     

The Transnational Project and its Implications for Migrant Civil Society in Bangladesh

In Bangladesh, overseas labor migration plays a vital role in the development strategy promoted by government agencies, international donor organizations and civil society organizations. Civil society organizations facilitate the migration process, respond to exploitation facing migrants while overseas and assist migrants upon their return to Bangladesh. Organizations in Bangladesh are pursuing a ‘transnational project,’ whereby their activities, missions, and objectives are now focused around transnational work in order to assist migrants. The transnational project is driven by foreign development agencies and the legitimating actions of local migrant organizations. This paper demonstrates the different ways transnationalism has moved from a radical concept to a banal development practice, by critically analyzing contemporary development practices of migrant civil society organizations in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Also addressed are the implications of the transnational project on migrant organizations, development, and migrant political inclusion, arguing that the transnational project creates new power structures and paradoxes within organizations.     

Somali Transnational Activism and Integration in the UK: Mutually Supporting Strategies

This paper considers the simultaneous processes of transnational?activism and integration amongst Somalis living in the UK. It argues that, rather than challenging integration, diasporic Somalis' involvement in transnational activism may actually support integration, and vice versa. Transnational engagement?fulfils?a range of?functions that relate not only to the country of origin, but also to community formation in the UK. Such practices may, in some cases, promote integration while, in others, they create a space in which those who experience difficulty integrating can still forge meaningful relations both in the country of settlement and with the dispersed transnational Somali community. In the context of the 2011 famine in Somalia, Somali community activism in the UK rose to new heights, helping to reinforce the integration–transnational activism relationship.     

The Effects of 'Transnationalism Reversed' in Venezuela: Assessing the impact of UN global conferences on the women's movement

The UN world women's conferences - in particular the two most recent ones, held in Nairobi (1985) and Beijing (1995) - have been celebrated as catalysts for the development of a transnational women's movement. But their achievements are less clear when examining their impacts on national organizing. Consideration of the effects of 'transnationalism reversed', or how transnational organizing affects national contexts, reveals that domestic conditions combine with global opportunities in ways that may be detrimental as well as productive for national women's movements. This article illustrates the effects of 'transnationalism reversed' using the case of Venezuela. Field research from national, regional, and transnational contexts (1994-1995) shows that the stage of the national movement, its sources of funding, and the politics of particular national administrations all interact with conference preparation, with quite different outcomes at different junctures.     

Reconciling transnational mobility and national social security: what say the welfare state bureaucrats?

The welfare state was constructed to ensure the well-being of a sedentary population, consisting of citizens living within the territorial boundaries of the nation. However, mobility patterns change, and more people lead lives that criss-cross national borders while drawing on different sources of transnational social protection – the welfare state included. Now, the daily work of bureaucrats involves delivering national social security benefits to transnationally mobile recipients. Through encounters and casework processes, these welfare state bureaucrats observe how ‘transnationals’ deal with complex regulations and make use of the social security system. This article explores bureaucrats’ perceptions of individuals’ agency and behaviour as they reconcile their transnational mobility with national social security. It builds on data collected during ethnographic fieldwork in the Norwegian welfare administration, including 36 interviews, participant observation and informal conversations. The analysis identifies an institutional perspective of transnationals’ agency as shaped by their level of regulatory awareness and compliance. The bureaucrats observe some types of transnational behaviour to be more prevalent than others. As the article concludes, these bureaucratic perspectives have major implications for transnational social security delivery and how the welfare state accommodates transnational mobility.     

The missing link: Social network analysis in migration and transnationalism

The focus on social networks in migration studies marked a significant departure of understanding. Social networks are not only a mechanism through which the migration process is patterned, but they also have broader implications for migrants and non-migrants alike. Despite the fact that the network character of migration processes has long been recognized in migration studies, for a long time, Social Network Analysis has not been applied. Taking this scholarly omission as a starting point, we seek in this special issue to discuss recent research into social networks and migration that use SNA approaches.     

The spatial structure of transnational human activity

Starting from conflictive predictions of hitherto disconnected debates in the natural and social sciences, this article examines the spatial structure of transnational human activity (THA) worldwide (a) across eight types of mobility and communication and (b) in its development over time. It is shown that the spatial structure of THA is similar to that of animal displacements and local-scale human motion in that it can be approximated by Lévy flights with heavy tails that obey power laws. Scaling exponent and power-law fit differ by type of THA, being highest in refuge-seeking and tourism and lowest in student exchange. Variance in the availability of resources and opportunities for satisfying associated needs appears to explain these differences. Over time (1960–2010), the Lévy-flight pattern remains intact and remarkably stable, contradicting the popular notion that socio-technological trends lead to a “death of distance.” Humans have not become more “global” over time, they rather became more mobile in general, i.e. they move and communicate more at all distances. Hence, it would be more adequate to speak of “mobilization” than of “globalization.” Longitudinal change occurs only in some types of THA and predominantly at short distances, indicating regional rather than global shifts.