Showing papers in "Global Networks-a Journal of Transnational Affairs in 2006"

'Virtual' intimacies? Families communicating across transnational contexts

Abstract: Many analyses of the uses of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) focus on factors such as gender, class and communication infrastructures in explaining how and whether people communicate across distance. In this article, I argue that such analyses fail to capture the full complexity of ICT use. I use the results of a large qualitative study of transnational families, conducted in Australia, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Iran, Singapore and New Zealand, to examine how and whether kin maintain contact across time and space. The research demonstrates that ICTs are more available for some people than for others. However, also and possibly more important in the decisions people make about using particular com- munication technologies are the social and cultural contexts of family life, which render some ICTs more desirable than others at specific points in time. Acknowledg- ing this provides an important corrective to economic analyses of transnationalism, and contributes to theorizing and documenting the role of ICTs in the maintenance of transnational social networks. When Arturo Escobar (1994) welcomed us to Cyberia, he was encouraging anthro- pologists to step outside a discipline that continued to be ordered by concerns with the differences between the modern and the savage. Instead, he asked us to use the new attention to cyberculture - specifically, information and communication technologies and biotechnologies - to rejuvenate what anthropology is really about: 'the story of life as it has been lived and is being lived at this very moment' (Escobar 1994: 223). The terms 'cyberia' and 'cyberculture' invoked the radical newness of the contexts that anthropologists might begin to explore as they charted the implications, con- sequences and contexts of the construction of these new technologies. In Escobar's account, cyberculture is acknowledged as emerging out of the familiar sociocultural environment of modernity. However, Cyberia is also presented as an exotic new land, in which we might imagine a future of cyborgs, cyberspaces and cyberpunks, among other exciting innovations. In this exotic world, the virtual competes with and in many respects supplants the 'real' world even as it evades being restricted to that world. This prospect of a virtual environment allows Escobar to anticipate utopian visions of a future where 'anthropological studies of cybercultures can help us to imagine contexts in which possibilities for relating to technoculture that do not exacerbate the power imbalances in society might emerge' (Escobar 1994: 221).

Transnational involvement and social integration

Abstract: In this article we offer a quantitative examination of the extent to which migrants from various countries are involved in transnational activities and have transnational identifications. The study is based on a survey of 300 immigrants (from the USA, Japan, Iraq, former-Yugoslavia, Morocco and the Dutch Antilles) living in the Netherlands. The respondents are deliberately chosen to include different cate- gories of immigrants. Transnational activities constitute a substantial part of their lives and are to a large extent socio-cultural. Many migrants also transfer money abroad. Professional economic activities were rare and mainly limited to the Ameri- can group. As a whole, our respondents identify more with other compatriots living in the Netherlands than with people living outside the Netherlands. The research also found that transnational involvement in general does not impede 'immigrant inte- gration'. Migrant groups that are known as poorly integrated into Dutch society are not more involved in transnational activities and have no stronger identifications with the country of origin than other groups. However, within the Moroccan and Antillean groups those respondents with the weakest labour market position identify more strongly with the country of origin than others. Strong identifications with com- patriots living elsewhere and withdrawal from Dutch society may reinforce their poor labour market integration In this article we examine how transnational involvement of immigrants living in the Netherlands relates to their incorporation or integration into Dutch society. As various authors have observed, the old concept of immigration, that immigrants settle perma- nently and assimilate in the host country, has lost significance. The modern trans- migrant is at home in several different social worlds, speaks several languages, participates in cross-border social networks and political movements, and sometimes makes a living with transnational economic activities. But what do these transnational activities and identifications of modern 'transmigrants' imply for their incorporation or integration into the host society? This is the central research question in this article. Using survey data of 300 immigrants in the Netherlands coming from six different Western and non-Western countries we examine their transnational involvement and whether this impedes their integration into Dutch society. There are two central concepts in our argument, transnationalism and immigrant incorporation or integration. The concept of 'transnationalism' came up in the early 1990s when anthropologists noticed intense interactions between the sending and receiving countries of international migrants (Glick Schiller et al. 1992). As Glick

Mobilizing in transnational space: a social movement approach to the formation of diaspora

Abstract: In this article I suggest analysing the formation of diaspora communities as an instance of mobilization processes thereby countering essentialist concepts of diaspora that reify notions of belonging and the‘roots’of migrants in places of origin. Taking the imagination of a transnational community and a shared identity as defining characteristics of diaspora and drawing on constructivist concepts of identity, I argue that the formation of diaspora is not a‘natural’consequence of migration but that specific processes of mobilization have to take place for a diaspora to emerge. I propose that concepts developed in social movement theory can be applied to the study of diaspora communities and suggest a comparative framework for the analysis of the formation of diaspora through mobilization. Empirical material to substantiate this approach is mainly drawn from the Alevi diaspora in Germany but also from South Asian diasporas.

The blessings and burdens of communication: cell phones in Jamaican transnational social fields

Abstract: Although much mention has been made of the importance of ICTs for transnational migrants, we know relatively little about how these technologies affect or change everyday transnational communications. Tracing the shift from community phone boxes to individually owned mobile (cell) phones in rural Jamaica, in this article I focus on the integration of mobile phones in Jamaican transnational communication. Equipped with a mobile phone, rural Jamaicans no longer rely on collect phone calls and expensive calling cards to initiate the connections between their friends and relatives living abroad. For many Jamaicans without access to a regular or reliable phone service prior to 2001, the mobile phone is viewed as an unadulterated blessing, transforming the role of transnational communication from an intermittent event to a part of daily life. For others, however, the mobile phone remains an object of ambivalence, bringing unforeseen burdens and obligations.

Diaspora, cyberspace and political imagination: the Eritrean diaspora online

Abstract: In this article I analyse the Eritrean diaspora and its use of cyberspace to theorize the ways transnationalism and new media are associated with the rise of new forms of community, public spheres and sites of cultural production. The struggle for national independence coincided with the rise of the Internet and the Eritrean diaspora has been actively involved in the new state. Eritreans abroad use the Internet as a transnational public sphere where they produce and debate narratives of history, culture, democracy and identity. Through the web the diaspora has mobilized demonstrators, amassed funds for war, debated the formulation of the constitution, and influenced the government of Eritrea. Through their web postings, 'Internet intellectuals' interpret national crises, rearticulate values and construct community. Thus, the Internet is not simply about information but is also an emotion-laden and creative space. More than simply refugees or struggling workers, diasporas online may invent new forms of citizenship, community and political practices. Identity is not a constant and is something that is renegotiated on (a) regular basis, be it at the individual or at the national level. This is especially prob- lematic for those of us living in the diaspora, we deal with so many identities and our existence is literally schizophrenic. We want to remain actively interested in the affairs of the homeland, at the same time we live in countries that (are) careless about our internal struggles and hence our miserable dependence on mediums like Dehai for a sense of belonging and for the illusion of home that it creates. I would even venture to say that the various cyber shoutings and negative exchanges we are accustomed to in Dehai are a necessary and unavoidable aspects of being a part of such a community.

Return to Cyberia: technology and the social worlds of transnational migrants

Abstract: This special issue on ‘Return to Cyberia’ is an attempt to evaluate the contemporary moment of new cultural and social forms influenced by rapidly evolving technologies in their first critical decade. It contains five case studies that highlight the range of transnational experiences - from temporary migrants and refugees to the second generation. The contributors address how and why transnational populations use particular communication technologies and the ways in which these practices are influenced by factors such as generation, history of settlement and dispersal, cultural values, class and access. In addition to addressing a wide variety of study populations, the case studies highlight the variety of available ICTs including email and the Internet, teleconferencing, telephones and mobile phones. Collectively, the articles address issues such as geographic identity and connectivity, different use patterns based on gender and generation, authenticity and representation on the Internet, methodology and the intricacies of interpersonal dynamics across transnational social fields.

Comparing world city networks: a network analysis of Internet backbone and air transport intercity linkages

Abstract: The research looks at the structure of the Internet backbone and air transport networks between 82 cities in 2002, using Internet backbone bandwidth and air passenger traffic data. Centrality measures on individual city's hierarchy in the Internet and in the air traffic networks were significantly correlated, with London in the most dominant position in both networks. A quadratic assignment procedure (QAP) showed a structural equivalence between two systems. The division and membership of the clusters in both networks also showed similarity; both networks had a strongly cohesive North American-European cluster with the London-New York dyad as the strongest linkage in the global flow of information and people. These findings suggest that current trends in Internet infrastructure concentration reproduce and maintain global inequality and hierarchy among world cities.

Consuming the transnational family: Indonesian migrant domestic workers to Saudi Arabia

Abstract: There is heated debate in contemporary Indonesia about the rights and regulation of transnational women migrants, specifically about the ‘costs to families’ of women working overseas, but little attention has been given to women migrants' own views of family or women's own motivations for migration. In this article, which is based on field work in a migrant-sending community in West Java, I focus on migrant women's narratives of transnational migration and employment as domestic workers in Saudi Arabia. I contribute to the literature on gender and transnational migration by exploring migrants' consumption desires and practices as reflective not only of commoditized exchange but also of affect and sentiment. In addition, I show in detail how religion and class inflect low-income women's narrations of morally appropriate mothering practices. In conclusion, I suggest that interpreting these debates from the ground up can contribute towards understanding the larger struggles animating the Indonesian state's contemporary relationships with women and Islam.

Hometown associations, the rescaling of state spatiality and migrant grassroots transnationalism

Abstract: Migration scholars have noted the recent growth of hometown associations (HTAs) in different parts of the world and have approached the topic within the nexus of migration, the increased flow of remittances and development. However, the question of the differential growth, spread and success of HTAs (even in the same national territory) is not addressed and/or remains under-theorized in migration scholarship. In this article I concentrate on how different genealogies, discourses and policies of migration in Europe and the USA gave rise to different trajectories of transnational migration scholarship, including the research on HTAs. Focusing on the blind spots created by these different paths of transnational migration research, I frame migrant HTAs in the context of the changing state-space relations of neo-liberal globalization. In this article I attempt to break the spatial indifference to state territory in migration research and to relate the dynamics of migrant formations to uneven spatial development, rescaling processes, the changing geographical organization of state intervention and the transformations welfare states go through in times of neo-liberal agendas. Finally, on the basis of a case study of a Turkish hometown association in Germany, I raise some questions about the narratives of power in transnational migration research.

Rishtas: adding emotion to strategy in understanding British Pakistani transnational marriages

Abstract: The popularity of transnational marriages that in most cases involve first cousins or other kin distinguishes Pakistanis from other British South Asian groups. In this article we explain the popularity of such marriages. We seek to complement accounts that stress kinship obligations and socio-economic strategy by showing that transnational marriages are also motivated by the emotional ties of kinship. Central to this analysis is a focus on the Urdu/Panjabi concept of rishta, which conveys ideas about a ‘good’ match and about emotional connections between people. Our attention to emotional discourse between siblings, between parents and children and between prospective spouses in the context of marriage arrangements augments the understanding of what is at stake for those involved in transnational marriages. Our analysis also complements accounts that emphasize parental exegesis by offering a multigenerational perspective.

South Asian transnational marriages in comparative perspective

Abstract: This issue on South Asian transnational marriages brings diverse practices and networks into detailed ethnographic focus. Gender and agency are key themes explored in the collection, as well as the potential and actual transformation of gendered status resulting from marrying a migrant or joining a spouse overseas. The introduction identifies some common threads. Several articles challenge the assumption of wives' passivity in arranged marriages or in their joining husbands overseas, while one highlights the less-documented experiences of men who migrate to join wives working abroad. The collection also offers insights into the cultural and emotional reasons for such marriages, complementing analyses that stress strategic motivations, and noting the emotional consequences of separation and new household formations for the experiences of marriage and parenthood. Marriage emerges as an important means of producing and transforming transnational networks, while marriage practices and dynamics are themselves transformed in the process.

Transnational dimensions of the digital divide among Salvadoran immigrants in the Washington DC metropolitan area

Abstract: In this article I explore some dimensions of digital divide among Salvadoran immigrants in the Washington DC metropolitan area. Three main issues are addressed: the configuration of social networks, local axes of inequality and the transnational forms of appropriation and usage of the Internet and other Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Based on a media ethnography approach, the analysis combines structuration theory with diasporic media studies. It includes an examination of Internet communications, Salvadoran diasporic websites, the use of mobile phones and teleconferencing, and the transnational dimensions of the digital divide. The study's findings include the limited accessibility to the Internet and ICTs among Salvadoran immigrants, the importance of understanding the transnational dimensions of the digital divide (particularly in terms of generation) and the need to design and implement communication and technology policies in the Salvadoran transnational society.

Italy is not a good place for men: narratives of places, marriage and masculinity among Malayali migrants

Abstract: Immigration from South Asia to Italy is a recent phenomenon and novel in that the pioneer migrants are often married or single women rather than men. In this article I explore the relationship between a ‘feminization of migration’ and the construction of masculine identities among Malayali migrants from Kerala, South India, who experience migration directly or indirectly through marriages with Malayali women living and working in Rome. The interest in focusing on the relation between women's pioneer role as migrants and their husbands' experiences of migration is to show how men's identity is represented through their conjugal bond with migrant women working in the domestic sector and to understand how masculinity is constructed and contested within and with reference to different places.

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.

Aspiration, reunification and gender transformation in Jat Sikh marriages from India to Canada

Abstract: In this article I explore marriage as a strategy of family migration among a transnational community of middle-class Jat Sikhs. Family reunification and status aspirations are examined as central concerns of the transnational movement of Jat Sikhs from India to Canada. It is argued that Jat Sikh transnationalism and gender are mutually-constitutive: migration strategies can construct women, as well as men, as agents of marital citizenship, and in facilitating migration, transnational marriage may transform practices and notions of gender and status. The article is based on preliminary ethnographic research among Jat Sikh brides in Toronto and Vancouver, and forms part of a larger study of gender, modernity and identity in Indo-Canadian Jat Sikh marriages.

The transnational work of kinship and caring: Bengali–British marriages in historical perspective

Abstract: In this article, based on ongoing research carried out in Bangladesh since the mid-1980s and field-work in London in the late 1990s, I take a historical approach to the analysis of transnational Sylheti marriages. By showing how the form of these marriages has changed since the mid-twentieth century, I argue that transnational migration is itself highly fluid. The role of wives in maintaining transnational links is central to the account. I focus in particular on the wives of ‘first-generation’ migrant men who came to Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, and whose families were generally reunited in Britain by the 1980s. By describing the household and caring work of these wives both in Sylhet and London, I demonstrate that rather than being ‘dependants’ of their migrant husbands, women have been central to the success of migrant households. The rewards of transnational connectedness have, however, come at a cost — long-term separation from loved ones. Isolation and loneliness have been hallmarks of the experiences of these earlier generations of women.

Rethinking Caribbean transnational connections: conceptual itineraries

Abstract: In academic debates across the social sciences, transnationalism has increasingly come to denote the cross-border networks developed by migrants and the ways in which these link geographically distinct places into a single social field At the same time, the intense focus on linkages between origin and destination groups frequently ends up privileging this binary - home/away - as the only way to map enduring cross-border linkages Drawing on two examples of Caribbean practices connecting Toronto and New York, in this article I suggest the traversing of a different spatial terrain and consider the implications of expanding our conceptual itineraries to include these other journeys that so far have tended to fly under the radar in discussions of transnational migration

Opportunities for transnational indigenous eco-politics: the changing landscape in the new millennium

Abstract: In the late 1980s, Amazonian indigenous peoples captured the imagination of northern policy circles and the larger public by strategically representing themselves as the solution to the environment-development quandary. They accomplished this in part through linkages to northern environmental and human rights organizations. The formation of such transnational networks was made possible by a uniquely favourable cultural, political and economic climate that increased indigenous peoples’international visibility. Since that time, however, the landscape has changed and constricted earlier opportunities. Salient shifts include the ideological and financial polarization of the rainforest movement, a relative absence of Amazonian issues from international mass media and, overall, a devaluing of indigenous identity. The Amazon Alliance, a coalition formed out of a 1990 meeting between Amazonian indigenous groups and northern non-governmental organizations, is the point of departure for a larger discussion of the changing landscape of opportunities for transnational indigenous eco-politics.

In the wake of the wave: globalization, networks, and the experiences of transmigrant seafarers in northern Germany

Abstract: In this article we highlight the plight of workers trapped at the interface between the national and the global: able to participate in global labour markets but marginalized within nation-states and excluded from local communities. We employ ethnographic field work to explore the experiences of transmigrant seafarers who travelled to northern Germany between the 1960s and 1980s in search of work aboard German flagged vessels. We describe how the economic benefits associated with an international labour market for seafarers initially attracted and benefited them but then left them stranded as the labour market changed and became globalized. In the article we draw on Massey's concept of power-geometry to interpret the dual processes of globalization and exclusion.

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.

Transnational marriage among Ahmadi Muslims in the UK

Abstract: Ahmadi Muslims constitute a reformed sect of Islam founded in 1889 by a charismatic leader, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. In this article I explore the character and processes of transnational marriage arrangements among Ahmadi Muslims over three generations in the UK. I suggest that the process of conversion to Ahmadiyyat and the organizational structure of Ahmadi mosques have combined to produce a flexible pattern of marriage among Ahmadis that is unusual among South Asians. A significant number of earlier and contemporary Ahmadi marriages are interethnic, reflecting an expansive Ahmadiya identity that is perceived to be independent of ethnicity. Further, analysis of marriage proposals accepted as well as rejected suggests gender differences in perceptions of and motivations for marriage. The analysis suggests that while gender differences in expectations of marriage may have parallels in some other South Asian transnational marriages, Ahmadi religious identity and organization plays a distinctive role in shaping the processes of Ahmadi marriage arrangements. British Ahmadi marriages are frequently transnational in the narrow sense of entailing the migration of at least one partner from their country of residence to another as a result of marriage. These marriages are also transnational in a wider sense in that that social links are usually reciprocally maintained across international borders after the marriage, often over two or more generations (Faist 2000; Kivisto 2001; Vertovec 1999). Such relationships, facilitated by modern forms of technology, speak of a transnationalism that is as much a mind-set and attitude to place as it is a social practice (Caplan 1988). In these respects, Ahmadi transnational marriages share many of the charac- teristics of transnational marriages among other British South Asian Muslim and Punjabi Sikh populations. However, as I go on to argue, the processes of conversion to Ahmadiyyat and the need to incorporate new converts through marriage have resulted in flexible patterns of and attitudes towards marriage that are unusual among South Asians. As Muslims, Ahmadis permit cousin marriages, which account for a small proportion of contemporary marriages. Some of these cousin marriages are also transnational. However, the research on which this article is based indicates that the number of cousin marriages is declining among British-born and educated Ahmadis in the UK. By contrast, among British Pakistanis there is local evidence of increased rates of transnational cousin marriage (Shaw 2001) and among Mirpuris cousin

Just how small is this world really? An application of small world theory to the study of globalization

Abstract: Inspired by recent research on the dynamics of ‘small-world’ networks, in this article I apply its basic arguments and findings to the study of integrative processes in the international system. Employing the logic of network models we can learn, by analogy, from fields as diverse as neural science and forest fire prevention, much about the likely changes caused in the international political environment by increased interaction among its various units. I first explain recent developments in network theory and demonstrate their relevance for the study of international politics and economics. I then develop the most important insights to be transferred from network theory to the study of globalization. Network theory suggests that our world truly ‘shrinks’ only to the extent that relations among international actors cross pre-existing alliances or cooperative arrangements. Making the world a single place seems to require flexibility in forming attachments with other actors which goes beyond culturally and historically justified efforts at exchange and cooperation.

Diasporas à la française: recent francophone contributions to the literature

Abstract: Books reviewed in this article S. Dufoix, Les Diasporas C. Chivallon, La diaspora noire des Ameriques: experiences et theories a partir de la Caraibe M. Bruneau, Diasporas et espaces transnationaux L. Anteby-Yemini, W. Berthomiere and G. Sheffer (eds) Les Diasporas: 2,000 ans d'histoire