Homeland

About: Homeland is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 6450 publications have been published within this topic receiving 93487 citations. The topic is also known as: motherland & native land.

Conceptualizing simultaneity: a transnational social field perspective on society

Abstract: This article explores the social theory and consequent methodology that underpins studies of transnational migration. First, we propose a social field approach to the study of migration and distinguish between ways of being and ways of belonging in that field. Second, we argue that assimilation and enduring transnational ties are neither incompatible nor binary opposites. Third, we highlight social processes and institutions that are routinely obscured by traditional migration scholarship but that become clear when we use a transnational lens. Finally, we locate our approach to migration research within a larger intellectual project, taken up by scholars of transnational processes in many fields, to rethink and reformulate the concept of society such that it is no longer automatically equated with the boundaries of a single nationstate. Social scientists have long been interested in how immigrants are incorporated into new countries. In Germany and France, scholars’ expectations that foreigners will assimilate is a central piece of public policy. In the United States, immigration scholars initially argued that to move up the socioeconomic ladder, immigrants would have to abandon their unique customs, language, values, and homeland ties and identities. Even when remaining ethnic became more acceptable, most researchers assumed that the importance of homeland ties would eventually fade. To be Italian American or Irish American would ultimately reflect ethnic pride within a multicultural United States rather than enduring relations to an ancestral land. Now scholars increasingly recognize that some migrants and their descendants remain strongly influenced by their continuing ties to their home country or by social networks that stretch across national borders. They see

Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return

Abstract: In most scholarly discussions of ethnic communities, immigrants, and aliens, and in most treatments of relationships between minorities and majorities, little if any attention has been devoted to d...

Global Diasporas: An Introduction

Abstract: An introduction to the concept of diaspora which provides the basic building blocks of comparative and theoretical analysis. It explores the relationship between migration, homeland and identity for both traditionally recognized and newer diasporas.

From immigrant to transmigrant : Theorizing transnational migration

Abstract: Contemporary immigrants cannot be characterized as the « uprooted » . Many are transmigrants, becoming firmly rooted in their new country but maintaining multiple linkages to their homeland. While in the United States and Europe, most social scientists and public policy makers have ignored these interconnections, anthropologists are currently engaged in building a transnational anthropology and rethinking their data on immigration. Migration proves to be an important transnational process that reflects and contributes to the current political configurations of the emerging global economy. In this paper, the AA. use their own studies of migration from Haiti, St. Vincent, Grenada and the Philippines to the United States to delineate some of the parameters of an ethnography of transnational migration and explore the reasons for and the implications of transnational migrations. They conclude that the transnational connections of immigrants provide a subtext for current efforts to redefine the nature of citizenship in relationship to the global economy

From immigrant to transmigrant: theorizing transnational migration

Abstract: Contemporary immigrants can not be characterized as the "uprooted." Many are transmigrants, becoming firmly rooted in their new country but maintaining multiple linkages to their homeland. In the United States anthropologists are engaged in building a transnational anthropology and rethinking their data on immigration. Migration proves to be an important transnational process that reflects and contributes to the current political configurations of the emerging global economy. In this article we use our studies of migration from St. Vincent, Grenada, the Philippines, and Haiti to the U.S. to delineate some of the parameters of an ethnography of transnational migration and explore the reasons for and the implications of transnational migrations. We conclude that the transnational connections of immigrants provide a subtext of the public debates in the U.S. about the merits of immigration. [transnationalism, immigration, nation-state, nationalism, identity]