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Although the idea of transnationalism is widely employed in the social sciences to describe long-distance networks, there is little agreement about its precise definition. The concept of transnationalism describes a situation in which nations and communications are connected, regardless of the geographical distances that separate them, typically by new communication technologies that facilitate flows and networks of people, goods, and services. Transnationalism is therefore also associated with such notions as “network society” (Castells 2000) and with international mobility (Urry 2000). Transnationalism can also be used simply as a substitute for the notion of globalization (Held et al. 1999). It is therefore important to distinguish between internationalism and transnationalism. The former refers to cooperation between nation states and encompasses the international relations between governments that are regulated by treaties and agreements. Transnationalism refers to global cooperation between people and can evolve into a global social movement that advocates harmony, multi-culturalism, and cosmopolitanism.
Transnationalism is said to be manifest in certain characteristic social phenomena. These include preeminently the global development of ethnic diasporas as a consequence of the international flow of legal and illegal migrants. The growth of such networks of dispersed communities is also associated with the development of transnational crime and with terrorist networks. These cross-border activities involve not just the trade in capitalist goods and services but include drugs, weapons, contraband, and people. The trade in women as prostitutes is part of a larger pattern of global slavery. It is also claimed, primarily in cultural studies, that transnationalism has given rise to new forms of consciousness because migrants have multiple identities and hybrid cultures. The analysis of these global cultural flows is closely associated with the anthropological investigations of Arjun Appadurai (1996, 2001). These fragmented and multiple identities become part of a transnational imaginary that creates fictive communities of membership and belonging. Because these cultural identities and images are drawn from multiple sources, it is claimed by writers such as Homi Bhabha (1994) that many modern cultures are going through a process of hybridization.
Alongside cultural transnationalism, there is the emergence of economic transnationalism, which is manifest in the transnational corporation that produces and sells in global markets beyond the controls of the nation state. There is also, as a result, an international capitalist class that is highly mobile and a transnational working class whose remittances to countries like Pakistan and the Philippines represent a significant contribution to the national economy. These movements of labor now also include large numbers of women, resulting in both the feminization of migrant labor—for example the Filipino maids of Singapore and the Gulf states—and the growth of the transnational marriage (Yeoh et al. 2000). These migratory roots also become the sites of international business communities that can exploit these ethnic ties, however weak and dispersed, to create economic opportunities for global accumulation, as Aihwa Ong (1999) has demonstrated with respect to the diasporic Chinese business community.
Unsurprisingly, transnationalism is thought to have significant political consequences resulting, for example, in the global city as a site of power that can challenge the nation state, or giving rise to a global democracy and a global public sphere (Held 1995) or to new forms of citizenship or “mutations of citizenship” (Ong 2006) and “transnational citizenship” (Baubock 1994). Transnational migration in creating guest workers and permanent residents has required a reassessment of the relevance of national citizenship to the rights of migrant workers and their families. The legal and political status of migrants as quasi citizens is often ambiguous, because national citizenship is based on both rights and duties. It is often unclear whether migrants, refugees, or asylum seekers should be expected to fulfill the duties of citizens, such as paying taxes or undertaking military service.
Transnationalism is also associated with the idea of cosmopolitanism, and it has been assumed that the porous boundaries of the modern state, along with international cooperation through such institutions as the United Nations, might fulfill Immanuel Kant’s (1724-1804) dream of “perpetual peace” and international harmony (Kant [1795] 1991). However, with growing fear of terrorism after the attack on the World Trade Center in New York in 2001 and the increasing emphasis on domestic and international securitization, many governments are attempting to control the transnational flow of illegal people, goods, and services. One state response is to build walls to contain such flows—for example, between Mexico and the United States. In October 2006 U.S. president George W. Bush signed the Secure Fence Act, which anticipates the creation of a 700-mile barrier to deter illegal migrants. However, walls are also being constructed between Brazil and Paraguay, between Saudi Arabia and Iraq, and between Israel and its Palestinian neighbors. The city council of Padua in Italy has created a steel barrier to divide the respectable side of the city from the high-crime neighborhoods, which are said to be rife with illegal drugs associated with an influx of Nigerian and Tunisian migrants. Sociologists have argued therefore that modern states, perceiving transnationalism as a threat to their sovereignty and security, have created an “immobility regime” and that increased surveillance and regulation of populations is resulting in an “enclave society” rather than transnational integration (Turner 2007).
Bibliography:
- Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
- Appadurai, Arjun, ed. 2001. Globalization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
- Bales, Kevin. 2005. Understanding Global Slavery: A Reader. Berkeley: University of California Press.
- Bauböck, Rainer. 1994. Transnational Citizenship: Membership and Rights in International Migration. Aldershot, U.K.: Elgar.
- Bhabha, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge.
- Castells, Manuel. 2000. The Rise of the Network Society. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell.
- Held, David. 1995. Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance. Cambridge, U.K.: Polity.
- Held, David, Anthony McGrew, David Goldblatt, and Jonathan Perraton. 1999. Global Transformations: Politics, Economics, and Culture. Cambridge, U.K.: Polity.
- Kant, Immanuel. [1795] 1991. Perpetual Peace. In Kant: Political Writings, ed. Hans Reiss; trans. H. B. Nisbet, 93–130. 2nd ed. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
- Ong, Aihwa. 1999. Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
- Ong, Aihwa. 2006. Mutations in Citizenship. Theory Culture & Society 23 (2–3): 499–531.
- Sassen, Saskia. 1996. Losing Control? Sovereignty in an Age of Globalization. New York: Columbia University Press.
- Turner, Bryan S. 2007. The Enclave Society: Towards a Sociology of Immobility. European Journal of Social Theory 10 (2): 287–303.
- Urry, John. 2000. Mobile Sociology. British Journal of Sociology 51 (1): 185–203. Yeoh, Brenda, Shirlena Huang, and Katie Willis. 2000. Global Cities, Transnational Flows, and Gender Dimensions: The View from Singapore. Asian Studies Review 28: 7–23.
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