Deepening and broadening transnational immigration analyses: commentary on Roger Waldinger's The Cross-Border Connection

Waldinger's The Cross-Border Connection is a tour de force. Yet, this commentary describes ways in which his work can and should be amended to deepen and broaden the understanding of today's world on the move. It demonstrates how the understanding of immigration can be enhanced by a deepened sociological analysis of features that shape immigrant experiences, such as gender and pre-migration lived experiences and life perspectives so formed. It also demonstrates how the understanding of immigration can be enhanced by incorporating macro-transnational dynamics into the analysis, above and beyond the transnational local-level involvements on which Waldinger focuses. Immigrants’ homeland impact may be society-wide, indirect and unintended. The importance of each of these matters is illustrated with respect to immigration from the Global South to the Global North.     

Bedamini Male Initiation and Marriage as Transformation Sequences

ABSTRACT

This essay focuses on how certain social relations among the Bedamini in Papua New Guinea are given their form through ritual at selected moments of the life cycle when relational transformations occur. Ritualised moments in Bedamini male initiation and symbolic bride capture are described as a dynamic agency that changes the existential conditions of persons in non-ritual reality. At those important ritual moments, the direct presence of the agents is required, while relations between them are mediated by acts, objects and moods. The effect intended is the formation, or reformation, of a relational field. Male initiation and marriage are consecutive parts of a sequence of transformations beyond its constituent moments, as initiation functions as a prerequisite to marriage.     

Marital instability among British Pakistanis: transnationality,conjugalities and Islam

This article offers insights into the dynamics underlying an increase in marital instability in British Pakistani families, thus challenging stereotypes of British South Asian populations as representing ‘old-fashioned’ families, with their lower rates of divorce in contrast with the wider British population. In addition to problems of compatibility, domestic violence and infidelity, we explore dynamics that may be more specific to the British Pakistani population, namely the transnational nature of many marriages, attitudes to parental involvement in arranging marriages, and the place of Islam. We suggest that, while arranged marriages were conventionally seen as safer than love marriages, both young people and their parents may now be viewing arranged marriages as riskier. In an arranged marriage that brings family approval but not personal fulfilment, young people are increasingly supported to divorce and remarry, with a greater degree of personal say in spouse selection.     

Education,gender, and generational change: The transformation of dowry in village Nepal

In a small Bahun village in Gorkha district, West Nepal, in only one generation, there has been a huge shift to educating young women and including them in modernity. Ideologies of ‘gender equality’ in education that are promoted in development programs and discourse, and in Maoist rhetoric, have been powerful drivers behind this. In this paper I highlight the gender and generational dynamics of the changing relationship of women to education in Nepal. I argue that the move to educating women is not a simple one, nor is it necessarily a development success story. The importance placed on educating the younger generation, including women, is also very much tied to local Bahun culture, marriage values and status. Bahun villagers of Ludigaun place great importance on both education and marriage. When combined, I argue, education has in fact become dowry. While there have been transformations in education and other modernising processes, as well as in dowry practices, in this paper I show that they have come to maintain traditional hierarchies and to support the status making of the educated Bahun man.     

Remittances and Relationships: Exchange in Cape Verdean Transnational Families

This article examines migrant remittances through the lens of anthropological theories of gift relationships. I explore remittance transactions as perceived and practised by people in Cape Verde, a country in which many households receive money from abroad. The article highlights three key dimensions. The first dimension is the transactors' (senders and receivers of remittances) relations and obligations to each other, the second is the degree to which remittances are seen as voluntary gifts or, alternatively, as elements in an obligatory reciprocal exchange, and the third is the relation between the transactors and money as an object of exchange. I argue that these dimensions together open up for a holistic understanding of the dynamic interplay between remittances and relationships. In contrast to mainstream remittance studies, with their conventional focus on economic rationality, this is an approach that illuminates what remittances mean, as social practice, to those involved.     

Temporary and transnational: gender and emotion in the lives of Mexican guest worker fathers

In this article I use the US H2A guest worker programme as a lens through which to analyse the gender subjectivities of Mexican transnational fathers. My qualitative findings highlight the ways in which the prioritization of productive over reproductive labour within the H2A programme exploits gender-based expectations within Mexican families, reproducing rigid gender divisions of family labour. Additionally, the subjectivities of guest worker fathers are influenced by cultural expectations as well as by the rurality and cyclicality of their lives. As fathers shift between the USA and Mexico, so do their gender subjectivities, symbolizing gender's fluidity. Findings complicate the oft-cited conclusion that emotional labour and sacrifice are the exclusive domain of transnational mothers.     

Transnational childhood and adolescence: mobilizing Sahrawi identity and politics across time and space

This paper proposes the importance of examining not only how and when diasporas are mobilized by political brokers, but also which members of diasporic populations are strategically engaged both according to their own characteristics (including their age) and the nature of their diasporic hosting context. It explores how Sahrawi refugee children and youth in the Algeria-based Sahrawi refugee camps, Cuba, Syria and in Spain have been mobilized by their political representatives (Polisario), asking why particular cohorts of youth have been actively encouraged to promote and protect ‘the Sahrawi cause’, while other members of the diaspora have not. Drawing on a framework that facilitates comparison both within and across cases, the paper argues that a combination of factors influence the extent to which the Polisario is able and interested in activating the support of Sahrawi children and youth, including the characteristics of the students themselves, their position within the respective host contexts, and the space and resources available to the Polisario/SADR in each location.     

Being a freshie is (not) cool: stigma,capital and disgust in British Pakistani stereotypes of new subcontinental migrants

Intra-ethnic discrimination, in the form of stereotyping of recent migrants by settled ethnic minorities, has been interpreted as internalized racism, displacing stigma and negotiation of local hierarchies of belonging. Stereotypes of ‘Fresh off the Boat’ migrants construct cultural boundaries and assertions of belonging, offering clues to processes of identity-making where ethnicity is complicated by ongoing migration. In British Pakistani portrayals of ‘freshies’, this assertion of difference coexists with familial ties and a high incidence of transnational marriage. Analysis of the figure of the ‘freshie’ in internet comedy videos, combined with qualitative research material, provides insight into dynamics of cultural and social capital, immigration and sexuality through manifestations of difference, similarity and disgust. Together these not only reveal the weakness of recent migrants’ positions in structures of socio-economic and symbolic power, but the blurring of social categories, and the continuing importance of transnational kinship in negotiations of identity amongst British Pakistanis.     

Chikotsa--secrets, silence, and hiding: social risk and reproductive vulnerability in central Mozambique

In this article, I examine pregnancy narratives and patterns of reproductive health seeking among women of fertile age in central Mozambique. I map the interplay between gendered economic marginalization, maternal risk perceptions, and pregnancy management strategies. By interpreting my data in light of Shona illness theories, I illuminate the ways that embodied experiences of reproductive vulnerability, risk perceptions, and social inequalities are linked: women attribute the most serious maternal complications to human- or spirit-induced reproductive threats of witchcraft and sorcery. This construction of reproductive vulnerability as social threats related to material and social competition significantly influences prenatal health seeking. Data reveal the structural and cognitive gap between biomedical constructions of risk and lay social threat perceptions. Plural health care systems are strategically utilized by women seeking to minimize both social and biological harm. On-the-ground ethnography shows that maternal health initiatives must take this plurality into full and accommodative account to achieve viable improvements in reproductive care and outcomes.     

Global Politics and Multinational Health-care Encounters: Assessing the Role of Transnational Competence

This planets most likely political/population scenario for the 21st century anticipates more people, more spatial movement, and more transnational interactions. Global health increasingly will be shaped by encounters among clinicians and patients who meet in health-care settings where cultural, ethnic, and national-origin match is not an available option. In multinational clinical consultations, bicultural competence and lists of culture characteristics will not suffice. The article adapts the generic Koehn/Rosenau framework of transnational competence (TC), which encompasses analytic, emotional, creative, communicative, and functional skills, to the global challenge of providing migrant-health care. The focus is on the patient/clinician encounter, where interpersonal interactions carry the potential to reduce or reproduce existing inequities in health care. A structured literature review provides the basis for the adaptation to transnational health encounters presented for the first time here by incorporating recent research findings from more than 80 published studies regarding patient–provider consultations and cultural competence in the medical interview into the TC frameworks empirical foundation in cross-cultural psychology, development studies, intercultural communication, and international management. The application elaborated in this article will enhance the ability of researchers to explore and to assess the role of encounter participants TC capabilities and deficiencies in transnational health-care outcomes—including migrant satisfaction/dissatisfaction with provider care, the incorporation of complementary biomedical and ethnocultural health-promotion practices, effective/ineffective migrant-health-promotion behavior in the new environment, and agreement on mental-health needs. The results of conceptually grounded TC research promise to enhance practitioner training and patient education in both North and South.     

Gender,Violence and HIV: Women's Survival in the Streets

In this article I propose that genderinequality promotes – directly or indirectly –vulnerability to HIV as a consequence of amultidimensional violence (structural, symbolicand physical) experienced by injection drugusing (IDU) women in The Mission District (SanFrancisco). Given the female subordinated positionstipulated by the street ideology, I analyzehow drug dependence afforded by precariousstrategies of subsistence places IDU womenunder multiple dangers and threats. In thissetting, unequal gender relations are part of acomplex system of transactions in the streeteconomy and a way to reduce or increase theeveryday violence. Facing multiple dangers andrisks, some women adopt a subordinatedposition, some try to negotiate the conditionsof the exchanges and the others resist theexploitation. Finally, everyday violence under conditions ofgender inequality and scarcity of resourcesimposes a logic defined by the challenge ofsurvival under the threat of immediate dangers,which transform HIV into a secondary risk.     

Marriage and employment patterns amongst UK-raised Indian,Pakistani, and Bangladeshi women

Discussion over marriage migration in the UK has largely focused on the South Asian groups, identified in survey data as Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi. This paper uses qualitative interviews and national Labour Force Survey data to gain some insights into how UK-born Pakistani and Bangladeshi women view marriage and, in particular, marriage to a partner from their country of origin; the extent to which UK-born Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi women and men marry partners from overseas and the key factors that influence this; and the effect on the level of economic activity for Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi women of marriage to a UK-born/raised partner versus a partner from overseas.     

Transnational Identities and the Subversion of the Italian Language in Geneviève Makaping, Christiana de Caldas Brito, and Jarmila Očkayová

In this article I analyze literary works written in the Italian language by three women authors: Geneviève Makaping (who migrated to Italy from Cameroon), Christiana de Caldas Brito (from Brazil) and Jarmila Očkayová (from Slovakia). In these texts migration is not only a biographical experience, it is an existential condition: a kind of critical consciousness where knowledge and behaviour are not taken for granted. The article focuses on the different strategies adopted by the three migrant writers to subvert the normativity of language in order to represent their experience of crossing different physical and/or metaphorical borders. According to them, this experience transforms their subjectivity in a space open to multiple belongings, turning the fragmentation of their identity into a source of empowerment.     

Transnational families and the subjective well-being of migrant parents: Angolan and Nigerian parents in the Netherlands

Studies on transnational families argue that the subjective well-being of migrant parents is negatively affected by living separated from their children. Most studies employ qualitative methods without a control group and hence are not able to distinguish whether the effects found are associated with separation only or with other factors. This paper investigates the association between parental subjective well-being and parent–child separation by comparing migrant parents who have at least one child in their country of origin with those who live with all their children in the Netherlands. The paper further investigates whether the same associations are found between migrant groups from Angola and Nigeria. Results indicate that transnational parents indeed report lower subjective well-being, as measured by happiness, life satisfaction and mental health for both groups and additionally, self-assessed health for Angolans. However, legal status, socio-economic status and the quality of the parent–child relationship are found to be important mediators.     

Explaining religious differences in immigrants' gender role attitudes: the changing impact of origin country and individual religiosity

Religion is often perceived as one of the main barriers to immigrant integration in Europe. By focusing on the contested area of immigrants' gender role attitudes, this study analyses data of first- and second-generation immigrants from multiple origin countries and of different religious affiliations in comparison to the native population. It shows that higher levels of religiosity can explain immigrants' more traditional attitudes to some extent, but that origin country socialization acts as an important additional determinant of attitudes of the first generation. Among second-generation migrants, only Muslims continue to hold more traditional attitudes. Acculturation for longer-staying migrants is partly explained by declining religiosity, with some evidence for a decoupling of attitudes from religious beliefs among female migrants in particular. Intergenerational change, on the other hand, cannot be attributed to a decline in the role of religiosity.     

Diversity and family: an inquiry into the effects of ethnic,linguistic, and religious fractionalization on family values

This article focuses on the connection between three forms of diversity – religious, ethnic, and linguistic – and family values. The article builds on the idea that diversity challenges social identity and people react by returning to traditional family values in order to protect their social identity and the in-group culture. The paper aims at contributing to the sociological debate about the effect of diversity on social life and investigates how different types of diversity connect with traditional family values because individuals want to protect their in-group culture that is mainly transmitted within family. The paper tests the research hypotheses employing multilevel regression models and using data from the ISSP IV from 2012. Religious diversity associates with traditional attitudes regarding marriage and gender roles, ethnic diversity goes together with lower support for marriage, but has no connection with attitudes towards gender role, while linguistic diversity is not associated with attitudes family values.     

Strategic citizens of America: transnational inequalities and transformation of citizenship

This article analyses the process whereby ‘natural' citizens of one country mobilize their resources so that their children receive by birthright, the citizenship of a rich liberal democracy. Utilizing the case of Turkish upper classes, who give birth in the USA in order to benefit from the jus soli principle, we trace the emergence of new inequalities at the intersection of multiple citizenship regimes. We show that, by mobilizing resources in markets of health care, travel, and real estate, those with means can acquire US citizenship for their children in expectation of future benefits. Because they are able to access ‘valuable' citizenships, these actors can strategically combine privileges within nation states with inequalities between citizenship regimes at the global level for the children. Their differential access to citizenship enhances the gate-keeping functions of citizenship. Based on these observations, we draw an analogy between citizenship and property regimes, understood broadly.     

Family ideation,immigration, and the racial state: explaining divergent family reunification policies in Britain and the US

Why do family reunification policies differ across liberal democracies? Established literature explains differentiation through reference to the logics of distinct “national models” of immigration policy-making. Drawing on critical race and feminist scholarship, this paper finds consistent racial logics in the political histories of family reunification policies in Britain and the US during the mid-twentieth century. In a context where the geopolitical power of each country was conditioned by an assertive antiracist internationalism, “family” provided a colourblind, ideational platform to rearticulate the state-based racial project of white supremacy. Despite an original convergence, family reunification diverged because of the context-specific racialization of the immigrant family in each case. In rooting divergent reunification policies in the logics of the racial state, this paper contributes to efforts to incorporate race into the sociology of immigration. The paper also develops recent feminist scholarship on the role of “family ideation” in building liberal-democratic immigration systems.     

Immigration and the cost of ethnic subordination: the case of Israeli society

This study focuses on earnings disadvantages experienced by three ethnic groups of Jewish immigrants in Israel. Data were obtained from the 2011 Income Survey gathered by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. The findings reveal that when compared to Israeli-born, all ethnic groups are disadvantaged in earnings attainment in the first generation. The earnings disadvantages of immigrants as compared to Israeli-born decrease with the passage of time and become negligible in the second generation. To disentangle the impact on earnings penalty of ethnic origin from that of immigrant status, a procedure for decomposing mean differences between groups is introduced. The analysis reveals that earnings disadvantage among Ashkenazim and Soviet immigrants can be attributed to immigrant status but not to ethnicity. By contrast, earnings penalties among Sephardim immigrants can be attributed to both ethnicity and immigrant status. The implications of the long-lasting effect of ethnicity versus the short-term effect of immigrant status are discussed.     

Marriage promotion and missing men: African American women in a demographic double bind

Since 1996, state legislators, members of the U.S. Congress, and more recently President George W. Bush, have called for the protection of monogamous, heterosexual marriage and the promotion of marriage among poor women. The thrust of this policy making is directed at African American families, among which female headship doubled between 1965 and 1990. This doubling is temporally associated with enacting the legislation directed toward the War on Drugs, which resulted in a tripling of the African American prison population. In Syracuse, New York, the swelling African American population behind bars has resulted in a skewed sex ratio, in which women significantly outnumber men. The authors use national, state, and local epidemiological, environmental, and ethnographic data to argue that the proliferation of marriage-promotion policies is heterosexist and blames African American women for demographic realities over which they have little control.