Migrants’ connections within and beyond borders: insights from the comparison of three categories of migrants in France

ABSTRACT

Since the mid-1990s, the concept of transnationalism has been increasingly used and discussed. Some authors have contested its novelty, arguing that all types of migrants, including internal ones, tend to remain connected to their home place. In this paper, we provide new quantitative evidence to show that migration, be it internal or international, entails a similar sort of connectedness between places. Using a nationally representative survey carried out in France (TeO, N?=?21,761), we systematically compare the transterritorial connections of international migrants, French migrants born abroad and French migrants born in overseas territories. Our findings show that all migrants maintain transborder ties, with particular intensity among French overseas migrants. Owing to border effects, oversenas migrants exhibit higher levels of sociopolitical and “re-migration” connections and are less engaged in economic relations. The results also show that transterritorial connections are affected by similar determinants across the three categories of migrants.     

Getting integration right? Media transnationalism and domopolitics in Ireland

Abstract

This article examines the transnational media environments and experiences of Nigerian and Chinese nationals living in Ireland. It theorizes empirical research in the context of the mode of integration governance developed in the Republic of Ireland during a period of significant in-migration. Building on a theory of domopolitics, it suggests that Ireland's short-lived integration regime deployed culture and interculturalism as resources for the self-governing integration of all foreign nationals, while developing a system of civic stratification designed to limit claims to citizenship and social and economic rights. It examines the concomitant development of public service media policies in this context. Drawing on recent discussions of contrapuntal media readings, the article argues that transnational media experience refracts the lived tensions inherent in the disjuncture between the possibilities of cultural participation and the constraints of socio-political containment.     

Bridging the gap: transnational and ethnic organizations in the political incorporation of immigrants in the United States

This study was prompted by concerns about the ways in which immigrant organizations, especially those of a transnational character, may retard or prevent political integration among recent migrants to the United States. For this purpose, we constructed an inventory of all organizations created by Colombian, Dominican and Mexican immigrants in the United States, interviewed leaders of the twenty largest organizations from each group in person, and conducted a survey of 178 additional organizations by telephone or Internet. Results reveal a near-absence of perceived conflict between transnational activism and political incorporation. Almost without exception, leaders asserted that there was no contradiction between home-country loyalties and activities and US citizenship and voting. These results appear to reflect genuine conviction, rather than any social desirability syndrome. Objective indicators show that most organizations maintain close ties with US political authorities at various levels and engage in a number of US-focused civic and political activities. Determinants of such engagement are examined. Implications of the results for theory and public policy are discussed.     

Bringing class back in: class consciousness and solidarity among Chinese migrant workers in Italy and the UK

The growing literature on international migration has a tendency to emphasize homogenous elements such as shared ethnic background, social network and cultural similarities in shaping immigrants' identity. We argue that this underestimates the differences (and sometimes conflicts) of interests between ethnic employers and migrant workers and that class needs to be brought back into the studies of ethnic relationship. Based upon findings from a series of fieldwork in Veneto, Italy and East Midlands, UK, this article contends that class consciousness has co-existed, sometimes uneasily, alongside co-ethnic and cultural relationships among Chinese migrant workers and has played an important part in the making of new Chinese communities. By analysing the perspectives of Chinese migrant workers and their relationship with co-ethnic entrepreneurs, this article illustrates complex factors behind the formation, diffusion and development of class consciousness among Chinese migrant workers.     

Training for transnationalism: Chinese children in Hungary

Based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted in the mid-2000s, this article discusses the educational strategies and emerging trajectories of Chinese children born or raised locally in Hungary. Born to small entrepreneurs who migrated to Hungary in the 1990s, these children exemplify a second generation issuing from a migration taking place in conditions sharply different from earlier migrant flows to Western Europe, North America and Southeast Asia. This first migrant generation came of age in the post-reform People's Republic of China (PRC) and generally maintains both Chinese citizenship and a political and emotional identification with the PRC. Based on findings in Hungary, this article argues that this cohort of migrants' children is being trained for a sustained transnationalism rather than for a minority position in the society of residence, and that, at least in countries that are semi-peripheral for global capitalism, this training appears to be largely effective.     

An Oceanic revolution? Stella and the construction of new femininities in Papua New Guinea and the Pacific

In August 2012, a new magazine for women was released in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Entitled Stella, the magazine provides an ideal opportunity to analyse shifting constructions of gender among educated, employed women in PNG and elsewhere in the Pacific. Drawing on interviews, surveys and readers’ letters, this article discusses Papua New Guinean women who, because they display ‘modern attributes’, are maligned and discredited as ‘inauthentic’. It then goes on to document the ways in which Stella is enabling such women to assert themselves anew. Arguing that the publication of Stella marks the arrival into the public sphere of a group hitherto consigned to the margins of Pacific societies on the basis that they represent an ‘inauthentic minority’, the article makes an important contribution to scholarly discussion about the emergence of new femininities in PNG and the Pacific.     

Transnationalism,economic transfers and families’ ties: Intercontinental contacts of older Gujaratis,Punjabis and Sylhetis in Birmingham with families abroad

This article examines the intercontinental contacts of South Asian migrants living in Birmingham (UK) with relatives abroad. A sample of 300 elders (aged 55+) were interviewed in the UK: 100 each of Gujaratis, Punjabis and Sylhetis. The study refers to contact with children, siblings and other relatives abroad. It examines contact through letters, phone calls, sending or receiving money and gifts and visiting. We hypothesize that (i) most remittances would be sent to relatives abroad (rather than received from relatives abroad) due to the expectations in the sending countries; (ii) that the frequency of visits to relatives abroad would be greater than the frequency of visits to the UK; (iii) that all types of contact would be greater between children and parents than between siblings, and other relatives. None of the hypotheses was supported in full, and highlight important distinctions between the South Asian groups in the study.     

Modes of incorporation and transnational Zimbabwean migration to Britain

In the last decade, the phenomenal growth of Zimbabwean congregations in Britain, responding to conditions in both the hostland and homeland, has received little scholarly attention. This article, drawing from an in-depth study of Zimbabwean Christians and the modes-of-incorporation framework, examines the ways in which the context of reception in the hostland shape, alter and influence the development of religious transnationalism among migrants. As this article will argue, Zimbabweans' mode of incorporation into Britain was mediated by a hostile reception from authorities, considerable prejudice and hostility from the host society and a weak pre-existing co-ethnic community. These conditions in the hostland reinforce migrants' transnational religious ties to the homeland. In addition, the article illustrates the contradictory ways in which respondents reproduce, contest and construct their transnational gendered identities.     

Toward a definition of diaspora

With the emergence of diaspora studies as a field, scholars from different disciplines have offered diverse definitions of the concept of diaspora. Thus far, scholarly debates about what constitutes a diaspora continue to thrive. In this article, I approach this conceptual divide inductively, by analysing how scholars identify and discuss the defining features of diaspora. I have constructed a database that consists of highly cited articles in the social sciences and the humanities that define diaspora. Using ATLAS.ti, a qualitative data analysis software, I coded and aggregated the most prevalent attributes of diaspora in those definitions. The features that appear in at least half of the definitions are dispersal or immigration, location outside a homeland, community, orientation to a homeland, transnationalism, and group identity. These attributes provided me with the foundation to offer a clear, comprehensive, and workable definition of diaspora.     

Homeland origins and political identities among Chinese in Southern California

Abstract

This research project seeks to understand the scope and sources of ethnic and other political identities among US residents of Chinese descent whose families originated from the Chinese mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong and elsewhere in Asia. In what ways, to which extent and why do these individuals from various homeland origins identify themselves politically in the United States? Informed by past research on ethnic identity formation and political transnationalism, this research analyses a large-scale public opinion survey of Chinese in Southern California to report the contours and sources of political identities and their relationship to homeland origins, transnational ties and adaptation experiences in the Unites States, while controlling for the influence of sociodemographic factors. By separating out socialization contexts and types of transnational practices, the findings provide important modification to the scholarship on immigrant assimilation and transnationalism.