Luis Eduardo Guarnizo

The study of transnationalism: pitfalls and promise of an emergent research field

This introductory article defines the concept of transnationalism, provides a typology of this heterogeneous set of activities, and reviews some of the pitfalls in establishing and validating the topic as a novel research field. A set of guidelines to orient research in this field is presented and justified. Instances of immigrant political and economic transnationalism have existed in the past. We review some of the most prominent examples, but point to the distinct features that make the contemporary emergence of these activities across multiple national borders worthy of attention. The contents of this Special Issue and their bearing on the present understanding of this phenomenon and its practical implications are summarized.

Assimilation and Transnationalism: Determinants of Transnational Political Action among Contemporary Migrants1

This article presents evidence of the scale, relative intensity, and social determinants of immigrants’ transnational political engagement. It demonstrates that a stable and significant transnational field of political action connecting immigrants with their polities of origin does indeed exist. The results help temper celebratory images of the extent and effects of transnational engagement provided by some scholars. The article shows that migrants’ habitual transnational political engagement is far from being as extensive, socially unbounded, “deterritorialized,” and liberatory as previously argued. Transnational political action, then, is regularly undertaken by a small minority, is socially bounded across national borders, occurs in quite specific territorial jurisdictions, and appears to reproduce preexisting power asymmetries. The potential of transnationalism for transforming such asymmetries within and across countries has yet to be determined.

TRANSNATIONAL ENTREPRENEURS: AN ALTERNATIVE FORM OF IMMIGRANT ECONOMIC ADAPTATION

The recent literature on immigrant transnationalism points to an alternative form of economic adaptation of foreign minorities in advanced societies that is based on the mobilization of their cross-country social networks. Case studies have noted the phenomenons potential significance for immigrant integration into receiving countries and for the economic development in countries of origin. Despite their suggestive character, these studies consistently sample on the dependent variable (transnationalism), failing to establish the empirical existence of these activities beyond a few descriptive examples and their possible determinants. These issues are addressed using a survey designed explicitly for this purpose and conducted among selected Latin immigrant groups in the United States. Although immigrant transnationalism has received little attention in the mainstream sociological literature so far, it has the potential of altering the character of the new ethnic communities spawned by contemporary immigration. The empirical existence of transnationalism is examined on the basis of discriminant functions of migrant characteristics, and the relative probabilities of engaging in these kinds of activities is established based on hypotheses drawn from the literature. Implications for the sociology of immigration as well as for broader sociological theories of the economy are discussed. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

The Economics of Transnational Living

Migrants’ long-distance economic relations with their homelands have been the subject of an extensive, albeit fragmented, multidisciplinary inquiry. Most existing studies have been primarily concerned with the north-south flow of monetary remittances that migrants send to their homelands. Using a transnational perspective informed by economic sociology tenets, this article argues that this north-south, monetary-centered approach is too limited, for it fails to heed the multiple macroeconomic effects of migrants’ transnational economic and noneconomic connections and, thus, underestimates migrants’ agency and their influence at the global level. Using the concept of transnational living, the study presents new vistas of transnational migration that question accepted notions about the relationship between labor mobility and capital mobility.

The Emergence of a Transnational Social Formation and The Mirage of Return Migration Among Dominican Transmigrants

Using a transnational perspective, this article analyzes the soriocul‐tural and political transformation of US‐Dominican transmigrants who have relocated to the Dominican Republic as one step in their transnational journey. Transmigrants and their society of origin have forged a dense web of transnational relations that unites them in a continuous transterritorial social formation. This formation is evident in the incessant back and forth traveling and multidirectional exchanges of material and intangible resources and symbols between the US and the DR. Transmigration has spread peoples lives across national borders and generated a transnational habitus. Thus, even transmigrants who resettle in the DR maintain enduring transnational relationships. However, instead of being a social equalizer that empowers all migrants alike, transnational migration tends to reproduce and even exacerbate class, gender, and regional inequalities. Finally, internal and transnational migration seem to form a single system co...

Mistrust, fragmented solidarity, and transnational migration: Colombians in New York City and Los Angeles

This article compares the transnational economic, political, and sociocultural relations of Colombian migrants residing in two different locations in the United States. The vast majority of these migrants are middle class and originally from large urban areas, which differs from the typical rural-origin migrants previously studied by transnational scholars. The analysis is based on theoretical developments from transnational studies and insights advanced by economic sociology. Our findings suggest that transnational relations and activities do not follow a linear path and are not necessarily and inevitably a progressive process. The reach, scope and effects of transnational activities are contingent on the interaction of multiple contextual (state of origin-migrants relations; state of origin relations with country of destination; context of reception of immigrants abroad) and group factors (size, class composition, mode of settlement).

Transnational migration : a view from Colombia

This article presents the preliminary results of an ongoing research project on US-bound Colombian migration from the cities of Cali and Pereira. The project identified a dense web of economic, political, and socio-cultural transnational relations connecting migrants and their places of origin. These relations are heterogeneous and differentiated; what some scholars refer to as transnational communities are, in fact, fragmented by class, regionalism, ethnic cleavages and dominant stereotypes of Colombians as drug traffickers. We observed a complex transnational field of action, but not the formation of a transnational community.

Pakistani immigrant organisational spaces in Toronto and New York City

ABSTRACT This study examines how ‘contexts of reception’ in two migrant cities shape the organisational infrastructure for Pakistani immigrant communities in Toronto and New York City (NYC). Previous research is divided into two epistemic camps, one focusing on locally oriented organisations promoting settlement/incorporation and the other on transnational organisations—thus obscuring the relationships between these organisations. The present study transcends this division by examining how the combined effect of state policies, socioeconomic incorporation, community characteristics and societal attitudes shape the composition and geographical orientation of an immigrant groups collective organisational space—comprised of local and transnationally oriented organisations. Data come from a newly constructed database of Pakistani non-profit organisations based in Toronto and NYC and from qualitative research conducted in both cities. Contrary to our expectations and previous research, we find that state-sponsored multiculturalism in Toronto is not associated with a larger or more transnationally oriented organisational space. Rather, it is the affluence of the Pakistani community in NYC that is associated with the larger and more transnational of the two Pakistani organisational spaces. Findings also reveal tensions between local and transnationally oriented organisations in both cities, reflecting a growing fragmentation between affluent cosmopolitan immigrant elites and the impoverished segments of Toronto and NYC Pakistani communities.

Commentary on the study of transnationalism: pitfalls and promise of an emergent research field

Commentary on the study of transnationalism: pitfalls and promise of an emergent research field Alejandro Portes, Luis Eduardo Guarnizo c and Patricia Landolt Department of Sociology, Princeton University, Princeton, USA; University of Miami School of Law, Coral Gables, USA; Department of Human Ecology, University of California-Davis, Davis, USA; Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

The migration-development nexus and the changing role of transnational immigrant organizations

ABSTRACT The State and the Grassroots presents the results of studies of immigrant organizations engaged in transnational development initiatives from thirteen different immigrant nationalities in five countries of reception. The scale of this endeavour is unprecedented. The articles represent the fruit of a long-term project known as the Comparative Immigration Organizations Project (CIOP), which was launched by the Center for Migration and Development at Princeton University in the early 2000s. The State and the Grassroots makes significant analytical and methodological contributions to the migration studies field, particularly to the study of the migration-development nexus and of the relationship between assimilation/integration and transnationalism. This volume will be useful for upper-division undergraduates, as well as for graduate students and seasoned researchers interested in this field, particularly at this time of heightened anxiety about immigration and national security.