Recent terms such as globalisation, virtual reality, and cyberspace indicate that the traditional notion of the geographic and the social space is changing. New Transnational Social Spaces illustrates the contemporary relationship between the social and the spatial which has emerged with new communication and transportation technologies, alongside the massive transnational movement of people.
The ongoing processes of globalization and regionalization have drawn attention away from the traditional domains of nation-states and their interaction. However, the border-crossing activities of non-state agencies, organizations and institutions should not be overlooked, as they can shed new light on our common understanding of the contemporary world. Using the concept of transnational social spaces, contributors to this volume demonstrate the importance of transnational spaces. A collaborative project by experts across the social science disciplines, Transnational Social Spaces focuses in particular on the German-Turkish context.
Although globalisation brings work to (some) places all over the world, the growing international mobility of workers (and refugees) will be one of the strongest social and political challenges at the end of this century. At the same time and in part originated by globalisation and transnational migration, there is emerging a qualitative new social reality of 'transnational social spaces' built by pluri-locally spanned social institutions, life trajectories and the biographical projects in specific institutional settings and material infrastructures. This volume presents conceptual frameworks and empirical studies of transnational migration processes and the emergence of pluri-social transnational social spaces.
Increasing interconnections between nation-states across borders have rendered the transnational a key tool for understanding our world. It has made particularly strong contributions to immigration studies and holds great promise for deepening insights into international migration. This is the first book to provide an accessible yet rigorous overview of transnational migration, as experienced by family and kinship groups, networks of entrepreneurs, diasporas and immigrant associations. As well as defining the core concept, it explores the implications of transnational migration for immigrant integration and its relationship to assimilation. By examining its political, economic, social, and cultural dimensions, the authors capture the distinctive features of the new immigrant communities that have reshaped the ethno-cultural mix of receiving nations, including the US and Western Europe. Importantly, the book also examines the effects of transnationality on sending communities, viewing migrants as agents of political and economic development. This systematic and critical overview of transnational migration perfectly balances theoretical discussion with relevant examples and cases, making it an ideal book for upper-level students covering immigration and transnational relations on sociology, political science, and globalization courses.
A growing number of people immigrants, refugees, asylum-seekers, displaced individuals, and families lead lives that transcend national boundaries. Often because of economic pressures, these individuals continually move through places, countries, and cultures, becoming exposed to unique risk and protective factors. Though migration itself has existed for centuries, the availability of fast and cheap transportation as well as today's sophisticated technologies and electronic communications have allowed transmigrants to develop transnational identities and relationships, as well as engage in transnational activities. Yet despite this new reality, social work has yet to establish the parameters of a transnational social work practice. In one of the first volumes to address social work practice with this emergent and often marginalized population, practitioners and scholars specializing in transnational issues develop a framework for transnational social work practice. They begin with the historical and environmental context of transnational practice and explore the psychosocial, economic, environmental, and political factors that affect at-risk and vulnerable transnational groups. They then detail practical strategies, supplemented with case examples, for working with transnational populations utilizing this population's existing strengths. They conclude with recommendations for incorporating transnational social work into the curriculum.
The social question is back. Yet today's social question is not primarily between labour and capital, as it was in the nineteenth century and throughout much of the twentieth. The contemporary social question is located at the interstices between the global South and the global North. It finds its expression in movements of people, seeking a better life or fleeing unsustainable social, political, economic, and ecological conditions. It is transnationalized not only because migrants and their significant others entertain ties across the borders of national states, staying in touch with family and friends, receiving or sending financial remittances in transnational social spaces. Also of importance are cross--border recruitment schemes for workers and the cross-border diffusion of norms appealed to in the case of migration--for example, the social right to decent work as a human right. Moreover, migration can become an issue of inclusion or exclusion in fields important to life chances in the emigration, transit, or immigration states--a transnationalization of national states. And, as in the nineteenth century, political conflicts arise, constituting the social question as a public concern. In earlier periods class differences dominated conflicts. While class has always been criss-crossed by manifold heterogeneities, not least of all cultural ones around ethnicity, religion, and language, it is these latter heterogeneities that have sharpened in situations of immigration and emigration over the past decades. Casting a wide net in terms of conceptual and empirical scope, this book tackles both the social structure and the politics of social inequalities. It sets a comprehensive agenda for research which also includes the public role of social scientists in dealing with the transnationalized social question.
The authors focus on families who organize their lives in transnational social spaces within and at the outer borders of Europe, to offer a new perspective on transnational family life and to advance the knowledge on borders drawn by social inequality, discrimination and political exclusion. They also discuss social mobility as inheriting different life worlds, while crossing borders. The research on the socialization of children, raised in different societies provides a better understanding of the new generations in Europe from the beginning of the XXI c. The variety of methods presented in this book is also a contribution to link Western and Eastern European perspectives as well as sociology and anthropology in order to capture a wider spectrum of social reality.
Social relations in our globalising world are increasingly stretched out across the borders of two or more nation-states. Yet, despite the growing academic interest in transnational economic networks, political movements and cultural forms, too little attention has been paid to the transformations of space that these processes both reflect and reproduce. Transnational Spaces takes a innovative perspective, looking at transnationalism as a social space that can be occupied by a wide range of actors, not all of whom are themselves directly connected to transnational migrant communities.
How do parents and children care for each other when they are separated because of migration? The way in which transnational families maintain long-distance relationships has been revolutionised by the emergence of new media such as email, instant messaging, social networking sites, webcam and texting. A migrant mother can now call and text her left-behind children several times a day, peruse social networking sites and leave the webcam for 12 hours achieving a sense of co-presence. Drawing on a long-term ethnographic study of prolonged separation between migrant mothers and their children who remain in the Philippines, this book develops groundbreaking theory for understanding both new media and the nature of mediated relationships. It brings together the perspectives of both the mothers and children and shows how the very nature of family relationships is changing. New media, understood as an emerging environment of polymedia, have become integral to the way family relationships are enacted and experienced. The theory of polymedia extends beyond the poignant case study and is developed as a major contribution for understanding the interconnections between digital media and interpersonal relationships.
This book explores novel aspects of transnational family research through the study of Romanian transnational families. A range of topics are covered, including the impact of lodging type upon life strategies; understudied elements in transnational relationships; gender roles in transnational communication; multinational relationships; the role of polymedia in the formation of couples; and the lives of the children of Romanian transnational families. The author presents the experiences of ‘leavers’ as well as of ‘stayers’; of the ‘highly-skilled’ as well as the ‘low-skilled’; that of women and that of men - through individual testimonies and couple interviews. Romanian Transnational Families will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including sociology, politics, anthropology and geography. Chapter 3 and Chapter 5 of this book are available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com
