Migration And Transnationalism

Pacific Islanders have engaged in transnational practices since their first settlement of the many islands in the region. As they moved beyond the Pacific and settled in nations such as New Zealand, the U.S. and Australia these practices intensified and over time have profoundly shaped both home and diasporic communities. This edited volume begins with a detailed account of this history and the key issues in Pacific migration and transnationalism today. The papers that follow present a range of case studies that maintain this focus on both historical and contemporary perspectives. Each of the contributors goes beyond a narrowly economic focus to present the human face of migration and transnationalism; exploring questions of cultural values and identity, transformations in kinship, intergenerational change and the impact on home communities. Pacific migration and transnationalism are addressed in this volume in the context of increasing globalisation and growing concerns about the future social, political and economic security of the Pacific region. As the case studies presented here show, the future of the Pacific depends in many ways on the ties diasporic Islanders maintain with their homelands.

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.

Curriculum of Global Migration and Transnationalism seeks to address the question: "What is the curriculum of global/transnational migration?". The authors in this collection explore the multifaceted implications of movement for curriculum, teaching and learning, teacher education, cultural practice, as well as educational research and policy. In this book, the authors consider the following, among other questions: is the current experience of global/transnational mobility and/or migration really a new phenomenon, or is it an extension of existing processes and dynamics (e.g. colonialism, capitalism, imperialism)? What does global/transnational mobility imply for schools and other educational institutions and processes as spatially located entities? What approaches to curriculum are needed in the constantly shifting context of global movement? How are the "global" and "local" re-imagined through the experiences of mobility and migration? This book was originally published as a special issue of Curriculum Inquiry.

Diaspora & transnationalism are widely used concepts in academic & political discourses. Although originally referring to quite different phenomena, they increasingly overlap today. Such inflation of meanings goes hand in hand with a danger of essentialising collective identities. This book analyses this topic.

By linking the experiences of immigrant families with the increased reliance on cheap and flexible workers for care and domestic work in Southern Europe, this study documents the lived experiences of neglected actors of globalization — migrant women — as well as the transformations of Western families more generally. However, while describing in detail the structural and cultural contexts within which these women have to operate, the book questions dominant paradigms about women as passive victims of patriarchal structures and brings out instead their agency and the creative ways in which they take control of their lives in often difficult circumstances. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork and interviews, the author offers a valuable dual comparison between two Southern European countries on the one hand and between two migrant groups, one Christian and one Muslim, on the other, thus bringing to light unique detailed data on migration decision-making, settlement and on the multiple ways in which different women cope with the consequences of their transnational lives.

People’s transnational ties and activities are acquiring ever greater importance and topicality in today’s world. The focus of this book lies in the complex and multi-level processes of migrant transnationalism in four transnational spaces: India-UK, Morocco-France and Turkey-Germany and Estonia-Finland. The main question is, how people’s activities across national borders emerge, function, and change, and how are they related to the processes of governance in increasingly complex and interconnected world? The book is based on the findings of a three-year research project TRANS-NET which brough together internationally acknowledged experts from Europe, Asia and Africa. As no single discipline could investigate all the components of the topic in question, the project adopted a multi-disciplinary approach: among the contributors, there are sociologists, policy analysts, political scientists, social and cultural anthropologists, educational scientists, and economists. The chapters show that people’s transnational linkages and migration across national boundaries entail manifold political, economic, social, cultural and educational implications. Although political-social-economic-educational transformations fostered by migrant transnationalism constitute the main topic of the book, the starting assumption is that the large-scale institutional and actor-centred patterns of transformation come about through a constellation of parallel processes.

Most studies on transnational migration either stress assimilation, circulatory migration, or the negative impact of migration. This remarkable study, which covers migrants from one Jordanian village to 17 different countries in Europe, Asia, and North America, emphasizes the resiliency of transnational migrants after long periods of absence, social encapsulation, and stress, and their ability to construct social networks and reinterpret traditions in such a way as to mix the old and the new in a scenario that incorporates both worlds. Focusing on the humanistic aspects of the migration experience, this book examines questions such as birth control, women's work, retention of tribal law, and the changing attitudes of migrants towards themselves, their families, their home communities, and their nation. It ends with placing transnational migration from Jordan in a cross-cultural perspective by comparing it with similar processes elsewhere, and critically reviews a number of theoretical perspectives that have been used to explain migration.

This book examines the transformations in home lives arising in later life and resulting from global migrations. It provides insight into the ways in which contemporary demographic processes of aging and migration shape the meaning, experience and making of home for those in older age. Chapters explore how home is negotiated in relation to possibilities for return to the "homeland," family networks, aging and health, care cultures and belonging. The book deliberately crosses emerging sub-fields in transnationalism studies by offering case studies on aging labour migrants, retirement migrants, and return migrants, as well as older people affected by the movement of others including family members and migrant care workers. The diversity of people’s experiences of home in later life is fully explored and the impact of social class, gender, and nationality, as well as the corporeal dimensions of older age, are all in evidence.