New Transnational Social Spaces

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.

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.

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.

Transnational social spaces" have emerged in recent years as a research area within migration and area studies. This volume is about African social spaces. It incorporates examples of Central and Western Africa as well as of African-European relations. Contributors from different disciplines, such as anthropology, geography, and political and educational sciences outline their interpretations of transnational social spaces, based on theoretical and empirical work within a wider research project at the University of Hamburg about contemporary transformations of African societies. Jrgen O?enbrgge is professor of economic and political geography at the University of Hamburg. Mechthild Reh is professor for African Studies at the University of Hamburg

Globalization has encouraged worldwide mobility, intensified migration and supported growing interconnectedness through new technologies; it has therefore substantially contributed to the development of so-called transnational spaces. This volume focuses on transnational spaces which should not be understood as locations on a map or as sealed containers, but instead as relational social areas which are composed of various relationships. Transnationalization increases liberation and/or emancipation from place because social relations overcome physical space and local, regional and national boundaries. As a consequence, a reconfiguration of social, cultural, political and economic scopes of action occurs. This volume reveals that for people in general and for migration movements in particular, new borders have been established in many places all over the world. The biographies of global actors and migrants reference this alteration of space. Additionally this volume calls special attention to border regions and their social configurations. Borders appear as narratives which can have an enormous impact on social structures. This book further deals with different aspects and various tensions having to do with local and global change, interplay and interdependence. Globalization leads to development that often ignores regional needs, supports the continuation of post-colonial power and maintains hegemonic dominance.

In the context of ever-increasing globalization, transnational systems of support have emerged in response to the needs of transnational families, labour forces, and the communities within which they are located. This volume will be the first to systematically address transnational support research from a theoretical and empirical perspective, making the concept of transnationality part of the core knowledge structure of social work.