Transnational Borders Transnational Lives

"This book tells the stories of a selected group of geographers who migrated to one side to another of the Canada-US border. The often emotional autobiographical testimonials of those academics go a long way toward capturing the full range of feelings and experiences related to migration and settlement decision-making, especially as personal processes play out within the larger context of North American mobility"--Project Muse website.

Communities across Borders examines the many ways in which national, ethnic or religious groups, professions, businesses and cultures are becoming increasingly tangled together. It show how this entanglement is the result of the vast flows of people, meanings, goods and money that now migrate between countries and world regions. Now the effectiveness and significance of electronic technologies for interpersonal communication (including cyber-communities and the interconnectedness of the global world economy) simultaneously empowers even the poorest people to forge effective cultures stretching national borders, and compels many to do so to escape injustice and deprivation.

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.

'Border Lives' tells the story of former, current, and future border crossers who live in Tijuana and use the border as a resource to construct their livelihoods. Drawing on almost a year and a half of ethnographic data, Sergio Chávez demonstrates the ways in which the border can be both a resource and a constraint on people's lives.

Contrary to popular opinion, increasing numbers of migrants continue to participate in the political, social, and economic lives of their countries of origin even as they put down roots in the United States. The Transnational Villagers offers a detailed, compelling account of how ordinary people keep their feet in two worlds and create communities that span borders. Peggy Levitt explores the powerful familial, religious, and political connections that arise between Miraflores, a town in the Dominican Republic, and Jamaica Plain, a neighborhood in Boston and examines the ways in which these ties transform life in both the home and host country. The Transnational Villagers is one of only a few books based on in-depth fieldwork in the countries of origin and reception. It provides a moving, detailed account of how transnational migration transforms family and work life, challenges migrants' ideas about race and gender, and alters life for those who stay behind as much, if not more, than for those who migrate. It calls into question conventional thinking about immigration by showing that assimilation and transnational lifestyles are not incompatible. In fact, in this era of increasing economic and political globalization, living transnationally may become the rule rather than the exception.

Blurred Borders

This volume examines the ways in which bordering practices influence the everyday lives of racialized parents in the changing welfare states of Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Focusing on the need to negotiate, adjust, and reconcile family life, parenthood and parenting practices in the face of national, material, ideological, cultural, religious, and moral borders, it considers the manner in which these processes are complicated by recent changes in the legitimation of Nordic welfare states. The case studies centre on migrant, refugee, and asylum seeker parents, as well as parents of the indigenous Sámi communities. The book considers the ways in which the welfare state and its services construct borders of respectable parenthood, and examines the efforts on the part of racialized parents to negotiate such borders and organize their transnational everyday lives. Uncovering possibilities and obstacles that exist for families seeking to enact citizenship in the Nordic welfare states, Family Life in Transition will appeal to social scientists with interests in the sociology of the family, children, parenting, and the welfare state.