Transnational Citizenship

This collection of mostly classic and some less well-known essays focuses on the historical question whether transnational citizenship is a genuinely new phenomenon and the normative question how it can be reconciled with principles of equal status and rights of citizens. The book opens with a introductory essay on the concept and the academic debates it has triggered. Its nineteen other chapters are grouped into five sections focusing on historical trends, institutional change, shifting boundaries, transnationalism from below and inter-state relations.

Regional integration, mass migration and the development of transnational organizations are just some of the factors challenging the traditional definitions of citizenship. In this important new book, Rainer Bauböck argues that citizenship rights will have to extend beyond nationality and state territory if liberal democracies are to remain true to their own principles of inclusive membership and equal basic rights.

In this book, the author argues that citizenship rights will have to extend beyond nationality and state territory if liberal democracies are to remain true to their own principles of inclusive membership and equal basic rights. Definition and extension of citizenship rights are discussed.

This book provides a detailed account of transnational practices undertaken by Indian ‘high-tech’ workers living in the United States. It describes the complexities and challenges of adapting to a new culture while clinging to tradition. Asian-Indians represent a significant part of the professional and ‘high-tech’ workforce in the United States, and the majority are temporary workers, working on contractual jobs (H1-B and L1 work visa category). Further, it is not unusual for Indian immigrant workers to marry and have children while working in the U.S. Gradually, they learn to negotiate the U.S. cultural terrain in both their place of work and at home in the U.S. As such there is the potential that they will become transnational, developing new identities and engaging in cultural and social practices from two different nations: India and the U.S. Against this background, the book describes the nature and extent of transnational practices adopted by high-tech Indian workers employed in the United States on temporary work visas. The study reveals that the temporary stay of these professionals and their families in the U.S. necessitates day-to-day balancing of two cultures in terms of food, clothing, recreation, and daily activities, creating a transnational lifestyle for these young professionals. Transnational activities at the workplace, which are forced by the work culture of the MNCs that employ them, can be considered as ‘transnationalism from above.’ Simultaneously, being bi-lingual at home, cooking and eating Indian and Western food, socializing with Indian and American friends outside work, and all the cultural activities they perform on a day-to-day basis, indicates ‘transnationalism from below’. The book is of interest to researchers and academics working on issues relating to culture, social change, migration and development.

Mass migrations, diasporas, dual citizenship arrangements, neoliberal economic reforms and global social justice movements have in recent decades produced shifting boundaries and meanings of citizenship within and beyond the Americas. In migrant-receiving countries, this has raised questions about extending rights to newcomers. In migrant-sending countries, it has prompted states to search for new ways to include their emigrant citizens into the nation state. This book situates new practices of ‘immigrant’ and ‘emigrant’ citizenship, and the policies that both facilitate and delimit them, in a broader political–economic context. It shows how the ability of people to act as transnational citizens is mediated by inequalities along the axes of gender, race, nationality and class, both in and between source and destination countries, resulting in a plethora of possible relations between states and migrants. The volume provides cross-disciplinary and theoretically engaging discussions, as well as empirically diverse case studies from countries in Latin America and the Caribbean that have been transformed into ‘emigrant states’ in recent years, offering new concepts and theory for the study of transnational citizenship. This book was originally published as a special issue of Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power.

This book briefly delineates the history of the Haitian diaspora in the United States in the nineteenth century, but it primarily concerns itself with the contemporary period and more specifically with the diasporic enclave in New York City. It uses a critical transnational perspective to convey the adaptation of the immigrants in American society and the border-crossing practices they engage in as they maintain their relations with the homeland. It further reproblematizes and reconceptualizes the notion of diasporic citizenship so as to take stock of the newer facets of the globalization process.

In recent decades, East Asia has become increasingly interconnected through trade, investment, migration, and popular culture at regional and global levels. At the same time, the region has seen renewed national assertiveness and nationalist impulses. The book interrogates these seemingly contradictory developments as they bear on the transformations of the nation and citizenship in East Asia. Conventionally, studies on East Asia juxtapose these developments, focusing on the much-exercised dichotomy of the national and transnational. In contrast, this book suggests a different orientation. First, it moves beyond the simplistic view that demarcates the transnational as "the West". Second, it does not view the national and transnational as distinct or contradictory spheres of influence and analysis, but rather, focuses on the interactions between the two, with a view on how these interactions work to transform the ideals and practices of the "good nation", "good society", and "good citizen". The chapters cover a broad range of empirical research--education, science, immigration, multicultural policy, human rights, gender and youth orientations, art and food flows, politics of values and regional identity--which highlight the ways in which the nation is reconfigured, and the relationship between the citizen and (national) collective is redefined, in relation to transnational dynamics and frameworks. Transnational Trajectories in East Asia provides a new perspective on and original analysis of transnational processes, bringing a fresh understanding to developments of the nation and citizenship in the region. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of transnationalization and globalization; comparative citizenship, migration, and multiculturalism; and Asian politics, society, and regionalism.

Examines how three transnational groups in Hong Kong use familial narratives to promote critical empathy and decenter the oppressive logics behind dominant citizenship discourses.