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.

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.

This volume, bringing together work by scholars from Europe, East Asia, North America, and West Africa, investigates transnational religious spaces in a comparative manner by juxtaposing East Asian and African examples. It highlights flows of ideas, actors, and organizations out of, into, or within a given continental space. These flows are patterned mainly by colonialism or migration. The book also examines cases where the transnational space in question encompasses both East Asia and Africa, notably in the development of Japanese new religions in Africa. Most of the studies are located in the present; a few go back to the late nineteenth century. The volume is rounded off by Thomas Tweed’s systematic reflections on categories for the study of transnationalism; his chapter "Flows and Dams" critically weighs the metaphorical language we use to think, speak, and write about transnational religious spaces.

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.

This book focuses on the experiences of temporary movements between Asia and Europe from the perspective of migrants and mobile people. It raises important questions such as: Why do people migrate on a temporary basis and what does this actually mean? How are these trajectories shaped? What are the implications of temporary moves for migrants and non-migrants? And how are transnational ties and practices characterized in the context of temporary migration? By shedding light on the practices and experiences of individual migrants, the book provides useful insights into understanding the challenges arising in an increasingly interconnected and mobile world. The chapters indicate that temporary migratory movements are on the rise: on the one hand on a voluntary basis such as reflected in labour migration, lifestyle migration and international student mobility, and on the other hand in an involuntary way as expressed in different forms of forced migration. Either way, temporary migration has diverse political. legal, economic, social and cultural implications, including the emergence of novel transnational networks and practices. The book is based on the findings of the international research project Transnational Migration in Transition: Transformative Characteristics of Temporary Mobility of People (EURA-NET), funded by the European Union’s 7th Framework Programme for period 2014-2017.