Transnationalism From Below

Michael Peter Smith

Luis Eduardo Guarnizo
Editors

Comparative Urban and Community Research V6 – 1998

New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers

Comparative Urban and Community Research is an annual review
devoted to theoretical, empirical and applied research on the
processes of urbanization and community change throughout the
world. The format of Comparative Urban and Community
Research enables the publication of manuscripts that are longer
and more richly textured than the articles a quarterly journal
can feature.
Editorial correspondence and manuscript submissions should be
addressed to Comparative Urban and Community Research,
Department of Human and Community Development, University
of California, Davis, CA 95616-8523. Submission requirements:
(1) papers should be double-spaced; and (2) author's name,
affiliation, address and telephone number should appear on a
separate sheet.
Michael Peter Smith, Editor
University of California, Davis
Alexis Ohran, Editorial Assistant

Editorial Board
Janet Abu-Lughod Joe R. Feagin Chris Pickvance
New School for Social University of Florida University of Kent
Research
Thomas Bender John Friedmann Adolph Reed, Jr.
New York University University of California Northwestern University
Los Angeles
Marshall Berman Luis E. Guarnizo Richard Sennett
City University of University of California New York University
New York Davis
Sophie-Body-Gendrot Peter Hall Carol Smith
Université Paris, University College, University of California
Sorbonne London Davis
Mike Davis Ira Katznelson Edward Soja
Southern California Columbia University University of California
Institute of Architecture Los Angeles
Mike Douglass Peter Marcuse John Walton
University of Hawaii Columbia University University of California
Davis
Rosalyn Deutsch David C. Perry Sharon Zukin
The Cooper Union, State University of City University of
New York New York at Buffalo New York
I. Theorizing Transnationalism
1. The Locations of Transnationalism......................................3
Luis Eduardo Guarnizo and Michael Peter Smith
2. The Fetishism of Global Civil Society: Global Governance,
Transnational Urbanism and Sustainable Capitalism in the
World Economy.............................................................35
André C. Drainville
3. Theoretical and Empirical Contributions Toward a
Research Agenda for Transnationalism................................64
Sarah J. Mahler

II. Transnational Economic and Political Agency

4. Transnational Social Networks and Negotiated Identities in
Interactions between Hong Kong and China.......................103
Alan Smart and Josephine Smart
5. Transnational Lives and National Identities:
The Identity Politics of Haitian Immigrants.......................130
Nina Glick Schiller and Georges Fouron

III. Constructing Transnational Localities

6. The Power of Status in Transnational Social Fields.............165
Luin Goldring
7. Transnational Localities: Community, Technology and the
Politics of Membership within the Context of Mexico and
U.S. Migration.............................................................196
Robert C. Smith

IV. Transnational Practices and Cultural Reinscription

8. Narrating Identity Across Dominican Worlds.....................241
Ninna Nyberg Sørensen
9. Belizean “Boyz ‘n the ‘Hood”? Garifuna Labor
Migration and Transnational Identity................................270
Linda Miller Matthei and David A. Smith
10. Forged Transnationality and Oppositional
Cosmopolitanism.........................................................291
Louisa Schein
Contributors......................................................................314
 I

Theorizing Transnationalism
 The Locations of Transnationalism 3

The Locations of Transnationalism1

Luis Eduardo Guarnizo

Michael Peter Smith

Transnationalism is clearly in the air. Expansion of transna-

tional capital and mass media to even the remotest of hinterlands
has provoked a spate of discourses on “globalization,”
“transnationalism,” and the “crisis of the nation state.” A core
theme in these discourses is the penetration of national cultures
and political systems by global and local driving forces. The na-
tion-state is seen as weakened “from above” by transnational capi-
tal, global media, and emergent supra-national political institu-
tions. “From below” it faces the decentering “local” resistances of
the informal economy, ethnic nationalism, and grassroots ac-
tivism. These developments are sometimes viewed in celebratory
terms. For some they bring market rationality and liberalism to a
disorderly world “from above.” For others they generate condi-
tions conducive to the creation of new liberatory practices and
spaces “from below” like transnational migration and its attendant
cultural hybridity. In more pessimistic readings, these develop-
ments are seen as preludes to a new form of capitalist moderniza-
tion that is bound to convert the entire planet to “global con-
sumerism.” This volume of Comparative Urban and Community
Research brings together a rich combination of theoretical reflec-
tions and grounded studies of transnational processes and practices
that offer a more nuanced reading of “transnationalism from be-
low” that is neither celebratory nor dystopian.

Meanings and Metaphors of Transnationalism

In the past decade the concept of transnationalism has swiftly

migrated across disciplinary boundaries. It has been rapidly
“assimilated,” indeed appropriated and consumed by anthropolo-
gists, sociologists, political scientists, geographers and other schol-
ars. The concept’s sudden prominence has been accompanied by its
increasing ambiguity. Transnationalism thus runs the risk of
4 Transnationalism from Below

becoming an empty conceptual vessel. The articles in this volume

should temper such skepticism. They show that transnationalism is
a useful concept that represents phenomena which, although not
entirely new, have reached particular intensity at a global scale at
the end of the 20th century. This volume centers on the develop-
ment and consequences of transnational practices linked to the
processes of mass migration, economic expansion, and political
organization across national spaces. Moving deftly between micro-
and macro-analyses, the studies in this volume expand the bound-
aries of the current scholarship on transnationalism, locate new
forms of transnational agency, and pose provocative questions
that challenge prevailing interpretations of globalization.
The convergence of several historically specific factors all help
explain the complexity of transnationalism. This is a new com-
plexity not only in terms of scale, but also because of the scope of
effects that contemporary transnational flows have upon the soci-
eties involved. These include:
• the globalization of capitalism with its destabilizing effects
on less industrialized countries;
• the technological revolution in the means of transportation
and communication;
• global political transformations such as decolonization and
the universalization of human rights; and
• the expansion of social networks that facilitate the reproduc-
tion of transnational migration, economic organization,
and politics.
Cultural studies scholars have been at the forefront in the anal-
ysis of transnational practices and processes (Appadurai 1990,
1996; Buell 1994; Clifford 1992; Bhabha 1990; Hannerz 1996).
Their leadership has imprinted the field with a peculiar cultural
bent and a distinctive normative, postmodern discursive flavor. A
variety of alternative visions of transnationalism, often specifi-
cally linked to transmigration, have also emerged in the social sci-
ences (Glick Schiller and associates 1994, 1995; Kearney 1991;
Rouse 1992; Portes 1996; M.P. Smith 1994; and authors in this
volume). However different in their theoretical starting points, a
sense of convergence between approaches in cultural studies and
 The Locations of Transnationalism 5

the social sciences is arising. One sign of this convergence is the

tendency to conceive of transnationalism as something to
celebrate, as an expression of a subversive popular resistance
“from below.” Cultural hybridity, multi-positional identities,
border-crossing by marginal “others,” and transnational business
practices by migrant entrepreneurs are depicted as conscious and
successful efforts by ordinary people to escape control and
domination “from above” by capital and the state.
Authors celebrating the liberatory character of transnational
practices often represent transnationals as engaged in a dialectic of
opposition and resistance to the hegemonic logic of multinational
capital. Given the declining political influence of working-class
movements in the face of the global reorganization of capitalism,
all sorts of new social actors on the transnational stage are now
being invested with oppositional possibilities, despite the fact that
their practices are neither self-consciously resistant nor even
loosely political in character. For example, recent work inscribes
the activities of transnational immigrant entrepreneurs with a
series of attributes which socially construct small capitalists as
common people whose entrepreneurial practices amount to an
expression of popular resistance (Portes 1996). In a similar vein,
Bhabha (1990: 300) characterizes the practices and identities of
transmigrants as “counter-narratives of the nation” which contin-
ually evoke and erase their totalizing boundaries and “disturb those
ideological manoeuvres through which ‘imagined communities’ are
given essentialist identities” (see also Anderson 1983). An example
of this use of transnationalism as a counter-hegemonic political
space is found in the work of Michael Kearney (1991) who
represents Mixtec migrant farm workers, despite their poverty, as
having created autonomous spaces in southern California and
Oregon in which, he claims, neither the United States nor the
Mexican state have access or control.
The totalizing emancipatory character of transnationalism in
these discourses is questionable. While transnational practices and
hybrid identities are indeed potentially counter-hegemonic, they
are by no means always resistant. As Katharyne Mitchell (1993,
1996) and Aihwa Ong (1996) have demonstrated in their studies of
6 Transnationalism from Below

the Chinese diaspora in Canada and the United States, respectively,

the liminal sites of transnational practices and discourses can be
used for the purposes of capital accumulation quite as effectively as
for the purpose of contesting hegemonic narratives of race,
ethnicity, class, and nation. The dialectic of domination and
resistance needs a more nuanced analysis than the celebratory vi-
sion allows. At the risk of disrupting these hopeful, albeit utopian,
visions, this volume attempts to bring back into focus the enduring
asymmetries of domination, inequality, racism, sexism, class
conflict, and uneven development in which transnational practices
are embedded and which they sometimes even perpetuate.
Transnationalism is a multifaceted, multi-local process. A main
concern guiding Transnationalism from Below is to discern how
this process affects power relations, cultural constructions, eco-
nomic interactions, and, more generally, social organization at the
level of the locality. We try to unpack the deceptive local-global
binary that dominates a significant segment of current academic
discourse. This task requires us to construct an analytical optic for
viewing transnationalism and for exploring the most useful
methods for investigating transnational practices and processes
from below. Five main analytical themes weave together the nine
essays that form this volume: the political organization of
transnational space; the centrality of “locality” in a historicized
sense; the constitution and reproduction of transnational networks
through material and symbolic exchange; transnationalism and
identity politics; and the development of viable approaches for
studying transnationalism.

Political Organization of Transnational Spaces

Transnational political organization and mobilization take place

at multiple levels (M.P. Smith 1994). Constructing transnational
political spaces should be treated as the resultant of separate,
sometimes parallel, sometimes competing projects at all levels of
the global system—from the “global governance” agenda of in-
ternational organizations and multinational corporations to the
most local “survival strategies,” by which transnational migrant
networks are socially constructed. At the most global level, spe-
 The Locations of Transnationalism 7

cific multilateral collectivities—such as the United Nations (UN),

the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank,
international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and the
global capitalist class—seek to construct a global neoliberal
contextual space, a “new world order,” to regulate transnational
flows of capital, trade, people, and culture. In the process, they
supplant the disintegrating nationally-managed regimes of
Keynesianism and Fordism (Drainville, this volume). Again, at the
most local level, it is specific collectivities—local households, kin
networks, elite fractions, and other emergent local for-
mations—which actively pursue transnational migration to create
and reproduce another kind of transnational social space, the
“trans-locality,” to sustain material and cultural resources in the
face of the neo-liberal storm.
Does this mean, as some (e.g., Appadurai 1996: Part III) have
claimed, that transnationalism “from above” and “from below” are
ushering in a new period of weakened nationalism, a “postna-
tional” global cultural economy? There are several reasons to
doubt this claim. First, historically, states and nations seeking
statehood have often kept the transnational connections of their
overseas diasporas alive, as in the classical examples of the Jewish,
Greek, and Armenian social formations (Tölölyan 1996). Second,
and relatedly, contributors to this volume underline the continuing
significance of nationalist projects and identities and their articula-
tion with competing identities and projects, such as feminism,
environmentalism and globalism in the formation of
“transnational grassroots movements” (M.P. Smith 1994). These
issues are thoughtfully explored in Sarah Mahler’s analysis of
alternative modes of political mobilization of “deterritorialized”
migrants as well as in André Drainville’s discussion of the implica-
tions of enduring national and local political identities in the new
transnational political coalitions that have sprung up to resist the
hegemonic ideology and austerity policies imposed “from above”
by the global neo-liberal regime.
Third, in the present period of mass migration many nation-
states that have experienced substantial out-migration are entering
into a process of actively promoting “transnational reincorpora-
8 Transnationalism from Below

tion” of migrants into their state-centered projects. Why is this

so? As suggested above, global economic restructuring and the
repositioning of states, especially less industrialized ones, in the
world economy, have increased the economic dependency of these
countries on foreign investment. Political elites and managerial
strata in these societies have found that as emigration to advanced
capitalist countries has increased, the monetary transfers provided
by transmigrant investors have made crucial contributions to their
national economies (Lessinger 1992), and family remittances have
promoted social stability (Mahler 1996; M.P. Smith 1994). Thus,
their growing dependence on transmigrants’ stable remittances has
prompted sending states to try to incorporate their “nationals”
abroad into both their national market and their national polity by
a variety of measures including: naming “honorary ambassadors”
from among transmigrant entrepreneurs in the hope that they will
promote “national” interests vis-à-vis receiving countries; subsi-
dizing transnational migrant “home-town” and “home-state” as-
sociations (Goldring, R. Smith, and Mahler, this volume); creating
formal channels for communicating with these “constituencies”
across national borders (Glick Schiller and Fouron, this volume;
Guarnizo 1996); passing dual citizenship laws; and even, in the
bizarre case of the state apparatus in El Salvador, providing free
legal assistance to political refugees so that they may obtain asy-
lum in the United States on the grounds that they have been perse-
cuted by the state that is now paying their legal expenses (Mahler,
this volume).
In short, far from withering away in the epoch of transnational-
ism, sending states once presumed to be “peripheral,” are promot-
ing the reproduction of transnational subjects; and, in the process
reinventing their own role in the “new world order” (see Glick
Schiller and Fouron, this volume). They are officially incorporat-
ing their “nationals” residing abroad into their newly configured
trans-territorial nation-state. This political process has been called
“deterritorialized” nation-state formation by Nina Glick Schiller
and her associates (Basch, Glick Schiller, and Szanton-Blanc 1994).
The role of the sending state and state-centered social movements
in the production of transnational social formations is thoughtfully
 The Locations of Transnationalism 9

explored below in Glick Schiller and Fouron’s study of the political

organization of the Haitian diaspora in New York and other U.S.
cities since the restoration of the Aristide regime
in Haiti.
This process of trans-territorialization raises intriguing
questions concerning human agency. The sending states are
insuring their own survival by contributing to the constitution of
new bifocal subjects with dual citizenships and multiple political
identities. Inadvertently, this very process opens up interstitial
social spaces which create multiple possibilities for novel forms of
human agency. These spaces provide possibilities for resistance as
well as accommodation to power “from above.” For example, by
accommodating to their newly-legitimated dual status, bi-national
subjects are able to enjoy the benefits of citizenship, the opportu-
nities for household reproduction, as well as the costs these entail
in two nation-states. They may be doubly empowered or doubly
subordinated, depending on historically-specific local circumstances
(compare, for instance the multiple empowerment of Ticuanenses
in New York City and Ticuani, Puebla with the multiple
subordination of Garifuna in Los Angeles and Belize City in the
studies by R. Smith and L. Matthei and D. Smith, this volume).
Fourth, in light of these new interstitial possibilities, it is impor-
tant to recall that the agents of “receiving states” remain relevant
actors. States still monopolize the legitimate means of coercive
power within their borders. Thus, it is problematic to conceptualize
as a “deterritorialization of the state” the expansion of the reach
of “states of origin” beyond their own national territorial
jurisdiction into other state formations. Rather, the “foreign”
territory in which transmigrants reside and their “state of origin”
comes to “visit” has a material force that cannot be ignored.
When politicians come to proselitize, officials to promote their
programs and plans, or business people to open or maintain
markets, their influence is exercised in a particular territorial
domain, formally controlled by the “receiving” state. This juridical
construction of transnational social formations is one which denies
their “globality” and re-territorializes their meaning as a
“boundary penetration,” as a “transgression” of its own jurisdic-
10 Transnationalism from Below

tion. The recent political controversy in the United States

concerning the “penetration of Asian money” into U.S. national
political campaigns suggests that the political elites ruling nation-
states do not merely react to, but actually act to constitute the
scope and meaning of “transnationalism” within their territories.
In terms of racialization, this example could be taken as a gross
overgeneralization of the notion of illegitimate border-crossing
from the level of the individual to that of entire states and regions
of the globe. It does illustrate, however, the key role of state-
initiated discourses in the reinscription of nationalist ideologies and
national subjects.
Paradoxically, the expansion of transnational practices from
above and from below has resulted in outbursts of entrenched, es-
sentialist nationalism in both “sending” and “receiving” countries.
In receiving nation-states, movements aimed at recuperating and
reifying a mythical national identity are expanding as a way to
eliminate the penetration of alien “others.” States of origin, on
the other hand, are re-essentializing their national identity and
extending it to their nationals abroad as a way to maintain their
loyalty and flow of resources “back home.” By granting them dual
citizenship, these states are encouraging transmigrants’
instrumental accomodation to “receiving” societies, while
simultaneously inhibiting their cultural assimilation and thereby
promoting the preservation of their own national culture.
Our effort to differentiate the local from the national and the
global political organization of transnational spaces points to the
growing interdependence of geographical scales. It suggests a
weakness in the prevailing postmodernist metaphors of
“deterritorialization” and “unboundedness.” Undoubtedly, the
boundaries limiting people cut across the politically instituted
boundaries of nation-states. But transnational actions are bounded
in two senses—first, by the understandings of “grounded reality”
socially constructed within the transnational networks that people
form and move through, and second, by the policies and practices
of territorially-based sending and receiving local and national states
and communities. We now turn to a closer examination of this
double-grounding.
 The Locations of Transnationalism 11

Grounding Transnationalism

Transnational practices do not take place in an imaginary

“third space” (Bhabha 1990; Soja 1996) abstractly located “in-
between” national territories. Thus, the image of transnational
migrants as deterritorialized, free-floating people represented by
the now popular academic adage “neither here nor there” deserves
closer scrutiny. Intermittent spatial mobility, dense social ties, and
intense exchanges fostered by transmigrants across national bor-
ders have indeed reached unprecedented levels. This has fed the
formulation of metaphors of transnationalism as a “boundless” and
therefore liberatory process. However, transnational practices
cannot be construed as if they were free from the constraints and
opportunities that contextuality imposes. Transnational practices,
while connecting collectivities located in more than one national
territory, are embodied in specific social relations established be-
tween specific people, situated in unequivocal localities, at histori-
cally determined times. The “locality” thus needs to be further
conceptualized.
For classical modernist theory the local, as opposed to the cos-
mopolitan, is conceived as a bounded “property or diacritic of
social life” (Appadurai 1996: 179). In this light, the local is seen as
a derogatory site that compounds backwardness, as the realm of
stagnation against the dynamism of the industrial civilization of
capitalism, as the realm of idiosyncratic culture at odds with scien-
tific rationality, “as the obstacle to full realization of that political
form of modernity, the nation-state” (Dirlik 1996: 23). One of
the main contributions of postmodern ethnography and critical
theory has been the redefinition of the local as a dynamic source
of alternative cosmopolitanisms and contestation (See M.P. Smith
1992; Robbins 1993; Schein, this volume). Recently, Appadurai
(1996: 185) has argued that, embedded in the contingencies of
history, local subjects reproduce their locality (which he calls
neighborhood) in interaction with the environment in which it is
embedded. This is, in his view, “how the subjects of history become
historical subjects, so that no human community, however
12 Transnationalism from Below

apparently stable, static, bounded, or isolated, can usefully be re-

garded as cool or outside [of] history.”
Despite the high level of fragmentation in the literature on
transnationalism, the concepts of “deterritorialization” and
“unboundedness” have gone unquestioned. Here we take issue with
the concept of transmigrants as unbounded social actors. We wish
to examine the applicability of the concept of unboundedness to
the practices of transmigrants as though implying their total
disconnection from local constraints and social moorings. If we
were to believe that transmigrants are socially, politically, and cul-
turally unbound, the question then is how can we define who is and
who is not a transmigrant? In other words, what are the boundaries
of transnationality? This is a central issue to resolve to determine
whether transnational practices are evanescent or a new structural
feature of society.
We wish to underline the actual mooring and, thus, boundedness
of transnationalism by the opportunities and constraints found in
particular localities where transnational practices occur. For ex-
ample, consider the question of the role of cities in transnational
studies. Cities are not merely empty containers of transnational
articulations. Is a transnational flow, such as a capital investment,
migratory stream, or IMF policy, simply imposed on cities? Or
does it matter whether Hong Kong capital flows go to Shenzhen or
Vancouver; IMF austerity policies are implemented in San Jose,
Costa Rica or Mexico City; Haitian, Mexican, Dominican, and
Salvadoran migrants move to New York or Miami, Los Angeles or
Madrid, Long Island or San Francisco, respectively? The studies in
this volume and other studies (compare Mahler, this volume with
Smith and Tarallo 1993 and Tardanico 1995, with Barkin, Ortiz,
and Rosen 1997) suggest that the local sites of global processes do
matter. The social construction of “place” is still a process of local
meaning-making, territorial specificity, juridical control, and
economic development, however complexly articulated these
localities become in transnational economic, political, and cul-
tural flows.
The complexity does not stop here, however. The research of
our contributors further illustrates that the specific context in
 The Locations of Transnationalism 13

which transnational actions take place is not just local, but also
“trans-local” (i.e., local to local). Luin Goldring and Robert Smith
call these contexts “translocalities.” In these social fields (see
Glick Schiller et al. 1992) transnational practices are vested with
particular meanings. Translocal relations are constituted within
historically and geographically specific points of origin and
migration established by transmigrants. Such relations are dynamic,
mutable, and dialectical. They form a triadic connection that links
transmigrants, the localities to which they migrate, and their
locality of origin. The locality of migration provides a specific
context of opportunities and constraints (e.g., labor market
conditions, popular and official perceptions of the migrant group,
the presence or absence of other co-nationals) into which migrants
enter. The fit between specific kinds of migrants and specific local
and national contexts abroad shapes not only the likelihood of
generating, maintaining or forsaking transnational ties, but also the
very nature of the ties that migrants can forge with their place of
origin. While transnational practices extend beyond two or more
national territories, they are built within the confines of specific
social, economic, and political relations which are bound together
by perceived shared interests and meanings. Without such social
closure, without a basic sense of shared meanings and a sense of
predictability of results bounding together the actors involved
(i.e., social control), it would be unthinkable for any person to try
to establish any kind of relations across national territories,
whether a transnational migrant network, economic project, or
political movement.
The diverse effects of this triadic translocal relation are clearly
illustrated in Ninna Sørensen’s article comparing the disparate ex-
periences of Dominican migrants in New York and Madrid. While
in both situations transmigrants have built transnational relations
with their native land, the type, scale, and scope of these relations
differ. The differences stem not only from the contextual differ-
ences abroad, but also from a selective social and regional com-
position of transmigrants in both locations. Those going to Madrid
tend to be drawn from among those who could not afford to mi-
grate to New York—because of their regional or class origin,
14 Transnationalism from Below

because of their gender, or, most importantly, because of their lack

of the appropriate social capital connecting them with the
migration networks linked to the Big Apple. In this case, class,
gender, and regional origin emerge as critical determinants of
migrants’ destination, attainment, and transnationality. The lim-
ited power of the generic “Dominican” label as a homogenizing
national identifier and predictor of migrants’ performance is
clearly demonstrated.
This case well illustrates the generalization that migration from
the same country is formed by a heterogenous rather than unitary
group of people, possessing distinct personal and social endow-
ments (human capital and social capital), migrating under disparate
circumstances, and professing significant, if subtle, regional cultural
differences. Heterogeneity, in turn, results in disparate rates of
access to opportunities in the receiving labor market and society,
which in part explains why not all migrants are able to afford the
maintenance of active transnational ties (see Mahler, this vol-
ume)—and why the transnational practices of those who do main-
tain them are also diverse. In general, different “receiving” locali-
ties offer migrants dissimilar contexts of reception, and thus dis-
similar opportunities and constraints.2
The contribution by Alan Smart and Josephine Smart illustrates
another dimension of locality and translocality, namely, that the
historically particular forging of translocal relations significantly
mediates the patterns of global investment as well as migration.
Their study of the formation of social networks by entrepreneurial
Hong Kong capitalists and Chinese workers starts from the well
taken assumption that an exclusive focus on international migra-
tion in studying transnationalism is too restrictive (for an alterna-
tive argument see Mahler, this volume). In the contemporary pe-
riod, national boundaries are being constantly criss-crossed by
processes of communication and exchange that do not include
actual bodily movement, such as capital expansion, Internet, and
other telecommunications. Other modes of transnational bodily
movement, such as tourism and expatriate consulting and
entrepreneurship, do not entail migration. All of these
relationships are mediated by trans-local understandings. Smart and
 The Locations of Transnationalism 15

Smart’s study of the constitution and mobilization of transnational

social networks traversing the soon-to-be-erased Hong Kong-China
border reveals a particular pattern of “situated ethnicity” as a basis
for translocal network solidarity and exclusion that differs
markedly from the kinds of translocal ties forged by corporate
Hong Kong Chinese capitalists investing in Vancouver (Mitchell
1993, 1996). In order to successfully penetrate different localities
in the world economy, the transnational capitalist fractions from
Hong Kong have to justify their activities within prevailing local
cultural understandings. The entrepreneurial Hong Kong capitalists
studied by Smart and Smart foregrounded their Chineseness in
China, while the corporate capitalists from Hong Kong in
Vancouver accommodated to a different setting by downplaying
their Chineseness and foregrounding their capitalist economic
position within a dominant multicultural public discourse. Thus
transnationalism, far from erasing the local identifications and
meaning systems, actually relies on them to sustain transnational
ties.
The reproduction of transnational ties is clearly sensitive to
contextual conditions. However, contextual conditions are not
static, and must be historicized. Over time, for example, labor mar-
ket conditions can improve or deteriorate; state policies can be-
come friendlier (see for example Schein and Smart and Smart this
volume); or additional opportunities may arise from an emergent
aggregate demand for goods and services generated by increasing
numbers of people arriving from the same country or region. This
latter process may also provoke class restructuring within the
group, as well as social transformations within the receiving city
and society (Sassen-Koob 1987; Sassen 1991). Given the many
possibilities for social transformation generated by all of these
flows, how are transnational networks currently constituted and re-
produced? Just how new are these processes?

Constituting and Reproducing Transnational Networks

A critical unanswered question raised by scholars of transna-

tional migration is whether transnational practices and relations
are merely an evanescent phenomenon which will not last beyond
16 Transnationalism from Below

first generation migrants. Or, by contrast, are transnational social

practices becoming an enduring structural characteristic of global
social organization? Critics of transnationalism argue that the
attention devoted to transnational practices is misplaced, for such
relations have always existed. In fact, the well-known “dual frame
of reference” phenomenon has been a typical trait of first
generation immigrants. At first glance, the historical record
supports this interpretation.
Despite the relative paucity and inconsistency of existing data,
there is consensus among scholars about a high incidence of
transnational mobility among European immigrants, before and
after the turn of the century. During the 1899-1952 period, for
example, a full one-third of all immigrants to the United States,
either returned or moved on. Between 1925 and 1943, almost
two-fifths of all migrants remigrated (Hoerder 1985: 353-54; see
also Rosenblum 1973). Moreover, some studies at the turn of the
century found that return rates tended to be higher among newer
immigrants. Some have attributed this to changes in the United
States labor market and society which made it harder for the
newcomers to adapt, and to the national composition of the
newcomers, most of whom were Southern and Eastern Europeans
who, apparently, returned in larger numbers than those from
Northern and Western Europe (Rosenblum 1973: 125-26). Yet,
according to received assimilationist wisdom, the dual frame of
reference of the first generation died with it. Accordingly, the
withering away of transnational ties, language, and most cultural
practices and values brought by immigrants from the old country
was almost completed by the third generation (Portes and Rumbaut
1990: 183).
Are transnational relations exclusively a first generation prac-
tice? Did European immigrants actually sever their connections
with their old country once the first generation passed on? While
these questions need further examination, recent scholarship sug-
gests otherwise. It shows that old world immigrants’ transnational
orientation did not die with them. For example, Irish, Polish, and
Jewish “immigrant nationalisms did not simply go to the grave
with the members of the migrating generation; on the contrary, a
 The Locations of Transnationalism 17

cultural thread links the diasporic political vision of the immi-

grants with the ethnic gestures of their grandchildren and great-
grandchildren” (Jacobson 1995: 5). More than 100 years after the
arrival of their forbearers, the enduring transnational linkages be-
tween the politics of the homeland and the culture of European di-
asporas still persist. Polish Americans, Jewish Americans, and Irish
Americans still profess political identity and allegiance to their
distant, and, for many, unknown homeland. During the struggle of
the Solidarity movement in Poland, for example, thousands of
Polish Americans sang the Polish national anthem in demon-
strations in Chicago and other major U.S. cities. St. Patrick’s Day
parades are celebrated nationwide and Irish Americans’ support of
Irish independence and the IRA’s struggle remains strong.
Meanwhile, the defense of Israel remains the paramount task and
unifying force for many Jews in the United States. Similar patterns
are also found among other Americans of Southern and Eastern
European descent.
This still leaves unanswered the question of what, if anything, is
different about current transnational practices? Critics of the re-
constitution of immigration studies as transnational studies argue
that cross-generational language retention remains problematic,
that different receiving state practices (e.g., ethnic pluralism in the
United States versus full assimilation in France) still tilt the balance
in favor of assimilation over time, and that renewed anti-
immigrant hysteria creates further pressures for “immigrants” to
assimilate or “go home” rather than maintaining the double-
consciousness required of transmigrants. Thus, what is the
likelihood that contemporary transnational practices will be
reproduced beyond first generation migrants?
In order to answer this question we will address three factors
connected to the processes of migration, namely: the micro-
dynamics of migration; the globalization of capitalism and
economic reorganization of the economy; and the technological
revolution. With regard to the micro-dynamics of migration we
must differentiate the reproduction of networks and households.
The social diffusion of a given social practice, like transnational-
ism, may be either kin- or non-kin-based. Village-based migration,
18 Transnationalism from Below

for example, has become a fact of life for many Mexican localities
where thousands of migrants to the United States have originated.
However historically resilient, the actual process of migration is
not reproduced exclusively by kinship networks. Migrants from the
same family often do emigrate North generation after generation.
Yet, because of the locality-based character of circular migration
from Mexico, many families, whose members had not ever emi-
grated before may join the process at any particular time (Massey
et. al. 1987). In other words, the reproduction of migration is so-
cial, not just familial.
This is what Robert Smith and Luin Goldring (this volume)
mean by the concept of “transnational communities.” Smith, for
example, appropriates Alarcon’s (1994) depiction of such locality-
based structures of reproduction as “rural Mexican communities
that specialize in the production and reproduction of international
migrant workers.” Such transnational social structures are sustained
by social networks in migration and their attendant modes of social
organization—home town associations, economic remittances,
social clubs, celebrations and other bi-national social processes as
well as by more indirect technological means of transportation and
communication now available to facilitate the reproduction of
transnational social fields such as jet airplanes, sattelite dishes,
telephones, faxes, and e-mail.
The examples provided in all of our case studies of trans-
migration well illustrate the interaction of global economic restruc-
turing, the technological revolution, and the microdynamics of mi-
grant social practices in reproducing transnational social fields.
Global restructuring has created contextual conditions in the form
of labor demand and labor market conditions in both rural agricul-
ture (Zabin 1995) and in manufacturing and services in global cities
like New York (Sassen-Koob 1984) favorable to transnational
migration. The technological revolution in transportation and
communications has facilitated the simultaneous maintenance of
bi-national connections by migrating members of the new
transnational working class. But it is the everyday practices of mi-
grants that provide a structure of meaning to the acts of crossing
borders, living in bi-national households, and reproducing
 The Locations of Transnationalism 19

transnational social relations. Such meanings are not exhausted by

the economistic rubric represented in the concept of “household
reproduction.” Rather, they may involve the production of local
or global status positions (compare Goldring with Matthei and D.
Smith, this volume), the reconfiguration of local power relations
(R. Smith, this volume) or the transgression of racial and gendered
boundaries (Sørensen, this volume). Politically organized transna-
tional networks and movements also weld together transnational
connections by constituting structures of meaning. Historically
specific examples include coalitions forged by international
political and economic organizations (Drainville, this volume),
cross-border labor organizing and “principled issue networks”
advancing the cause of human rights, environmental justice,
political democratization, and gender or racial equality (Sikkink
1993; Brysk 1993; M.P. Smith,1994; Mahler this volume). Once
established, the maintenance and reproduction of relations of
power, status, gender, race, and ethnicity become inextricably
enmeshed in the reproduction of transnational social fields.
Moreover, recall that transational flows are not limited to
transmigrants bodily geographic mobility. They also include
multiple exchanges of monetary and non-monetary resources,
material and symbolic objects, commodities and cultural values.
Even in the highly unlikely event that every new immigrant
became “settled” and severed all her or his connections with their
country of origin, a continuous flow of new arrivals and material
goods may reproduce a transnational social field. So too may the
continuous flow of ideas and information provided by global media,
ethnic tourism, and religious or secular festivals and rituals. All of
these mechanisms have played a role in the re-emergence of
transnational ties. Even in cases in which the sense of
connectedness with the old country appear to have vanished, we
find second and even third generation immigrants to the United
States and other nation-states retaking the banner of ethnic pride
and nationalism—e.g., the new nationalism vis-à-vis the Balkans
and the Baltic states. Louisa Schein’s case study of the invention
of Hmong transnational ties with the Miao ethnic minority in
China shows that it is now even possible to completely reinvent
20 Transnationalism from Below

one’s ethnic origins by the production, diffusion, and consumption

of culturally oriented ethnic videos laden with geographical images
and cultural icons. By these means, Hmong refugees from Laos are
currently constructing a myth of cultural origins linked not to Laos
but to Miao regions of China. Does this intriguing example mean,
as some postmodernists would contend, that personal and social
identity are completely malleable and that, in our postmodern
world, anybody can become anybody else? We think not, but, as we
shall see, the answer to this question is not as simple as it seems.

Transnationalism and Identity Politics

There is a tension in the literature on transnationalism between

postmodern cultural studies’ conception of identity construction as
a free-floating, if not voluntaristic, process of individual self-
formation and the many empirical studies of bi-national migrants,
transnational social movements, and international organizational
networks which envisage personal identity as embedded in socially
structured and politically mediated processes of group formation
and collective action. How can personal identity be seen as both
hybrid and channeled, multipositional and network-bound, trans-
gressive and affiliative, freely formed yet socially determined?
In a chapter of Reading the Postmodern Polity (1990: 70-72),
entitled “American Fictions and Political Culture,” social theorist
Michael Shapiro offers an insightful way to reconcile this apparent
contradiction. Building on the work of Foucault, but moving be-
yond his conceptual categories, Shapiro calls for a mapping of the
“competing situations, local spaces, discourses, media, and gen-
res...which affect the building of a person’s consciousness of self
and others.” Among the different venues “through which people
move as they form and reform their character and identity over
time,” Shapiro singles out such historicized and socially structured
discursive fields as “educational space, military space, metropolitan
space, [and] foreign ideational space.” Shapiro makes a persuasive
case for the post-structuralist view of subjectivity in which the
“self” is envisaged as “fragmented and in contention as it is
dispersed over a variety of dominant and peripheral discursive
practices rather than existing as a homogeneous, centered steering
 The Locations of Transnationalism 21

mechanism.” Yet the decentered subject is not a free-floating

subjectivity. Rather, the discursive fields through which people
travel as they move through life constitute alternative, socially
structured bases for the inner tension and contention over selfhood
and identity. In this way various “social spaces” like trans-local
migrant networks, transnational working arrangements, and global-
ized neo-liberal ideology, can be viewed as affecting the formation
of character, identity, and acting subjects at the same time that
identity can be seen as fluctuating and contingent, as the contexts
through which people move in time-space change and are appro-
priated and/or resisted by acting subjects.
The implications of the foregoing analysis for the study of
transnational processes are intriguing. The discursive spaces
through which transnational actors move are socially structured
and shape character and identity—as do more general and enduring
features of social structure, such as patriarchical gender relations,
racial hierarchies, and economic inequality. Yet, as we have argued,
the localized contexts of social action are important and differ-
entiated, thus making possible a wider space for identity formation
and “made character” than social structural inequalities and
power/knowledge venues alone would predict. The loyalties and op-
positions forged by transnational social networks, the ideological
projects of transnational political actors, and the metropolitan
cultures in which transnational processes are located, are more
often in a state of “becoming” rather than “arrival.” They
constitute opportunities as well as constraints. In short, personal
identity formation in transnational social spaces can best be
understood as a dialectic of embedding and disembedding which,
over time, involves an unavoidable encumbering, dis-encumbering,
and re-encumbering of situated selves. Identity is contextual but
not radically discontinuous. People seek to be situated, to have a
stable mooring, an anchor amidst the tempest. Ticuanese moving
between New York and Ticuani may conceive of themselves differ-
ently than they did before migration but they do not conceive of
themselves as postmodern role-players on the global stage.
The complexities of transnational-identity politics are well
illustrated in several of the contributions to this volume. These
22 Transnationalism from Below

case studies lucidly capture emergent spaces of group loyalty and

identity formation ushered in by transnational investment, migra-
tion, and political mobilization, both between and within various
scales of state and community. One of the most obvious discourses
of identity centers around the group loyalties and affiliations
fostered by localities and by the state. In the case studies by Louisa
Schein and Alan Smart and Josephine Smart political elites of the
local state in different Chinese regions forge links and construct a
cultural sense of “weness” with U.S.-based Hmong cultural brokers
and Hong Kong-based entrepreneurs, respectively, that bypass na-
tional party loyalties and the ideology of the Chinese state. The
Chinese state, eager to attract foreign remmitances and
investment, tolerates these trans-local ties within its borders, but
remains watchful, worried about the risks of ethnic separatism and
the erosion of the ruling party’s control of local politics. Unlike
Robert Smith’s and Luin Goldring’s Mexican transmigrants who are
concerned with reconfiguring power and status relations within
their villages of origin and maintaining a reconfigured home-town
identity, the Smarts’ Hong Kong small capitalists carefully avoid
establishing economic ties in their villages of origin in China for
fear of the “excess”—i.e, non-business related—expectations and
demands that might be thrust upon them if they did invest there,
thus minimizing the cost of negative social capital. Their basis for
building transnational economic and social relations is “situated
ethnicity” (i.e., a constructed “transnational Chineseness”) rather
than home town loyalty. Despite their differences, each of these
cases illustrates the persistent pull of “locality” as a social space of
identity formation in transnational social fields.
Similarly, the experiences of Dominicans in New York City and
Madrid and Haitians and Belizians in the United States discussed in
this volume question the hopeful expectations of those who argue
that transnational practices and identities constitute “counter-
narratives of the nation” that subvert essentialist nationalist iden-
tities (Bhabha 1990: 300). If anything, these cases suggest the
reinscription of group identities by transnational actors “from
below” as efforts to recapture a lost sense of belonging by recre-
ating imagined communities. These identities forged from below
 The Locations of Transnationalism 23

are often no less essentialized than the hegemonic projects of

nation states. Identities forged “from below” are not inherently
subversive or counter-hegemonic. Yet they are different from
hegemonic identities imposed from above. The process of
subaltern identity formation is a process of constant struggle—a
struggle in which discursive communities produce narratives of
belonging, resistance, or escape. In these grand narratives of per-
sonal meaning, the spaces available for forming non-essentialist
identities, while not entirely absent, are interstitial—i.e., they
open up between such dominant discursive venues as the “nation-
state,” the “local community,” and the “ethno-racial community.”
The process of marking differences within these essentialized
identities is no easy task, however necessary and desirable it may
be. Power, including the power to resist hegemonic projects, exists
latently at all levels of the global system. But to materialize, it
must be socially organized, and cannot be taken for granted as in-
herently embedded in phantom discourses “from below.” The lit-
erature on transnational grassroots movements reviewed by Mahler
underlines this point. Resistance to the kind of hegemonic neo-lib-
eral project discussed by Drainville is more than merely sponta-
neous or episodic. Despite their scattered successes, these transna-
tional movements are nonetheless systematically organized by the
intentional human agency of human rights organizations (Sikkink
1993), solidarity networks of indigenous peoples (Nagengast and
Kearney 1990; Smith 1994), grassroots political leaders (e.g., the
Central American Solidarity and Zapatista movements), cross-
border labor organizers (e.g., the tri-lateral labor struggle against
NAFTA), and other issue-oriented interest groups (see, for exam-
ple, Eisenstadt and Thorup 1994).
Furthermore, while transnational practices may reduce power
asymmetries based on gender and race, and even promote solidarity
based on these dimensions, such asymmetries often tend to persist
not only as a steady source of struggle, but also of identity. For
example, Ticuanense in New York, while marginalized by
mainstream society, affirm and recreate an essentialized group
identity by positioning themselves as racially superior to their
equally impoverished Puerto Rican and African American
24 Transnationalism from Below

neighbors. Analogously, Mixtec immigrants remain discriminated

against and marginalized by their fellow mestizo Mexicans in the
United States, while women’s subordination vis-à-vis men endures,
although to a lesser degree than in their communities of origin
(Sørensen, this volume; Guarnizo 1997; Hondangneu-Sotelo 1994;
Levitt 1994; Pessar 1994).

Future Directions for Transnational Studies

It should be apparent from what we have already said that there

is a need to “stretch” the study of “transnationalism from below”
to encompass the scope of global processes, as well as to focus
empirical research upon the “local” specificity of various socio-
spatial transformations. This means that the traditional methods
for studying people in local communities—ethnography, life his-
tories, and historical case studies, must be contextualized and his-
toricized to take into account four central dimensions of transna-
tional socio-economic and political transformation:
1. the globalization of capitalism and the repositioning of
states, nations, and class, gender and ethno-racial forma-
tions within this global restructuring;
2. the transnational dimension of global political transforma-
tions like decolonization, the universalization of human
rights, and the rise of cross-national institutional networks;
3. the transnational social relations made possible by the
technological revolution in the means of transportation
and communication; and
4. the spatial expansion of social networks “from below” that
facilitate the reproduction of migration, business practices,
cultural beliefs, and political agency.
The challenge then is twofold, namely: to integrate macro- and
micro-determinants into analysis, and to develop an appropriate
research strategy capable of capturing the complexity of transna-
tional processes. In undertaking this task it should be kept in mind
that it is impossible to study unmediated agency; structural factors
are omnipresent. The definition of an appropriate unit of analysis
is thus central to the exercise of situating transnationalism. Should
 The Locations of Transnationalism 25

the unit be the individual, the household, transnational organiza-

tions, the global system, or all of the above?
Three major shortcomings have limited the explanatory power
and reliability of existing theories of transnationalism. We will dis-
cuss each of these in turn. The first is the use of disparate and not
always clearly stated levels of analysis. If scholars of transnational-
ism were to state at the outset the level of analysis they were
using, particularly whether it was macro-, meso-, or micro-struc-
tural, this would help define not only the unit of analysis, but also
the most suitable research methods to use. Each level of analysis
has advantages and limitations not only for what can be examined,
but more importantly, for the extent to which the researcher can
generalize from her or his inquiry.
Given the complexity of transnational processes, we think that
a fruitful approach for future transnational research would be to
start from a meso-structural vantage point, the point at which
institutions interact with structural and instrumental processes.
This would facilitate incorporating into one’s analysis both the
effects of macrostructural processes and those generated by micro-
structures and practices. In contrast, starting from the macro-
structural vantage point may lead to the kind of overgeneralization
that produces the self-fulfilling “grand theories” that have been the
postmodern object of derision. This is particularly problematic
when scholars become so wrapped up in the theoretical elegance of
their formulations, e.g., “late capitalism,” or time-space
“distantiation” or “compression,” that they altogether ignore
empirical analysis of the world “out there” (See for example,
Jameson 1984; Giddens 1991; Harvey 1990). The contribution to
this volume by André Drainville nicely avoids this pitfall by
grounding the analysis of the social production of the hegemonic
ideology of neo-liberalism in the political practices of historically
specific macro-level actors “from above” as well as the particular
forms of resistance that are emerging “from-below.”
Other contributors to this volume have avoided the equally
problematic pitfall of starting analysis at the micro-structural
level, namely, that in privileging “personal knowledge,”
researchers may develop a kind of solipsistic tunnel vision that
26 Transnationalism from Below

altogether fails to connect human intentions to social structure and

historical change. One of the most complicated components to
investigate is that of the micro-dimension of transnationalism. To
understand transnationalism from below as well as from above, it is
crucial to systematically study the translocal micro-reproduction
of transnational ties. Specifically, it is crucial to determine how
transnational networks work, and in that sense, how principles of
trust and solidarity are constructed across national territories as
compared to those which are locally based and maintained. What
discourses and practices hold these principles in place? How are
social closure and control organized across borders to guarantee
loyalty and curtail malfeasance? How do transnational relations
interact with local power structures, including class, gender and
racial hierarchies? More generally, how does translocality affect
the sociocultural basis supporting transnational relations and ties?
This task presents serious challenges as well as new opportuni-
ties for creative scholarship. All of the contributors to this volume
who have used field research have been required by the character of
the transnational processes of investment, migration, and political
organization to pursue a multi-locational research strategy that
crisscrosses national, cultural, and institutional boundaries. For ex-
ample, Louisa Schien’s inventive deployment of unorthodox
ethnographic methods moves back and forth between text and
context, observation and participation, the United States and
China, acting out her self described role as an ethnographic nomad.
This flexible and reflexive approach is also apparent in the
postmodern reading of Dominican migrant women’s identities pro-
vided by Ninna Sørensen in the Dominican Republic, the United
States and Spain. The study of rural Mexican and Salvadoran
transnationals, members of the Haitian diaspora, Belizian transna-
tional households, and Hong Kong Chinese transnational en-
trepreneurs all require multipositionality. As James Clifford (1992)
has suggested, the study of “travelling cultures” requires travelling
researchers.3
The second common conceptual pitfall in transnational studies
has been a conflation that confuses transnational social relations
with the effects of these relations on social organization and
 The Locations of Transnationalism 27

regrouping in the nations involved. Often, analytical concep-

tualizations of how transnational relations take place, such as
through a “transnational social network”or by means of a
“transnational circuit,” are interchangeably used with other con-
cepts that speak to the social organization emerging from transna-
tional practices, e.g., “transnational communities” or “binational
societies.” Moreover, the theorized transnational spaces in which
these actions occur, i.e., “transnational social fields” (Glick Schiller
et. al. 1992, 1995), are often rather carelessly thrown into the
cauldron of transnationalism. Regardless of the theoretical richness
and utility that researchers have given to each of these
conceptualizations, it is important to keep in mind the theoretical
differences among each of these types of conceptualization and to
consider the implications of each.
It is important to try to sort out which of these conceptualiza-
tions carries the most promise for future research directions. A
useful starting point in this exercise is to ask which captures more
of the discernable consequences of transnationalism on social or-
ganization and restructuring. Given the complexity and unevenness
of this emerging social organization, the concept of “transnational
social formation,” seems to offer some promise of capturing what
is actually happening. This is because this conceptualization
signifies the transterritorialization of a complex array of socioeco-
nomic and political asymmetries, hegemonic discourses, and
contradictory cultural practices and identities, which center around
the formation and reconstitution of the nation-state. It implies a
process in which what has conventionally been seen as belonging
within well defined territorial boundaries (i.e, political institutions
and practices as well as social and cultural relations), has spilled
over national borders, producing something new, namely new
social formations.
The third limitation of existing knowledge about transnational-
ism is the lack of comparative studies. Future research centered on
the comparative analysis of diverse cases of transnationalism
would clearly advance the field. Comparative studies are needed at
different scales and may take different forms. Several examples of
particularly useful comparisons come to mind:
28 Transnationalism from Below

a) comparing the practices of the same group in different lo-

calities, whether it is a migrant group or a participating
component of a transnational social movement, to deter-
mine the effect of localities;
b) comparing and contrasting forms of transnational practices
undertaken by different groups in similar locations, to ex-
amine the effect of group differences;
c) comparing the practices of migrants and states vis-à-vis
transmigration in different broadly geo-political regions
(e.g., Latin America and the Asian-Pacific) to determine if
differences within regions are greater than differences be-
tween regions;
d) comparing the consequences of neo-liberal policies in dif-
ferent places where they have been “localized” to tease out
new spaces of domination, accommodation, and resistance.
In all of these cases systematic comparative examination can
shed light on key differences and similarities of contemporary
transnationalism.
In studying transnational processes, as Mahler has suggested, a
sense of scale, and thus some common indicators, are needed to
determine the weight and prevalence, as well as the frequency,
density, and intensity of transnational relations in the societies and
communities involved. We believe, however, that this search for
empirical measures of scale, scope, and impact should be
undertaken with caution. Quantitative measurement cannot replace
qualitative investigation of social, economic, and political
processes. Quantitative and qualitative analysis are complemen-
tary. Thus, quantitative evidence of transnational processes should
be qualified by interpreting it in the context of ethnographic in-
sights which quantitative methods cannot capture.
In doing this, it must be kept in mind that positivist taxonomies
can lead to the erroneous conceptualization of transnationalisms as
“things” that can be readily “measured” such that a person or
group may be conceived as being “more or less transnational.”
Transnationalism is neither a thing nor a continuum of events that
can be easily quantified. It is a complex process involving macro-
and micro-dynamics. In our view, a main concern guiding
 The Locations of Transnationalism 29

transnational research should be the study of the causes of

transnationalism and the effects that transnational practices and
discourses have on preexisting power structures, identities, and so-
cial organization. Put differently, the causes and consequences of
transnationalism, from above and below, ought to form the center
of the transnational research agenda. Both quantitative and quali-
tative methods ought to focus on elucidating these questions.
Whether using ethnographic, quantitative, or comparative-
historical methods, transnational studies must clearly identify
social and political agency—i.e., who initiates and thus who
determines the direction of any transnational action under study.
In investigating the “above” and the “below” of transnational
action, we should guard against the common mistake of equating
“above” exclusively with global structures or agents. Categorizing
transnational actions as coming from “above” and from “below”
aims at capturing the dynamics of power relations in the transna-
tional arena. By definition, these categories are contextual and
relational. Thus they cannot be taken as essential, immutable
categories. As Schein’s study so pointedly shows, Hmong cultural
brokers act “from below” vis-à-vis the United States and Chinese
states by transgressing traditional borders while simultanteously
they act “from above” vis-à-vis the Miao objects of their tourist
gaze. Similarly, the explicit or implicit intentionality of the agent
undertaking an action carries tremendous sociological weight,
regardless of the final intended and unintended consequences of the
action. Thus, we must avoid, at all costs, confusing intentionality
with consequences, as when actors are designated “resistant” or
“oppositional” because their practices produce some social change,
even when it was not one they intended, fought for, or socially or-
ganized. In the last instance, as we have shown, “transnationalism
from below” must be located and historicized if its is to have any
meaningful referent capable of being studied now or in the future.
30 Transnationalism from Below

Notes
1. We wish to thank Alexis Ohran for her able editorial support at all stages of
our work on this volume, John Dale for his editorial scrutiny of the final
manuscript, and Anita LaViolette for her expert assistance in preparing the
final manuscript for publication. We are indebted to the insightful work of
each of the authors contributing to this volume as well as to the anonymous
reviewers who assisted us in the difficult task of selecting articles from
among the many fine manuscripts submitted in response to our call for
papers for Volume 6.
2. With respect to class structuration, the queuing of migrants into particular
socioeconomic positions abroad is maintained not only by such contextual
forces as labor market conditions and employers’ recruitment patterns, but
also by the inertia of social networks. Ethnic labor niche formation, based
on social networking, has been widely documented by migration scholars
(Waldinger 1994, 1996; Model 1993; Portes and Borocsz 1989; Lieberson
1980). However, aggregate data tend to overlook the effects of regionalism
and ethnic stratification among people coming from the same country, with
all the inequalities they imply. For example, the subordination of and dis-
crimination against indigeneous peoples in countries of origin are repro-
duced upon immigration, as in the case of Mexican Mixtecs in California
(See Zabin 1995).
3. This approach is greatly facilitated by contemporary means of transporta-
tion and communication. However, emergent patterns of transnational
mobility place significant limitations on this research approach.
Transmigrants from the same country of origin are now leaving from more
regions and are following a more diverse and more diasporic migratory path
than in the past. For example, in addition to the United States, significant
and increasing numbers of Caribbean, Latin American and Asian
populations are also migrating within their own regions and to Europe and
Japan. More often than not these migrants are moving to more than one
location in the countries of destination making their geographical
dispersion more intense and more difficult to track by lone researchers. To
counter these limitations, the ethno-centric and sometimes even
imperialistic approach traditionally used by scholars from core countries
should be revised and transnational, collaborative projects with scholars in
countries of origin should be explored.

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