The paradigm of transnational migration

Nonetheless, the transnational analytical framework has struggled to disassociate itself from some problematic assumptions underlying the very types of knowledge production it was criticising. Early work on transnational migration, for instance, was overwhelmingly concerned with migration between the United States (construed as a core/centre) and places like Mexico and the Caribbean (peripheries). As Featherstone et al. indicate, initial investigations mainly focused on ‘receiving’ countries, and, much like previous migration studies research, were unable to go beyond the research agendas that funded them and required construing people moving as immigrants (or, candidates for settlement) (2007, p. 384). Over the last two decades, migration studies has morphed into transnational studies and brought many of the distortions migration studies scholars had been reproducing for decades into the ‘transnational analytical framework’. Examples of these are the unwillingness or incapacity to cast aside the distortions created by the ‘world systems’ perspective and the assumption that what they now call ‘transmigration’ only occurs in a South to North direction.

Furthermore, this transnational perspective insists on privileging the role of the state as a key point of reference and as an absolute force in regulating different typesof migrant experiences. Within this logic, activities undertaken by individuals on the move are assumed to be evidence of how states are connecting — although, many of these activities occur beyond the reach of the state. By remaining within this perspective, a great deal of theorisation about individuals on the move has failed to account for the types of movement that do not fit into linear or circulatory migration models. In short, transnational studies are still mired by the binary distinction of sending and receiving states; and contemporary mainstream transnational perspectives on human movement have not been able to avoid the dichotomies and assumptions resulting from decades of methodological nationalism and methodological immigrationism.

Contemporary notions of transnationalism go beyond the exclusive movement of people and goods across borders, and they do not have one singular common origin. Theorists in an array of fields have, at overlapping times, grappled with the issues surrounding the magnitude of the changes in contemporary social, cultural, and economic processes. Two main (and somehow convergent) perspectives emerged almost simultaneously. On the one hand, the aforementioned scholars led by Glick Schiller (Basch et ah, 1994), along with Portes et al. (1999), Rouse (1992), and Smith and Guarnizo (1998), structured the field of transnational migration. On the other hand, cultural studies and anthropology scholars such as Hannerz (1996), Appadurai (1990, 1996), and Ong (1999), provided alternative visions of transnationality by theorising transnational cultural flows, hybrid subjectivities, and entrepreneurship. These interventions further highlighted the notion that transnationalism, either conceptualised as a sociocultural phenomenon or as a perspective, is constituted by complex and multilayered sets of processes (knowledge production about this phenomenon is one of the layers). Moreover, the convergence of these two main perspectives has highlighted the increasingly difficult task of distinguishing between human and non-human forms of transnational movement. Ong (1999) made this clear when she referred to transnationality as a condition of cultural interconnectedness and mobility across space. Indeed, Ong’s theorisation attempted to close the gap between the political economy approaches in migration studies and the more anthropological/cultural studies perspectives on transnationality. In this way, she contributed to a more complex understanding of the regimes of truth and power that govern transnationality.

It is mobility, or relational approaches to mobility, as an explanation or paradigm, if you may, that best describe the complexities of contemporary human behaviour under conditions of transnationality. Unsurprisingly, as humans and things have become more mobile during the last few decades, some fields within the social sciences and humanities have made a ‘mobility turn’ (Cresswell, 2006; Urry, 2000). Yet, while mobility has brought the multiplicity and diversity of things moving to the fore, and highlighted the importance of differentiating between types of movement, it has also been criticised for overemphasising the fluidity of ideas, capital, goods, and people, rather than painstakingly showing ‘the concrete consequences that such fluidity carries for different people in different positions and localities’ (Kalir, 2013, p. 313). Moreover, as Kalir suggests, while privileging the analysis of all sorts of‘people on the move’, the gaze of researchers has remained largely stagnant. At the root of this stagnation, Kalir argues, lies a pervasive methodological nationalism that still shapes research (2013, p. 312).