Towards a Definition

of Transnationalism
Introductory Remarks and Research Questions
NINA GLICK SCHILLER, LINDA BASCH,
AND CRISTINA BLANC-SZANTON

In the course of the past few years, anthropologists have increasingly noted
that immigrants live their lives across borders and maintain their ties to home,
even when their countries of orign and settlement are geographically distant.
To describe this new way of life, some social scientists have begun to use the
term “transnational.” However, this term is being used loosely and without
specificity. Much conceptual work needs to be done to move fiom the per-
ception that “something new is happening here” to the development of a new
conceptual framework within which to discuss contemporary international
migration.
As part of an effort to conceptualize and analyze transnational migration
in May of 1990 we brought together a group of researchers who had found
in their own field work evidence of a new pattern of migration and who had
each been trying to grapple with the implications of what they were seeing
all around them. The decision to have a workshop was a result of an odyssey
that we had embarked upon several years before. When comparing our obser-
vations of the social relations of immigrants to the United States from three
dfferent areas- the eastern Caribbean, Haiti, and the Philippines-we found
that migrants from each population were forging and sustaining multi-
stranded social relations that linked their societies of origin and settlement.
We called this immigrant experience “transnationalism” to emphasize the
emergence ofa social process in which migrants establish social fields that cross
geographic, cultural, and political borders. Immigrants are understood to be
transmigrants when they develop and maintain multiple relations- fimilial,
economic, social, organizational, religious, and political- that span borders.
We came to understand that the multiplicity of migrants’ involvements in
both the home and host societies is a central element of transnationalism.
Transmigrants take actions, make decisions, and feel concerns within a field
of social relations that links together their country of origin and their country
or countries of settlement.
Having identified and defined transnationalism, we sought to locate this
process historically and theoretically. Was transnationalism actually a new im-
ix
X INTRODUCTORY REMARKS AND RESEARCH QUEsrrONS

migration experience or was it rather that previous conceptualizations of im-

migrants and migration had precluded us from perceiving the manner in
which immigrants, as they settle in a new society, extend their social fields to
include their home societies?A research agenda developed: 1) to examine the
manner in which transnational migration is shaped by and contributes to the
encompassing global capitalist system; 2) to examine the analytical categories
with which social scientists have approached the study of migration; and
3) to analyze the manner in which transmigrants-caught between the experi-
ence of transnationalism and the dominant discourse on migration -construct
their racial, ethnic, class, national, and gender identities. We hypothesized
that transnational migration differs significantly from previous migration ex-
perience and is becoming increasingly a global phenomenon as populations
in capital-dependent countries are everywhere forced to migrate to centers of
capital in order to live. However, the manner in which transmigrants con-
ceptualize their experiences, including their collective identities, is very much
shaped by both the political and economic context of the country of origin
and the countries of settlement of the transmigrants.
In order to pursue this research agenda we formulated an initial conceptual
framework (Glick Schiller, Basch, and Blanc-Szanton, this volume), con-
tinued our own comparative studies (Basch, Glick Schiller, and Blanc-
Szanton, n.d.), and organized a workshop with others who were embarked
on similar explorations. Although the perspective of the workshop was
global, to keep the scope of analysis manageable we confined our focus to mi-
gration to the United States. The workshop was jointly sponsored by the
Anthropology Section of the New York Academy of Sciences, the Research
Institute for the Study of Man, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthro-
pological Research. It advanced our research agenda in many ways by pro-
viding invaluable documentation of the transnational migrant experience and
by honing and shaping the nature of the theoretical inquiry. The papers and
discussion presented in this volume are the fruits of that process.
The papers prepared for this workshop can be grouped around three
themes, which we have used in the organizational structure of this book. In
Part I, the Introduction, we propose a transnational perspective on migra-
tion. We argue for a global perspective, linking the emergence of transnation-
alism to recent changes in the world economy, especially the extensive pene-
tration of capital into the third world. We suggest that the transnational lives
of contemporary migrants call into question the bounded conceptualizations
of race, class, ethnicity, and nationalism which pervade both social science and
popular thinking. The papers in Part I1 proceed by discussing the ways in
which the identity of the new transnational subject is currently being con-
structed. Transformations of class practices and racial categories and the restruc-
turing of women’s and men’s lives in the deployment of cultural capital are
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS AND RESEARCH QUFSTIONS xi

all detailed. In Part 111, the relationship between transnational populations

and nation states is examined, and the challenge posed to nationalism by the
existence of these transnational populations is described.
The discussion at the workshop was far-ranging, touching both on the
specifics of the papers and on the global perspective in which the presenters
placed their data. Although we have located the discussion papers at the end
of the book, they serve not so much as a summary but as a springboard for
further thought. The papers and discussion in this book represent some of
the first steps in what is proving to be a fruitful journey.
>> <<

The workshop participants were also provided with a series of questions that
we felt need to be addressed. We include these in the hope that they may con-
tribute to the development of a research agenda to accompany this new trans-
national perspective on migration.

A. Analytical Methodology

1. Analytically, what tools d o we as social scientists have available to de-

velop a better understanding of transnational processes and to formulate a con-
ceptual framework that allows us to see these processes more clearly and chart
changes as we move into the 21st century?
2 . What concepts and terms should we use to describe the identities, per-
sonhoods, social fields, subjects, cultural citizenships, and psychic stresses
that are emerging fiom the practice of transnational migrants?

B. The Global Perspective

1. What is the relationship between transnationalism and global capitalism-

both in terms of the current historical moment and how this moment is being
experienced within the particularities of both third world sending countries
and the receiving countries?
2. How does the emergence of transnationalism relate to neocolonialism?

C. The Historical Perspective

1. Comparing past and present migrations, to what extent is this trans-

nationalism a new phenomenon?
xii INTRODUCTORY REMARKS AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS

2. What continuities exist between past and present practices of immi-

grants, who have maintairied home ties and yet settled in new geographical
locations?
3. How does what we are observing now differ from the experiences of
earlier migrant populations?
4. Were earlier migrants able to sustain active involvement in the two or
more geographical and national settings-in terms of kinship, friendship net-
works, organizational alliances, political activities?
5. How did the maintenance of home ties in earlier generations affect the
construction of national, racial, and ethnic identities?
6. How does the emergence of this new transnational subject reflect the
major recent technological leaps in the areas of communications and media
that put the world in much more immediate interaction technologically as
well as facilitate transnational processes?

D. Transnational Social Fields

1. What are the implications of current day transnationalism for kinship

relations, family organization, and the form and content of social networks?
2. To what extent are family networks now multi-class in composition and
are multiple class locations reproduced within the familial networks?
3. Do transnational networks develop new economic activities or drain
capital from immigrant enterprises?
4. How d o transmigrants develop organizations that span national borders
and how d o these organizations deploy resources and leadership positions?
5. Under what conditions do transnational media develop and how d o
such media serve to develop the transnational social field?

E. Class Background, Class Mobility, and the Emergence of Class Globally

1. What classes and strata (skilled workers, unskilled workers, small busi-
ness people, professionals, capitalists) are currently becoming transmigrants?
2. Why are different strata moving?
3. What d o the similarities and differences in the flows and agendas of
different classes and strata suggest for defining this new transnationalism?
4. Where d o transmigrants end up in the stratification and class structure
of each different country to which they have moved?
5. How d o migrants gain access to resources, education, and capital, and
how does this access assist in the reproduction of classes and affect the class
position of individual migrants?
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS xiii

6. To what degree is the immigrant’s class position in the home society

transferable to the host society?
7. To what extent can class position attained in the host society be trans-
ferable back home?
8. How are we to understand class formation, position, and consciousness
as transmigrants participate in both home and host societies?
9. What kinds of leadership roles d o transmigrant political and economic
elites assume within their immigrant populations, their host societies at large,
and in their home societies?
10. What are the implications of transnationalism for global capitalism
and concepts of class?
11. Is transnationalism contributing to the emergence of new class and
racial structures that cut across national boundaries?

F. Identity, Hegemony, and Resistance

1. How and to what degree are hegemonic constructions in home and

host societies affected by the presence of transnational populations and their
practices?
2 . What types of racial and ethnic constructions emerge when trans-
migrants participate simultaneously in two or more polities and are exposed
to two or more hegemonic systems with differing constructions of identity?
3. What role d o the governments of the home and host societies play in
developing and/or shaping the identities of the transmigrant populations?
4. How d o dominant strata and political and economic elites use culture
to further their own agendas, grounded in the political economy of each lo-
cation in the transmigrant field?
5 . How d o transmigrants confront, resist and accommodate to the
different racial, social, and political structures of the several societies in which
they take part?
6. When transmigrants participate in several different racial systems simul-
taneously how are their sense of social position, their concepts of race, and
their emergence as political actors affected?
7 . Capital and labor are global yet the world is still very much divided into
nation states, and internal and external oppositions are expressed in nation-
alist terms. To what extent does transnationalism perpetuate nationalist iden-
tifications or will it lead to morc encompassing forms of identification?
8. How aware are transmigrants of their particular locations within a
global labor force when they adopt strategies of migration or when they utilize
one aspect of identity or another derived from the different hegemonic con-
texts that they have experienced?
XiV INTRODUCIORY REMARKS AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS

9. To what extent and in which ways are consciousness of class, race, and
national identities being transferred, reinterpreted, resisted and transformed
as a result of transnationalism?
10. To what extent is a new transnational subject being formed who tran-
scends the hegemonic context and its disciplining practices in each nation?
11. Are we all faced with the emergence of new transnational subjectivities
that are shaping us in ways we are only barely starting to comprehend?

G. The Future

1. Is transnationalism a phenomenon of the first generation only or is it

transmitted across generations? If it is transmitted, how is this and to what
extent?
2 . What are the harmful effects of these processes on individuals, institu-
tions, and whole societies?
3. By defining, raising awareness, and naming these new transnational phe-
nomena are we contributing to the development of transnationalism as a new
form of hegemonic construction?
4. To what extent does transnationalism produce conscious resistance to
global capitalism, and to what degree might this resistance go beyond limited
challenges and contribute to calls for a reconsideration of the whole global
capitalist system and its premises?

REFERENCES CITED

Basch, Linda, Nina Glick &hiller, and Cristina Blanc-Szanton

n.d. Rethinking m@rion, ethniiq, me and nationalism in t n z m ~ l ~ c h .
New York: Gordon-Breach. Forthcoming.
Glick Schiller, Nina, Linda Basch, and Cristina Blanc-Szanton
1992 Transnationalism: A new analytic framework for understanding migration.
In Tmanha tnznmatkmulperspec& on m@&: Race, c h s , ethnuiq, and na-
tkmultim reconsiclere, edited by Nina Gtick %hiller, Linda Basch, and Cris-
tina Blanc-Szanton. Annals $the New Ymk Academy ofSciences 645:l-24. This
volume.