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In response to the Syrian conflict, the biggest humanitarian challenge since the Second World War, aid organisations have set up large‐scale cross‐border operations. Aid convoys and workers within Syria have become targets, forcing most operations to be carried out remotely from the Turkish border city of Gaziantep, a ‘little Aleppo’ hosting more than 300,000 Syrians. This produces a transnational humanitarian social field embedded in historical, political and economic relations. Grounded in ethnographic fieldwork among aid workers and organisations providing relief assistance remotely, this article analyses the production of humanitarian remoteness, both rhetorically and in practice, shaped by remote technologies and the division of labour. In the case of Syria, the normalisation of remote practices and the dependency on local aid workers and organisations ultimately increases the distance between donors and beneficiaries inside Syria, although it reinforces the illusion of control among aid managers.

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Thanks to the latest developments in network-oriented sampling, it is now possible to measure “transnational social fields,” or emergent social structures that connect places or regions in different countries. These structures are instrumental in explaining sociocultural phenomena like the emergence of ethnic or demographic enclaves, social and economic remittances, and ethnic identifications. Nevertheless, they have only been mentioned metaphorically so far.

In this article we focus on individuals’ structural embeddedness in transnational social fields (TSFs) and examine how this is related to patterns of international mobility. The main argument is that the structure of TSFs matters for (im)mobility trajectories, and thus all actors (migrants, non‐migrants, and returnees) need to be examined as a whole to obtain a deeper understanding of the role of social networks in processes of transnational mobility. Taking the case of Romanian migrants in Spain as a TSF connecting their place of origin (Dâmbovița in Romania) with their destination (Castelló in Spain), we analyze survey data for 303 migrants, non‐migrants, and returnees, sampled through an RDS‐like binational link‐tracing design. We then categorize types of personal network using an international mobility scale to assess the degree of structural embeddedness in the TSF. An important contribution is the rigorous operationalization of TSF and assessment of the level of migratory capital of each individual. Our results reveal that migratory capital is not always linked positively with high mobility patterns and that its role is strongly related to the overall composition and structure of the TSF.

Publicar una enciclopedia en los tiempos de Wikipedia es cuando menos valiente, sobre todo para tratar un tema tan impreciso y complejo como la informalidad. Sin embargo, debido a la necesidad académica de organizar las prácticas informales y poder consultarlas de forma accesible, los dos tomos de 500 páginas de Ledeneva pueden colocarse en un sitio importante de nuestras librerías, ya sea en la de casa o en la del disco duro. Más allá de la utilidad comparativa y la monumentalidad tipológica de esta enciclopedia global de la informalidad, su editora, Alena Ledeneva, publicó en 1998 una espléndida y referenciada etnografía sobre informalidad, Russia's Economy of Flavours. Blat, Networking and Informal Exchange (Ledeneva, 1998). En ella analiza el blat, un concepto intraducible que ella misma define como una práctica de intercambio de 'favores de acceso' en situaciones de escasez y cotidianeidad que invierte los privilegios estatales utilizando redes personales informales (Ledeneva 1998, p.37). Ledeneva agradece en el libro el apoyo y los comentarios de Anthony Giddens, Zygtmun Bauman o Marylin Strathern, lo que puede ayudar a situar la importancia (y el sostén) de su propuesta. Además de esa primera etnografía sobre redes informales en Rusia, la autora ha completado una trilogía estudiando las redes profesionales que han reemplazado al blat a nivel político e institucional (Ledeneva, 2006), así como el sistema de gobernanza informal mediante redes de poder organizado por Putin (Ledeneva, 2013), explorando fenómenos informales hasta ahora inasibles en los estudios post-socialistas.

Post-Weberian definitions see the state–individual relationship as a “do ut des” one. The state grants protection, education, medical care, and its citizens contribute labour, compliance, and taxes. When this does not occur, it is generally accepted that the citizens are deviating from state goals. However, there are cases where lack of compliance stems from the fact that society members do not feel protected by formal structures, and they rely on informal ones to replace, supplement, or even compete with state institutions. The starting point of this article is that this lack of support may result from enhanced labour mobility (and migration) across Europe, and may enhance the creation and persistence of informal practices. Taking advantage of two case studies, Romanian migrants to Spain and ethnic entrepreneurs in Croatia, we observe how governance is constructed and provide two novel interpretative frameworks. First, we explore the use of informality (informal practices) to suggest that apparently insignificant actions that are repeated routinely and without much thought, are a way to contribute to the construction of the political and that everyday governance should receive more attention. Second, we use this claim to argue that a better understanding of informality can help identify governance areas where interventions are more urgent. These are the spheres of public life where it is possible to identify a larger gap between the wishes of a state and the ways citizens actually act as they informally avoid or bypass its rules.

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