Transnationalism Unbound: Detailing New Subjects, Registers and Spatialities of Cross‐Border Lives

Abstract

The emergence of transnationalism as a central focus in the study of migration in the early 1990s marked a significant departure in scholarly understandings of cross‐border movements and their consequences. Indeed, the recognition that migrants do not simply follow linear pathways of departure, settlement and assimilation or return has both highlighted the importance of and provided an empirical base for reconfiguring conceptualisations of nations, societies and cultures in the light of globalising processes. Initially, this emergent cross‐disciplinary field was dominated by anthropologists, sociologists and political scholars and less so by geographers, resulting in a reduced concern for the spatial characteristics and consequences of transnationalism. More recently, however, geographers have taken significant interest in both the theoretical and empirical study of transnationalism and have made a significant contribution to understandings of different subjects, registers and spatialities of this phenomenon. This article examines the different ways that geographers have engaged with issues relating to transnationalism. In particular, I argue that the work of geographers has served to unbind the study of transnationalism from its concern only with sustained forms of transnational activity, as well as the latent representational fixes and limited geographical foci of the field. Latent gaps within and future possibilities for the study of transnationalism within geography are also outlined.

Still ‘breadwinners’ and ‘providers’: Singaporean husbands, money and masculinity in transnational marriages

“…In his review of recent literature on transnational migration and mobilities, Collins (2009) highlights the analytical purchase of considering various subjects connected to the conditions of cross-border lives, whether they are migrants or non-migrants. In his review of recent literature on transnational migration and mobilities, Collins (2009) highlights the analytical purchase of considering various subjects connected to the conditions of cross-border lives, whether they are migrants or non-migrants.…”

Performing the nation between us: urban photographic sets with young migrants

“…The increasing centrality of the transnational paradigm in the study of migration during the early 1990s was marked by a relative absence of contributions by geographical scholarship (see Collins 2009). Transnational studies, as was later recognised, were dominated by a "liquid, uncontained, immaterial, and essentially metaphorical idea of space" (Collyer & King 2014: 2).…”

“…Drawing from Smith's conceptualisation, geographers engaged with transnationalism and contributed to its empirical unbinding by detailing transmigrants' and non-migrants' embodied experiences of multiplicity of transnational spaces well beyond an imaginary frictionless, dematerialised world (see Collins 2009). From these analyses, new registers of transnationalism in relation to the question of collective identity have emerged, and more nuanced understandings of the co-existence of transnational identities and integration/belonging/loyalty to the nation-state have been articulated (Collins 2009: 442-443).…”

Introducción al número especial

“…As result of these developments, migration scholars have highlighted the need to take into account how migrants themselves understand their experiences of 'integration' and transnationalism as well as their senses of affiliation and belonging to both sending and receiving societies (Ehrkamp, 2005;Walton-Roberts and Pratt, 2005;Nagel and Staeheli, 2008;Collins, 2009). In this regard, access to migrant families and their children over various generations has become both an intriguing process but also a necessary one for researchers as they shift from the objectification of the subject to understanding how we 'write culture' (Clifford and Marcus, 1986).…”