Immigration and Transnationalism

The activities linking immigrants to their countries of birth—the sending of remittances, travel, communication, political activity, business investment—are increasingly important and visible in the global age. They also generate controversy and acclaim in both contexts, that is, birth countries and new countries of residence.

Although widely studied, the global aspects of immigration remain misunderstood, both by scholars convinced that globalization is leading to a deterritorialized world of unbounded loyalties and flows, and by policymakers hoping to turn migration into a means of development. These views, however, ignore the ways in which contemporary nation-states (especially the most powerful among them) circumscribe the immigrants’ social connections while transforming their identities. Social scientists who are convinced of the newness of the contemporary pattern and inattentive to the relevant historiography have also reproduced the duality between an “open” present and a “closed” past. Historians have responded by demonstrating relevant precedents, a crucial contribution, yet one which begs the questions of how, why, and to what extent immigrants’ “here-there” connections have changed.

International migration inherently generates cross-border connections: remittances, letters, phone calls, visits, investments, all of which affect the places and people left behind. These connections lead to greater connectedness, driving down the costs of cross-border exchanges and spurring additional departures; migrants’ movement to a rich society provides them with the resources needed to keep up cross-border ties; those resources combine with the new freedoms made possible by emigration to produce continuing engagement with homeland politics, often providing the migrants with greater levels of influence than previously experienced; and, seeking to access those resources while controlling migrant behavior, sending states develop policies aimed at engagement with their diasporas.

These cross-state ties are put in place by masses of individuals taking a common path in the pursuit of a better life, doing so in parallel, without direction or coordination, and against the preferences of home and receiving states. Whereas the buildup of immigrant populations, networks, and communities generates an institutional infrastructure, encompassing organizations dedicated to maintaining homeland ties and engaging in homeland affairs, most immigrants are mainly interested in their own nonpolitical agendas. Although not [Page 882]bereft of homeland patriotism and ready to help with monetary contributions when disaster strikes their home country, most migrants are concerned mainly with the cross-state ties that connect them to immediate kin; they show less interest in the local communities left behind and even less interest in neighboring communities where they never lived.

The result of uncoordinated, mass behavior, migrant cross-state social action is conditioned by the stateness of the receiving environment. Wealth remains contained within the boundaries of the destination states on which South-to-North migrants converge, making immigration a technique for closing the gap between rich and poorer places, either by sending home money or saving it to be used for investments upon return. Although borders have become more heavily guarded in a post-9/11 world, once traversed, they prove to be protective, insulating migrants from the pressures of their home countries and often providing political freedoms that were unavailable there. The material and the political combine: The receiving country's wealth generates resources used for leverage back home; further advantages come from the skills, allies, ideas, and experiences acquired in a new political system.

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