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Transnationalism

The term transnationalism refers to the circulation of goods and ideas between two or more countries that create new identities, communities, and cultures distinct from both sending countries and receiving countries. In many cases, transnational migration results in the geographical separation of family members for lengthy periods of time. Transnational-ism redefines motherhood to include mother-child relations in one transnational community, or more commonly, mother-child kinship relations stretched across national, political, and cultural boundaries.

Beginnings in Transnational Labor

The phenomenon of transnationalism stems from the dramatic increase in transnational labor. Advanced globalization in agricultural and industrial production systems results in male and female workers having to move across borders in search for better labor markets.

While transnational labor migration includes some managerial, technology, and business elites, most labor migrants are blue-collar service and production laborers, and are increasingly female. At the same time, increasingly restrictive immigration policies of the receiving counties make it more difficult, if not impossible, to migrate or later reunite with children. Consequently, international circulation of migrant women from poor countries created a situation where millions of mothers find themselves practicing motherhood, as well as other forms of family care, thousands of miles away from their children.

In the United States, African American women have left their children in the South for jobs in the North. Since the early 1980s, Central American women, mainly from Mexico and El Salvador, have been leaving their children behind to provide care and domestic services for California families. In Australia and in Canada, Chinese mothers are sending young children back to China to be cared for by grandmothers and extended relatives. In western European countries, thousands of eastern European and North African women are serving as nannies and homemakers, supporting their children who remained in their countries of origin. Also, Turkish, Romanian, and Polish women work in Germany; Moroccan women work in Spain; and Algerian women work in France. There are several factors that determine the particular combination of the nationalities of transnational migrant workers, and the country in which they work. These factors include geographical proximity (Mexicans in the United States), colonialism (Algerians in France), history of slavery (black women from the southern United States), informal networks (Filipina in Saudi Arabia), and international agreements (Caribbean women in Canada).

Redefining Conventional Motherhood

Most literature on immigration regards spatial rupture of transnational mothers from children as an irregularity, a temporary stage, stressing the negative impact of this experience on mothers and their children, especially where they are expected to look after other people's children. However, more recent literature on transnationalism considers multilocality not just a necessary stage before complete migration, but rather as a social reconfiguration of motherhood that help mothers and children to maintain multilocalized belonging. Transnational-ism does not suspend, but rather redefines, conventional discourses of motherhood. Transnationalism develops new strategies for dealing with maternal roles. In comparison to unilocal mothering, multilocal transnational mothering is characterized by both an enhancement of the provider's role and a reconfiguration of the nurturer's role.

One of the major features of transnationalism is the flow of financial support from receiving countries to sending countries. Mothers who cross the border in search for a source of livelihood are regularly sending remittances to their children back home. According to the World Bank, in 2004, transnational remittances exceeded $126 billion. These remittances pay for children's food, housing, clothing, education, health expenses, and occasionally, to finance local caregivers.

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