Abstract
Along with structural factors, the transnational ties and activities of geographically mobile people are increasingly important factors in the emergence of transnational spaces that transcend geographic, political, social, and cultural borders (Portes et al. 1999). This book focuses on the dynamics of people’s transnational practices and the question of how they are connected to the wider processes of political, economic, sociocultural, and educational transformations that are underway. The following questions are posed: What is the role of geographically mobile people in the emergence of transnational spaces? How do the emergent transnational spaces modify people’s living conditions? To achieve an understanding of the dynamic interplay between people’s border-crossing activities and wider structural factors, four representative cases are scrutinized in detail: the transnational spaces of India–UK, Morocco–France, Turkey–Germany, and Estonia–Finland.
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Notes
- 1.
“Transformation” is used here to describe deep and far-reaching processes that, within a relatively limited time span, change societies and modify people’s living conditions. Although transformations do not necessarily result from people’s intentional actions, they often develop out of individual and collective short-term actions that are unexpected ways of constituting fundamental and long-term changes (Castles 2001, 2007; Vertovec 2004, 2009).
- 2.
The concept of “transnationalism” is used as a perspective on cross-border migrations and the ties migrants and others forge in the processes connected, as a description of actual processes happening, and as a result (e.g., desirable state of affairs, transnational social spaces) of cross-border migrations.
- 3.
The critique has led to the emergence of social transformation studies as a new analytical framework. In particular, Stephen Castles (2001: 18–20) has used the concept of “social transformation” as an analytical tool to move away from earlier simplistic ideas that economic growth is the key to everything and will automatically trickle down to improve living standards for all.
- 4.
In Europe, an important feature is the establishment of the legal and political concept of European citizenship that coexists with the national citizenship and thus in a way represents a certain kind of dual citizenship.
- 5.
The TRANS-NET project, conducted in 2008–2011, was coordinated by the University of Tampere, Finland (http://www.uta.fi/projects/trans-net).
- 6.
The results of these studies are available in the report State of the Art in the Participating Countries of the Project Transnationalisation, Migration and Transformation: Multi-Level Analysis of Migrant Transnationalism (see http://www.uta.fi/laitokset/pdf/TRANS-NET_state_of_the_art_final_3.pdf).
- 7.
The country-specific results of semistructured and life-course interviews are presented in the Country Reports, produced by each participating country (http://www.uta.fi/laitokset/kasvlait/pdf/countryreportfinland.pdf).
- 8.
In the Indian case, it became evident that India as a whole is much too large and diverse for a qualitative analysis. Thus it was agreed that the project would focus solely on the Punjab so as to study the largest and most long-standing migration channel between India and the UK.
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Pitkänen, P. (2012). Introduction. In: Pitkänen, P., Içduygu, A., Sert, D. (eds) Migration and Transformation:. International Perspectives on Migration, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3968-0_1
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