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The introduction explains themes of being Catholic and a Latin American transnational migrant through an eye to the entrenched anxiety in the Catholic Church about the never-ending project of full conversion of the Americas. In Rome, Mexican and Latin American nation-state memories and affective returns of religious histories are, on one hand, harvested by conservative streams of the Catholic Church producing re-narrativisations of martyrdoms and of a Church under attack. On the other hand, migrant devotional practices and socialities in Rome engender new possibilities for a migrant Catholic presence that shapes Catholicism in new directions, from the Catholic Church’s Christocentric catechism toward the New Evangelization and conceptions of Catholicism based on notions of European civilization.

Highlights the ways in which marital ideologies are socially constructed and historically variable and suggests how transformations in these marital ideologies and their social categories can contribute to an understanding of fertility decline. The ethnographic material presented here comes from a multi‐generational study of gender, sexuality, and reproductive health among women and men in a community of transnational migrants in western Mexico and Atlanta, Georgia. Older couples in this community spoke about marriage in terms of ‘respeto’: mutual respect, gendered work obligations, and bonds of marriage, which are reinforced through reproduction. Younger couples, in contrast, presented an ideal of ‘confianza’: companionate marriage marked by a significant amount of ‘helping’ with previously gendered tasks, increased heterosociality, and greater emphasis on trust, emotional warmth, and communication than on obligation and respect.

This chapter examines the impact of transnational family migration on the relationships between Lithuanian migrant adolescents living in Ireland and their non-migrant grandmothers residing in Lithuania. Drawing on cross-generational perspectives obtained through multi-sited, in-depth interviews, this chapter focuses on three major themes, namely: 1) the changing nature of grandmother-grandchild relationship as perceived by both parties involved; 2) practices endorsed in maintaining intergenerational ties transnationally; and 3) the key factors contributing to the grandmother-grandchild relationship in transnationally dispersed families. Findings discussed in this chapter contribute to the study of intergenerational relationships by providing a more nuanced understanding of how significant physical distance and long-time separation affect relationships, contact practices, and perceived emotional ties between grandparents and grandchildren.

Chapter 1 formulates a transnational approach to the Korea question and embeds it in the larger historical and theoretical inquiry into modern sovereignty, the crisis of capitalism, and the temporality of historical change.

This chapter focuses on one of the most pressing sociopolitical challenges facing the world today: that of ensuring the well-being and dignity of individuals as they move across the globe in search of a better life. This chapter argues that migration and global mobility pose serious conceptual and practical problems for language rights. Following Jacobson (1997), This chapter shows how many states are acting as ‘midwives’ to international law as they try to accommodate the presence of foreign workers and other aliens within their territories. The chapter argues that both states and the residents within them are best placed to accommodate the challenges posed by immigration and global mobility when the emphasis is on respecting the rights of individuals, interpreted in accordance with international law. As a consequence, the notion of language rights can either be dispensed with or, if retained, interpreted as being borne by individuals (rather than groups).

This chapter provides new information relating to aspects of transnational migration among high-skilled Lebanese migrants from a dual country perspective; that of the sending country, Lebanon, and of the receiving country, Kuwait. By using a dual, home and host country perspective, the chapter shows a more complete picture of some specific aspects of transnational migration, in particular, the motivations and drivers of migration, and why migrants chose Kuwait as a destination, as opposed to other GCC countries. It then explores aspects of integration and socialization to first identify the Lebanese in Kuwait who, according to this research sample, are integrated into Kuwaiti society, and to see if a transnational community was formed among and between other Lebanese in Kuwait. The chapter proceeds to explore temporal aspects of migration to discover how long migrants plan on staying in Kuwait as well as presenting data on returned migrants and the reason for their return to Lebanon. Finally, it explores remittances, which form a key feature of transnationalism.

The past twenty years have seen a call for a new transnational perspective on migration and settlement, in that traditional approaches social scientists use to understand individuals who move and settle abroad are no longer suitable for an increasingly complex world; concepts like immigrant no longer suffice because they imply a permanence to migration that no longer exists. Others claim that nations and states no longer serve as adequate units of analysis. The concept of transnationalism is said to capture more accurately the central features of immigrant and ethnic community life. This chapter argues that significant aspects of the literature on transnationalism demand historical correction: An interdisciplinary dialogue might help us to historicize general hypotheses, creating a more nuanced understanding of workers' local, national, and transnational lives. A labor history that pays attention to both the local and the transnational can temper claims about the unprecedented nature of contemporary transnationalism, particularly as it relates to the understanding of immigrant lives. Furthermore, a renewed emphasis on immigrants as workers instead of simply carriers of certain transnational identities and practices can establish a more complete picture of the lives of those who cross national boundaries in search of work, business opportunities, and better lives.

This chapter outlines the three main concepts that are derived from transnational migration studies. Transnational migration signifies mobility that not only spans geographies but also space and social fields, allowing scholars to account for and understand how (new) forms of identity, belonging, and nationhood materialize. In turn, the ongoing societal changes taking shape by way of transnational migration reflect a new reality and social condition, that of mobility and encounters between/among people across relations of difference that are themselves constantly shifting. To expand on new directions for management scholarship that are possible based on transnational migration studies, this chapter identifies three key concepts: multiscalar global perspective, moving beyond methodological nationalism and globalhistorical conjunctures. Each of these concepts are expanded upon in terms of their main points and contributions to thinking about the new social condition of mobility as it relates to theorizing people, difference and work—an endeavour that is the focus of the following three chapters.

The introduction provides the reader with a context for transnational migration studies and its importance for studying people, work and organizations today. Starting out referencing contemporary trends, such as Brexit, the election of Trump and general rise of anti-immigrant, righ-wing regimes globally, the introductory chapter lays the foundation for a transnational migration perspective. Key ideas from transnational migration studies, an interdisciplinary field born out of sociology, are explained and their relevance for theorizing and studying difference in the context of globally-mobile people made explicit. The chapter then outlines how existing approaches to the study of people and work under these new times and in the context of mobility has taken shape in the management, focusing explicitly on diversity and cross-cultural management areas. These two scholarly areas represent the dominant approach to the study of people and difference albeit there have been critical interjections into static notions of identity, place and work in these areas. Altogether, the introduction lays the foundation for the book in terms of the need for and importance of transnational migration studies as a much-needed theoretical approach for rethinking identity, difference and work in the diversity and cross-cultural management fields.

This introductory chapter explores the social organization of migration, the forces driving it, and the images that migrants produce and circulate of themselves through communicative practice and exchange between Peru and the United States, by drawing on a series of extended case studies and upon more general social theory and scholarship on migration and mobility. It also demonstrates how the difficulty of maintaining meaningful transnational lives in today's world is embedded in the process of always-partial communication between migrants, their families, their communities, and the state. The situated representations of self and Other that are produced within these relationships operate in shaping how indigenous and rural migrants strive to become mobile.

Chapter 4 examines violence against women in the context of the political economy of globalization. The first part of the chapter examines the global and local environments that accentuate gendered inequalities, migration for precarious employment, and the attendant risks of violence. The second part considers women's survival strategies, especially the choice to migrate, given the need for their labor in developed countries and for their income in often impoverished families and countries. The third part of the chapter investigates state responses to labor exploitation, highlighting the criminal justice approach adopted to stem trafficking in particular. The chapter argues that governments in sending and receiving countries have failed to protect migrant women workers and to attend to the socioeconomic inequalities at the root of labor exploitation and trafficking. The fourth part of the chapter analyzes a similar failure at the international level, noting how countertrafficking strategies tend to perpetuate violence against women with their focus almost solely on prosecution rather than prevention. The chapter concludes by considering alternative strategies for preventing violence suggested by a political economy perspective.

The following chapters offer important insights into the uneasy tension between exclusionary practices of nation building in the early years of the twentieth century and the continued reliance of the United States on the transnational migration of labor. The authors examine the process of state building without seeing that process or its ultimate geographical expression—fixed borders and sovereign states—as determining migration patterns or migrants’ sense of belonging. Far from it, in fact. They suggest new ways of thinking about the study of human migrations by using a transnational approach to examine the microlevel life projects of individual migrants and groups of migrants and, in the process, illustrate the entwined historicity and contingency of those movements to, from, and around North America. They tackle three questions of particular interest to the study of workers, the nation-state, and transnationalism: How did internationalism shape the meanings of identity and citizenship? How did international migration challenge ideas of American exceptionalism? How did migrant workers draw on their transnational experiences to gain control over their everyday lives?

This chapter approaches the Puerto Rican diaspora as a transnational colonial migration. In so doing, the author defines Puerto Rico as a nation, an imagined community with its own territory, history, language, and culture. At the same time, the island lacks a sovereign state, an independent government that represents the population of that territory. This unsovereign state has long sponsored population displacements from Puerto Rico to the United States. During the first half of the twentieth century, colonial officials embraced migration as a safety valve for the island's overpopulation. During the 1950s and 1960s the Commonwealth government spurred the “Great Migration” to the U.S. mainland. In particular, the Farm Labor Program, overseen by the Migration Division of Puerto Rico's Department of Labor, illustrates the complicated negotiations required by a transnational colonial state. In many ways, Puerto Rico's postwar migration policies anticipated those of contemporary transnational nation-states, such as the Dominican Republic.

This chapter examines remittances as an economic transaction and social practice that links macro demographic change and institutional policies with local, individual material and spatial practices. An overview of the scope and scale of remitting, as well as an examination of Manuel Gamio and Paul S. Taylor’s studies as historical antecedents of today’s remittance culture, provides context for “remittance space.” Ethnographic accounts of the social, spatial, and psychological conditions of migration and remitting also describe the inherent distances, ambivalences, and aspirations that migrants experience as they attempt to build a better life.

This concluding chapter states how the book sought to accomplish three major goals, each of which reflects an important element in the study of transnational migration and circulation between Peru and the United States. First, it dissects the reasons why people in the central highlands of Peru leave their home country. Second, it illustrates the conditions under which contemporary Andean migrants leave, how they fare, what structural constraints shape their lives and experiences, and how they reimagine their communities and themselves in the process. Finally, the book suggests a particular form of ethnography that serves both as a metaphor and fieldwork strategy in contexts where mobility has become the modus operandi of the ethnographer. The latter part of the chapter details the contributions that this case study on transnational migration between Peru and the United States make to scholarship on migration and circulation.

The opening chapter considers the evolution of financial exclusion in the UK from the 1980s onwards and the key processes that have shaped it. It identifies the emergence of distinctive geographies of financial exclusion as well as factors which render particular groups at risk of exclusion. It discusses the wide-ranging socio-economic and political implications of living at the margins of a financialised economy. Alongside this, this chapter also tells the story of growing transnational migration to the UK and specifically London, detailing the nature of this migration and the forces shaping transnational mobility. It highlights the factors underlying the exclusion of migrants from formal financial services. Finally, it outlines the complex and hybrid financial practices deployed by financially excluded individuals and households which are shaped by varying degrees of inclusion and exclusion from formal financial circuits which reflect a preference for different ways of ‘doing finance’.