The document discusses theories of transnationalism and how views of migration have changed over time. It addresses how nation-states were previously seen as bounded entities but globalization disrupted this. Early migration studies focused on rural-urban movements but failed to consider international migration. World War I led to ideas of ethnic identity being tied to the nation-state. Recent scholarship rejects the notion that individuals belong solely to one nation and recognizes that migrants maintain ties across borders. The concept of "transmigrants" emerged to capture how immigrants live transnationally through social networks that cross borders. While most research focuses on Latin American and Caribbean migrants, transnationalism exists among other groups as well, as shown through a study of Singaporeans in London.

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“Once we rethink the boundaries of social life, it becomes clear that the incorporation of
individuals into nation-states and the maintenance of transnational connections are not
contradictory social processes” (Levitt and Glick-Schiller, 2004: 1003). Discuss in relation to
the debate on transnationalism.
‘Under conditions of transnationality, the question is whether the purported links between
individual, family, nation and citizenship are becoming more tenuous or interlocking in
tighter ways than before.’ (Ho, 2008: 158)
Migration is a discourse, which gathers multi-disciplinary interest, one studied by academics
from a wide range of disciplines, and it is this multi-scholarly discussion, which enables analyses
of migration practices to ask questions on the motivations, demographics and geographies behind
these movements. What has captured the interest of anthropologists in particular is the migrants
themselves, the lives they leave behind and the ways in which they react and interact with the
lives they encounter in their country of settlement;; ‘migrants act and are “acted upon” with
reference to their social, cultural and gendered locations’ (Brettell, 2000: 118). As Glick Schiller,
Basch and Blanc-Szanton (1992) noted in the early years of the 1990s anthropologists had
become interested in the way that ‘immigrants live their lives across borders and maintain their
ties to home even when their countries of origin and settlement are geographically distant’
(Glick-Schiller et al., 1992: ix), this trend in anthropological interest is even more prominent
today in light of the ever increasing interconnection of peoples.

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The historical trajectory of multistranded migratory relations:
Within this essay I discuss the arguments that Levitt and Glick-Schiller’s (2004) present in their
paper entitled; Conceptualising Simultaneity: A Transnational Social Field Perspective on
Society that the assimilation which migrants come to accomplish is not incompatible with the
upkeep of transnational connections;; ‘they are not binary oppositions’ (ibid: 1002). In so doing, I
place their discussion in relation to the debate on transnationalism as this allows an
understanding of the changing immigrant experience. Migrants have become able to form and
sustain ‘multistranded social relations that linked their societies of origin and settlement’ (Glick-
Schiller et al., 1992: ix), thus forming a central component of transnationalism as we know it
today. It is important, however, to first illustrate the social and historical context from which
current studies of migration have developed. In so doing, I provide an explanation of how I shall
use and define the terms ‘incorporation’ and ‘nation-states’ and why they lie at the crux of
migration discourse.
Where previously anthropologists had been confined by notions of bounded nation states and
societies seen to be home to singular cultural systems, which formed communities and citizens of
the state, by the late 19th
century and early 20th
century processes of globalisation had been seen
to have disrupted this system (Glick-Schiller et al., 1994). In the 18th
century, the notion of
individuals as belonging to only one country and thus possessing only one identity had come
about through the increasing number of nation-state building projects conducted by state leaders
and intellectuals (Glick-Schiller et al., 2006:613). Thus, previous to the rise of networks of travel

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and communication, migration was viewed to be one of internal nature, with people moving from
rural to urban locales in seeking greater work opportunities due to the newly industrialising and
urbanised cities; city life offered a different life to rural-urban village life (Simmel, 1903). In
1887, Tönnies (1957) noted that the ‘Gemeinschaft’ or rural village encompassed feelings of
belonging and community whilst the ‘Gesellschaft’ stood in opposition to this as the capitalist
city of contractual bonds. Whilst Tönnies (ibid) and Simmel (1903) noted the differing
characteristics found within urban and rural locales, the place of immigrants remained outside of
the focus of such studies. This is not to say that processes of migration were solely situated
between rural and urban locations within a nation-state instead ‘processes that cross the borders
of the state are as old as states themselves’ (Glick-Schiller, 1997: 155). However, the ideology of
containment of citizenship within borders of sole nation-states had led scholars to a theory of
‘methodological nationalism’;; the approach that took historical and social processes ‘as if they
were contained within the borders of individual nation states’ (Glick-Schiller et al., 2006: 613).
Prior to the migration which followed World War I, movement of peoples had been largely
uncontrolled with the world increasingly viewed as a mass civil society, this did not mean
however, that migrants were able to settle in recipient countries unnoticed, they stood as ‘the
stranger’ (Simmel ,1903). Simmel (ibid) notes that the migrant was regarded in terms of having a
different origin from those within the country they had travelled to but notions of ethnicity and
race did not enter into and thus they held a special place in society. Following World War I
however, views towards migrants changed significantly. An idea of ethnic or racial identification
with the nation-state had come to replace the concept of the civil society and thus as Wimmer
and Glick-Schiller (2002) noted; “the people now primarily meant a nation united through

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common ancestry and a shared homeland, no matter where its members might have wandered”
(ibid: 314). The ‘stranger’ quickly became seen as a danger to the integrity of the nation and as
someone who need to be integrated. In recent years, scholars have thus promoted the use of a
conceptual vocabulary that does not take for granted the containing nature of a nation-state or the
individual as a sole member of one state. Through this the term ‘incorporation’ has been taken up
by scholars such as Glick-Schiller (ibid) to produce a term, which, unlike ‘assimilation’ used by
migration scholars in the US and ‘integration’ used by European academics, does not obscure the
local and transnational processes. Hence, in this essay I use the term incorporation to be ‘the
processes of building or maintaining networks of social relations through which an individual or
an organized group of individuals becomes linked to an institution recognized by one or more
nation states’ (Glick-Schiller et al., 2006: 614). This concept I argue directly links to the
phenomenon of transnationalism and thus, I now enter into a discussion of the term and its
conditions and the consequences it has had on the boundaries of social life.
Transnationalism:
Whereas previously economic success and social status depended exclusively on rapid
acculturation and entrance into mainstream circles of the host society, at present they
depend (at least for some) on cultivating strong social networks across national borders.
(Portes, Guarnizo and Landolt, 1999: 229)
Transnationalism in the 1970s was primarily linked to; economic relations, the rise of
transnational corporations led to the establishment of organisations and institutions which

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operated below the state level but transcended state borders in an effort to maximise profits and
expand trade networks (Wayland, 2007: 55). However by the 1990s, transnationalism had
evolved within the social and political sciences to transnational relations on an individual and
non-corporate level;; transnational practices were then seen ‘to cover all spheres of social action’
(Itzigsohn and Saucedo, 2002: 768). In 1992, Glick-Schiller, Basch and Szanton-Blanc, applied
the discourse of transnationalism directly to the domain of the immigrant in an attempt to
reconfigure anthropological knowledge and discourse away from a tradition of migration studies
which had taken nation-states for granted and had ignored contemporary shifts in the relations of
migrants. From studies of Caribbean, Haitian and Philippine migration to the United States they
found that there was an emergence of a social process ‘in which migrants establish social fields
which cross geographic, cultural and political borders’ (Glick-Schiller et al., 1992:ix). Rather
than being uprooted from their countries of origin, they instead maintain relations, making as
Margolis notes;; ‘home and host society a single arena of social action’ (1994: 29). Anthropology
has thus come to view international migrant experiences since the last decade of the twentieth
century to present day, as constructed through transnational practices and hence to define
international migrants as ‘transmigrants’;; ‘immigrants who live their lives across national
borders, participating in the daily life and political processes of two or more nation-states’
(Glick-Schiller, 1994: 158).
Goldring and Krishnamurti (2007) comment on the more general conceptual shifts which led to
the development of the idea of transmigrancy. From the 1980s onwards theorists moved away
from Marxist and neo-Marxist theories, which had been characterised by a disregard for human
agency and the development of the historical and political economy. This in turn prompted a

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shift from viewing ‘migrants as people who sever ties or simply lose contact with their
homeland’ (ibid: 9). Two considerations of transnational discourse on migration must be noted at
this point, the first being that the studies on ‘transmigrants’ are not monolithic in their focus and
second, it must not be assumed that transnational connections are held and exercised by every
migrant to the same extent. As Goldring and Krishnamurti (ibid) note within North America, the
field of transnational studies has formed two schools of thought. The first focuses on the
collectivities such as transnational villages and social formations and on the processes and
networks, which structure the transnational social spaces (ibid: 10). The second school of
thought focused on the individual, the occupations and activities thus allowing an analysis of
types and the different levels of transnationalism. This second approach ties in with the second
more general consideration that has to be kept in mind, that is that following Itzigsohn and
Saucedo’s (ibid) argument, that we must not assume that in the contemporary world immigrants
now always enter into transnational networks;; ‘the degree of immigrants involvement and
participation in transnational activities and institutions shows a large degree of variation’ (ibid:
769).
The border-spanning arena of transnational migration:
Following Glick-Schiller, Basch and Szanton-Blanc’s (ibid) analysis of Caribbean, Haitian and
Philippine migration there has been a continued trend in the study of migrants from Latin
America and the Caribbean in order to explore the transnational migration paradigm. As Voigt-
Graf (2005) argues ‘this empirical work remains the context through which many conceptual
conclusions on migrant transnationalism have been reached’ (ibid: 366). This is so, he argues,

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because of the close-proximity between host and home countries with the United States and the
nations of Latin America and the Caribbean. However, as many scholars have come to show;
transmigrancy is a trend found amongst an ever growing demographic of migrants and this I
show through the use of Ho (2008) study of Singaporean migrants in London. I also argue that
our conception of the transmigrant should be expanded to encompass such practices as
transnational adoption, as through this act I contend that defining elements of transnational
connections can be seen.
The many social connections and organisations that ties these individuals to one another
create a border-spanning arena that enables migrants, if they so choose, to remain active
in both worlds. (Levitt, 2001: 8)
Ho (ibid) examines migrant motivations and the strategies, which the Singaporean state deploy in
order to bind overseas citizens to the nation in her paper entitled; “Flexible Citizenship” or
Familial Ties that Bind? Singaporean transmigrants in London (ibid). This provides a
particularly interesting analysis of transmigration as it illustrates how the Singaporean nation-
state encourages those who move away to maintain their connections with those still living in
Singapore in order to maintain their national coherence (ibid: 146). As Ho notes the state
emphasise the ‘workings of a transnational familial logic that binds Singaporean transmigrants to
the nation-state’ (ibid: 147). This she notes, following Bryceson and Vuorela’s (2002) concept,
creates a transnational family;; ‘families that lie some or most of the time separated from each
other, yet hold together and create something that can be seen as a feeling of collective welfare
and unity, namely “familyhood”, even across national borders’ (2002:3), in turn, through state

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discourse the notion of the family and its upkeep is directly related to that of the welfare of the
nation state. Ho (ibid) interviews a Singaporean transmigrant in London who within her paper
she called ‘Noor’, this interview illustrated that despite the regular correspondence and visits
‘Noor’ carried out with her family in Singapore, her long-term plan of maintaining her family
unit was to return home (ibid: 159). ‘Noor’ noted that this temporary and ultimate long-term
maintenance of family connections was possible due to the ‘dual citizenship’ that the
Singaporean government had implemented;; ‘the official state discourse is thus couched in such a
ways that the boundaries between the notions of the extraterritorial citizen-subject, the family
and the national community are made to seem as if they overlap and intersect with one another’
(ibid: 156). Through transnationalism not only do migrants themselves reconfigure their
relation’s identities, but states also find themselves assuming new functions in determining levels
of incorporation, receiving policies and definitions of members and migrants (Levitt and Glick-
Schiller, 2004: 1019). Ho (ibid) demonstrates Levitt and Glick-Schiller’s (ibid) premise that it is
within sending states that the vast majority of changes as a consequence of migration can be seen
to occur;; ‘changes… in law, state policy and migrant practices’ (ibid: 1019) take place on both
the national and international scale. In the case of Singaporean transmigrants, these changes have
acted to promote the sustained incorporation into the home nation-state despite distance. Thus
Ho’s study brings to light Levitt and Glick-Schiller’s (ibid) premise that it is not only one state
which migrants can experience incorporation into; the host country is not the only nation-state,
which works to incorporate migrants, but instead the home nation stakes a claim in the migrants
continued incorporation into the state from which they migrated.

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In The Transnational Villagers (2001) Levitt argues against popular migration understandings,
that migrants increasingly participate in the political, social and economic spheres of their
countries of origin (ibid: 3). In demonstrating this she looks at the connections that arise between
Miraflores, a town in the Dominican Republic, and a neighbourhood in Boston called Jamaica
Plain (ibid: 2). In Boston, migrants from Miraflores have come to recreate parts of their
‘premigration lives’;; ‘ women continue to hang curtains around the door frames; these provide
privacy without keeping in the heat in the Dominican Republic but are merely decorative in
Boston’ (ibid: 3). However, this maintenance of ties and the recreation of the home nation-state
within the host nation-state does not disallow for the Miraflores transmigrants incorporation
within the United States, instead many of them, once settled in the new lives they have made for
themselves in the host country, help to ease incorporation for new migrants by aiding them in
finding jobs and housing (ibid: 8). As Levitt notes ‘they are assimilating and remaining
transnational at the same time’ (ibid: 203).
Just as Itzigsohn and Saucedo (ibid) noted that transnational connections are maintained and
formed by different people to different extents, the degree of incorporation, I argue, is just as
context and individual dependent. Levitt (ibid) provides a key example of this when she
comments that, despite migrants from the Dominican Republic preserving strong transnational
ties this is in part due to the notion that they are unable to assume equality and full incorporation
within the United States. This is due to the fact that many migrants taken on jobs which result in
them living near the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder with few possibilities to learn English
or new skills and thus assimilation with an individual of American origin is considered is seen as
much harder than maintaining links with relations overseas. In keeping up ties, then, with their

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home nation;; ‘they feel more capable when they compare themselves to those who remain in
Miraflores and diminished when it comes to their dealings in the larger world’ (ibid: 200). Hence
a double-edged sword of migration appears for some. Upon migrating, transmigrants leave
behind the feelings of incorporation and assimilation that they are born with and instead have to
re-constitute themselves in nations with pre-formed ‘identities’. On the opposing edge lies the
reason for many migrations; the gain of economic, social and political capital that comes from
‘starting again’;; from choosing to move to a nation-state that promises more than your own. As
with what Ho (ibid) found, migrants are not the only agents and components which are able to
actively construct the level of transnationalism the migrant may enter into;; ‘the strength of
migrants’ attachments ebbed and flowed depending upon sending and receiving- country
opportunities and constraints…the motivations underlying them also shifted, ranging from mere
interest in keeping up with home-country news to actively mobilising against home-country rule’
(ibid: 204).
Forced displacement and international adoption:
While the studies above have shown, the reasoning behind the maintenance of transnational ties
is normally a consequence of the importance given to kinship relations (Ho, ibid) (Levitt, ibid).
However, I now wish to illustrate another reason for the upkeep of transnational ties and the
complications with defining social fields and nation-state identities. In the case of forced
displacement (Halilovich, ibid) or intercountry adoption (Weil, 1984) (Howell, 2004) the upkeep
of a ‘traditional’ identity and community relations becomes key in promoting transnationalism.

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‘Today an estimated 1.3 million people are living outside Bosnia and Herzegovina’ (Halilovich,
2012: 163), as Halilovich illustrates since the Bosnian war in 1992, millions of Bosnians have
become dispersed throughout North America, Europe and Australia. His study demonstrates how
before the war feelings of collective ethnic and religious identity had been simply nominal
categories, but following migration, a new Bosnian identity had been formed which captured
‘traditional’ pre-war notions of what it was to be Bosnian. Bosnians have come to construct this
identity despite the loss of a ‘territory’ or nation-state of which to call home, they have become
‘de-territorialised’ communities (ibid: 169). Thus the notion of transnationalism is challenged in
Halilovich’s paper as he construes it to be limited to a focus on borders and nation-states,
ignoring the complexity of social relations and ties which lie beyond the ‘political supra-
identities’ of the state (ibid: 168). Consequently whilst not maintaining transnational links with a
specific home-nation state;; ‘deterritorialised Bosnian communities sustain strong links with their
“sister” communities spread across the globe in host countries, as well as with their matica, the
original hometown’ (ibid: 169). Their ability to preserve links with their hometown is not
necessarily performed between migrants and Bosnians still located within the town, instead it is
preserved through a phenomenon known as “chain migration”, this occurs as sizeable
communities from one location re-locate to another location thus creating a ‘new’ Bosnian
nation-space within the host country. Halilovich (ibid) argues that this can be seen within the
area surrounding Vienna in Austria, a large number of former-residents of a municipal in Bosnia
now live. This phenomenon can also be noted within Levitt’s (ibid) ethnographic study, which I
have previously looked at in this essay, migrants from the Dominican Republic have participated
in this “chain migration” in the earlier stages of their settlement;; ‘a large number of migrants
lived within the same twenty-block radius’ (ibid: 3), thus recreating premigration communities.

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In emphasising how ‘cultural place and embodied local identities transcend geographical space
and chronological time’ (ibid: 174), Halilovich (ibid) promotes the use of the term ‘trans-
localism’ in place of transnationalism (ibid: 174). This is a concept I think should be given more
precedence in migration studies because as Halilovich argues, whilst transnationalism
accommodates for the multiplicity of migrant identities, it places them within states and
discourses of nationality which is limiting when applied to the migrant who does not choose to
move but is instead displaced due to war or persecution. Thus trans-localism allows for the ‘fixed
and stable’ notions of nationalities and incorporation into nation-states to be viewed as processes,
which can be ‘reconstructed, readjusted, remembered and re-imagined’ (ibid: 174).
International adoption, just as the example of forced displacement, challenges notions of the
boundaries of social life just as Ho’s (ibid) study does. Whilst, as Selman (2002) notes
intercountry adoption is not usually viewed as a concern of migrant studies, in recent years the
act has come to be discussed in a number of articles in the International Migration Review
journal. This is in part due to its historical trajectory. After World War II the adoption of foreign
children became an increasingly enacted phenomenon, but before then had not been carried out
on a large scale and thus (Weil, 1984: 276) analysis of the international migration of children has
remained largely undocumented until recently. I agree with Weil (ibid), that this is another area
of migration, which can contribute to our knowledge of transnationalism and the maintenance of
social ties. Weil’s (ibid) focus is on the migration of children via procedures of adoption and
demonstrates how there are multiple cultural and political considerations from both host and
home countries that have to be taken into account before a child is allowed to enter or leave a
particular country. Thus meaning that various state actors and adults largely construct their

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boundaries of social life for them before they reach an age where they are legally allowed to
construct and make their own choices. International adoption is an unusual case in migratory
patterns, because as Roseman (1971) noted in most migrations the decision to relocate is
primarily made by those who choose to relocate the child and thus, at first, choices of whether to
incorporate yourself into the new nation-state are not made by the adopted child unless they are
old enough to understand the process and make such choices. Much intercountry adoption occurs
between dissimilar cultures, however unlike the Singaporean migrants in Ho’s study or the
Miraflores migrants in Boston (Levitt, ibid), children very rarely maintain connections or
elements of their native countries even despite strong efforts by the adopted parents to promote
such links;; ‘apparently the adoptees feel a great need to assimilate rapidly into their new
environments’ (1984: 277).
Howell (2004), however, has produced an ethnography documenting international adoption
within Norway, which illustrates that, the connection to ‘home’ is not always lost in the process
of intercountry adoption. ‘Domestic adoption is virtually non-existent in Norway’ (ibid: 227) and
thus creating a vast flow of international children mainly originating from developing countries
into the Norwegian nation-state. As children arrive in Norway they are greeted by discourses of
‘returning home’ as they have already been provided with new passports, citizenships, languages
and kin, however in recent years adoptive parents have become more interested in the social
networks and culture that they leave behind during the process of migration (ibid: 229). Adoptive
parents seek out;; ‘the pieces in the jigsaw puzzle for the sake of completeness’ (ibid: 238), and
this I note signifies a return to the migrant as ‘the stranger’ (Simmel, 1903), someone with a
different origin but who is ultimately part of the larger civil society and consequently not a

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threat, able to be incorporated whilst maintaining their transnationality. Thus whilst Howell
(ibid) argues that this is due to the rise of the nature-nurture debate, I would also dispute that this
growing interest can be placed then within the discourse of transnationalism. As I have already
demonstrated in this essay transmigrancy has been seen to both promote the uptake of the new
host culture and identity as well as the maintenance of previous connections with the migrants
homeland. It is interesting, however, that due to their age, the decision of whether to work on the
upkeep of transnational ties to the children’s home country is one that the adoptive parents,
members of the host nation-state, make on their behalf.
Whether or not individuals forge or maintain some kind of transnational connection may
depend on the extent to which they are reared in a transnational space. (Levitt and Glick-
Schiller, 2004: 1018)
What both international adoption and forced displacement illustrate is, as quoted above; Levitt
and Glick-Schiller (ibid) argue is a level of transnationalism dependent on where and when the
migrant first encounters the transnational. For international adoptees, as Howell (ibid) argues, the
extent of the transnational connections they are provided with, is initially the responsibility of the
adoptive parents and thus in later life, the transnational space may not be as important for the
adoptee if they have been unused to its incorporation their lives or it may serve to increase their
interest in ties of ‘origin’. Levitt and Glick-Schiller (ibid) argue that for the second-generation
migrants the importance they ascribe to transnational connections will be less so than that of
their first-generation parents;; they ‘will not do so with the same frequency and intensity as their
parents’ (ibid: 1018). However, just as an adoptive child, when of age, may actively seek to

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rediscover their ties with their nation-state of origin, so too when faced with a life changing
event, migrants ‘may activate their connections within a transnational field in the search of
spouses or values to teach to children’ (ibid: 1018). An interviewee of Ho’s (ibid) demonstrated
this in explaining that;
“Perhaps the reason [why people keep] their citizenship is not because they are keeping
their citizenship, but so that they can be with their family…if you give it up then you are
only there on a tourist visa…like for myself…if not for the family, if not for thinking that
my mother-in-law would take care of my kids’ (ibid: 159).
Hence this choice of when to activate transnational ties is exemplified, as shown above, in the
reasons provided by Singaporean migrants in London for their upkeep of contact and visits with
relations in Singapore (Ho, ibid). This once again provides a further commentary to Levitt and
Glick-Shiller’s (2004) notion, that we must challenge the boundaries of social life and in so
doing allow incorporation and transnational ties between host and home nation-states to appear
as two sides of the same coin.
Conclusion:
It is important to go beyond binary questions such as whether transnationalism is more
prevalent among groups that experience systematic social and economic exclusion or
whether transnational engagements are associated with successful immigrant
incorporation. (Goldring and Krishnamurti, ibid: 20)

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This extract taken from Goldring and Krishnamurti (ibid), provides the starting point from which
I will take my concluding comments, as I feel that the conceptual basis of the need to ‘go beyond
the binary’ outlook on transnationalism and incorporation, is one that is key to developing
further discourse on the subject of migration and the ties that are formed, maintained or severed
in the process. Within this essay I have provided a discussion of Levitt and Glick-Schiller’s
(ibid) argument that once we have dissolved the boundaries of social life we are able to view
transnational connections and the individuals incorporation into nation-states as compatible
notions. In so doing, through the use of examples provided by scholars such as Ho (ibid) and
Levitt (ibid), I have demonstrated the validity of the claim made by Levitt and Glick-Schiller
(ibid) that; ‘Once we rethink the boundaries of social life, it becomes clear that the incorporation
of individuals into nation-states and the maintenance of transnational connections are not
contradictory social processes’ (ibid: 1003), as migrants in both Ho (ibid) and Levitt’s (ibid)
studies had experienced both incorporation into multiple nation-states and the maintenance of
transnational ties.
Through the use of Howell (ibid) and Halilovich’s (ibid) studies on international adoption and
forced displacement, respectively, I have presented the notion that anthropologists must move
beyond the idea of incorporation and transnationalism as contradictory social processes, but in so
doing must not then assume their connectedness. Levels of incorporation and transnationalism
are affected by a multitude of actors and the contexts in which they are performed; they are not
simple compulsory facts of migration in the transnational world era. It must also be noted that
studies of migration must move beyond the multitude studies which focus on the migrant as an

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individual who actively chooses to move, instead extending the discussion to those forcefully
displaced or those who are not active in choosing whether to migrate; the migration of children
through international adoption, for example. This will, as Goldring and Krishnamurti (ibid)
suggest, allow anthropology and those who enter into migration studies to ‘develop complex,
multi-path and multi-outcome models that take into account the contexts of departure and
reception’ (ibid: 20).
Word Count: 4,670

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