Inappropriate/Appropriated Feelings: The Gendered Construction of Transnational Citizenship

Abstract

Transnational analysis has clarified two issues that have troubled migration studies. First, where migration studies attempt to explain the articulation among peoples who are geographically distant, transnational analysis reverses the temporal relation between identity and dispersal. Thus certain social formations, such as diasporas and transnational communities, perceive themselves first as “peoples” and only then seek out an explanation for the mobility of people and signs (Clifford 1994). Second, where migration studies have generally taken nations and their boundaries as given, transnational analysis has underscored the historic character of the nation, especially in the current world of rearticulation of states and the advent of supranational institutions. Transnational communities may result from changes at the level of the state and the nation that entail no migration whatsoever, as when borders shift, national identities are redefined, or new identities and traditions appear—complexities that classic migration studies never contemplated.