National, Transnational or Cosmopolitan? Local Immigrant Organisations

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This article examines how features of theoretical perspectives on transnationalism and cosmopolitanism can be found in categories that immigrant organisations use to describe their own activities. The empirical basis is the written statutes of 133 local membership-based immigrant organisations in Oslo. The article finds that the organisations mainly use national categories and that national belonging is formulated in terms of cultural activities. The use of national categories is, however, combined with many organisations' aims to have transnational ties and activities along with features of cosmopolitan consciousness. Three main patterns emerge. Firstly, while all organisations aim to arrange cultural activities among their members living in Oslo, only a few organisations formulate aims of having a comprehensive transnational practice. Secondly, most organisations aim to combine either various forms of transnationalism and/or features of cosmopolitanism with efforts to integrate their members into Norwegian society, while there is hardly any local identity. Thirdly, the concept of cosmopolitanism is not mentioned by any organisation, although around 40 per cent of them refer to features of cosmopolitanism.