Transnational organisations

Abstract

Transnationalization as a process refers to increasing social, cultural, economic and political relations and interactions between locales across the borders of nation-states and national societies. From a social science perspective, transnationalization leads to and is sustained by pluri-local cross-border social spaces at the micro, meso and macro level. At the micro level, transnationalization refers to habitual and accountable patterns of transnational perception and action in everyday life (such as telecommunication, shipment of goods or sending of money and information seeking across borders). At the macro level, it includes social institutions as complex programs of routines, rules and norms that increasingly structure significant terrains of life and span different countries (such as transnational educational careers or labour markets). Finally, at the meso level transnationalization is linked to the growth of organizations as stable and dense loci of cooperation with rules of membership, given structures and processes, and stated goals which span over different countries.