Translocal Networks Research Articles

Translocal networks; a means to inclusive city development

Migrants have relied on their translocal ties to adapt to city challenges, particularly in the global south. Yet, the potential of translocality in facilitating the inclusion of migrants into cities has been less explored. Adopting a systematic review of literature, this study investigates the contributions of translocal networks to promoting inclusive urbanism and discusses their implications for inclusive city development. The results from a synthesis of 45 literature indicate that migrants use their translocal networks to accommodate, socialize and find spaces in cities. Translocal networks have also been used to secure employment opportunities for migrants in cities. These promote migrants’ right to and inclusiveness in cities. However, the effectiveness of translocal networks in promoting inclusiveness is contingent on their dedication and organization. The study therefore calls on governments and city authorities to explicitly identify and engage translocal networks in the inclusive city discourse.

From the Translocal to the Multi‐Sited Transnational: Tracing Rohingya Refugee Networks in India

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the transnational and translocal experiences of the Rohingya in India, a stateless, refugee community forcibly displaced from Myanmar, onward migrants from Bangladesh, who currently occupy a legally precarious space in India. Drawing on approximately 90 interviews conducted with refugees, community leaders and NGOs across three Indian cities, along with informal group discussions and field notes, this paper makes two arguments that shed light on the complex, multi‐factorial ways in which networks are rebuilt in displacement as well as the emerging characteristics of Rohingya onward migration in Asia. First, that early generations of Rohingya in India leveraged translocal network building spaces and encounters to rebuild their networks with others in the community and create translocal networks of care and support with local civil society actors, cementing the notion of a ‘Rohingya refugee community’ in India. Second, that the gradual internationalisation of the Rohingya crisis as well as the transnationalisation of the Rohingya diaspora in the last decade through multiple waves of displacement, onward migration and resettlement schemes has prompted a shift towards multi‐sited transnationalism, particularly reflected in the emergence of multi‐sited transnational families, digital transnational spaces among younger refugees and extended diasporic networks.

Translocal lessons from transitional justice in Colombia: Truth, art, and memory to advance human rights and transform societies

This article highlights the expansion of traditional concepts of transitional justice in Colombia to include an emphasis on human rights and the empowerment of marginalized communities. It describes how grassroots truth processes, collective art projects, and memory work have been essential to a transitional justice experiment that challenges dominant national narratives and power structures. It argues that Colombia’s experience may provide lessons for other political communities across the globe that are struggling to address legacies of past injustice, ongoing structural violence, and a rise in xenophobic nationalism. More broadly, it examines how this experiment might inform a model for political imaginaries based on social connections across differences—one that can compete with the power of nationalist myths of singular community. Importantly, it suggests the opportunity for horizontal borrowings via translocal networks of innovative human rights practices worldwide, not necessarily mediated by Global North institutions. This illustrates the contention that human rights globalization can operate through local advocacy.

Patient Group Advocacy in China: Local Activism and Translocal Networks

Patient Group Advocacy in China: Local Activism and Translocal Networks

Beyond the Buddhist heartland: Magadha’s Himalayan and trans-Himalayan networks (fifth to fifteenth century CE)

The Buddhist landscape of ancient Magadha, modern south Bihar in eastern India, constituted the religion’s heartland because the Buddha had lived and taught here for a substantial period of time in the sixth century BCE. Within a few centuries after the Buddha’s death, Magadha started developing strong trans-regional connections, attracting pilgrims from within and beyond the subcontinent to the many shrines and monasteries that came to define the region. While Magadha’s robust translocal networks have been well established, a long-term history of its interface with the Himalayan and trans-Himalayan regions in the premodern period has yet to be charted. In this paper, I explore Magadha’s connections with parts of Nepal, Tibet and China in the course of a millennium (fifth to fifteenth century CE), using a combination of texts, inscriptions, sculptures and other artefacts. Within Magadha, I focus on Mahābodhi, the place of the Buddha’s enlightenment, and on Nālandā, the site of a renowned mega-monastery (mahāvihāra), since they had the most enduring transcultural links. Such an exercise highlights the evolving character of the Buddhist heartland and the perception of it in the Asian Buddhist world. It also demonstrates how cross-cultural influences contributed to shaping Buddhist practices both within and beyond the heartland.

Sound mediations: a translocal reading of sonideros

ABSTRACT In this paper, I study the case of sonideros in Mexico to explore the possibilities that aural archives and experiences can bring to the academic understanding of the modern urban sensorium. I inquire about the ways in which Latin America is built through translocal networks that traverse the aural space. Through a dialogue between theorists from the region and other parts of the global south, I attempt to bring new light to some of the most important concepts proposed by Jesús Martín-Barbero. I propose a reading of sonideros from a translocal point of view that reclaims the use of non-traditional archives in order to question hegemonic assumptions about popular culture.

Reality Decoupling: Rumours, Disinformation, and Studying the Politics of Truth in Digital Asia

Abstract This article explores what conflicts over information and meaning-making in digital Asia can tell us about politics in advanced networked societies, using examples from East Asia. It interprets the construction and spread of unverified information as part of near-ubiquitous political practices that threaten to lead to a decoupling of realities. The article makes the case that digital Asia is a crucial site for researching such practices: Asian societies are characterized by a long-standing engagement with rumours, and they also maintain highly developed digital infrastructures across diverse socio-political and economic environments. To explore the relevance of rumours and conspiracy theories in such contexts, the article suggests a three-step research agenda that analyzes the anatomy of rumours, traces their genealogy across complex socio-technical systems, and assesses their pathology – that is, the way in which they are products of, and in turn produce, power in translocal networks.

Polity of the New Apostolic Movement considering Biblical and Historical Precedents in the Christian Church

The New Apostolic Movement (NAM) is marked by two tenets: the legitimacy of the ministry of modern-day apostles and “theocratic single-headship” of churches by apostolic leaders. There is a lack of specialized research regarding the polity of NAM networks and NAM churches. What is the polity of the New Apostolic Movement and how can that polity be evaluated in the light of biblical and historical precedents? New research found that local-church polity in NAM churches is consistently autocratic but with enough plurocratic function to provide a measure of accountability. There is little to no democratic function in NAM churches. Research into the polity of the trans-local networks of the New Apostolic Movement found an absence of autocratic control, contradicting previous assumptions in the literature. Biblical exegesis concluded that the primacy of apostolic ministry is given to building the church, not governing it, and that the governing role of New Testament apostles was conducted collegially, not autocratically.

Degrowth and agri-food systems: a research agenda for the critical social sciences

Degrowth has become a recognised paradigm for identifying and critiquing systemic unsustainability rooted in the capitalist, growth-compelled economy. Increasingly, degrowth is discussed in relation to specific economic sectors such as the agri-food system. This paper builds on the foundational work of Gerber (2020) and Nelson and Edwards (2021). While both publications take a rather specific analytical or disciplinary focus—the former specifically connects critical agrarian studies and degrowth, the latter explores the contributions of the recent volume ‘Food for degrowth’—this paper takes stock of the emerging body of literature on degrowth and agri-food systems more broadly. It proposes research avenues that deepen, expand and diversify degrowth research on agri-food systems in four areas: (i) degrowth conceptualisations; (ii) theorisation of transformations towards sustainability; (iii) the political economy of degrowth agri-food systems; and (iv) rurality and degrowth. Together, these avenues devote due attention to a variety of agents (ranging from translocal networks to non-humans), spaces (e.g. the rural), theories (e.g. sustainability transitions and transformations towards sustainability) and policies (of the agricultural sector and beyond) that thus far have received limited attention within the degrowth literature. The critical social science perspective on degrowth agri-food systems, which is advanced in this paper, illuminates that the present unsustainability and injustice of hegemonic agri-food systems are not merely a problem of that sector alone, but rather are ingrained in the social imaginaries of how economies and societies should work as well as in the political–economic structures that uphold and reproduce these imaginaries.

The interactive field of open government data: inter-administrative dynamics, trans-local networks, and local geopolitics of environmental data activism in China

ABSTRACT Using an example of China’s environmental data activism, this study explores the state–society interactive mode of socialization in the politics of open government data. Drawing on an interactionist approach, this study argues that in this intermediate situation, NGOs are relatively autonomous, organizing their campaigns and initiatives independently instead of partnering with the state. However, these two sides both spur and exploit each other, shaping an ‘interactive field.’ Data actors use the state’s open data agenda as an opportunity to initiate spin-off data activism to counteract the deficiencies of data disclosure by the government. In response, state agencies adjust and enhance their data disclosure practices, thus performing reactive data governance. We identified several dynamics of this interactive field: (1) It involves multiple grassroots data actors in the form of NGOs that attempt to expand the autonomy of their data advocacy by forming activist networks to bargain with state bureaucracy. (2) The interactive strategies mainly involve tactics of ‘rightful resistance’ but are hybridized with other boundary-spanning strategies that straddle the demarcation of confrontation and non-confrontation. (3) Although the state and nonstate actors are not partnered, they exert mutual influence over each other’s actions and strategies. The shrinking of institutional space has caused NGOs to reorganize interactive strategies. Our study also highlights the local geopolitical dynamics that condition such interactions: besides the inter-administrative dynamics that afford political opportunities, the trans-local advocacy network coordinates actors and resources to exercise data counterpower. Also, the selection of advocacy strategies is varied with targeted government agencies.

Life of a Colombian Musician: Music Autobiography, Cosmopolitan Musickings, and Agonistic Objectification

Abstract This article presents an analytical framework for the study of Latin American music autobiographies. I take Colombian composer Guillermo Uribe Holguín’s 1941 autobiography Vida de un músico colombiano as a paradigmatic case in order to argue that Latin American music autobiographies are not secondary sources that lack historical or literary value—a common historiographical assumption—but rather agonistic and intermedial objects that intervene in local and translocal networks. In addition to introducing recent literature on music autobiographies, the article expands on post-foundationalist political thought to make a case for a renewed examination of Latin American music autobiographies and their relevance to the study of music, sound, and the political. In my reading of the Vida, I consider Uribe Holguín’s literary inscription of cosmopolitan musickings, anxieties, and agentic claims and evaluate their potential to at once reify and/or disarticulate a nationalist-populist poetics, the conflation of partisan struggle with national identity, and narratives of European and Euro-American exceptionalism in global music histories. The article also discusses how other political actors continue to use the Vida to sound and perform a politics of belonging in contraposition to Uribe Holguín’s non-national, cosmopolitan autobiographical self. The last section exposes Michael Herzfeld’s notion of cultural intimacy to Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s category of antagonism to account for the Vida’s reception beyond national borders and analyze the performances of cosmopolitan subjectivity it enabled among actors at the margins of a global modernity who saw themselves as precarized by the geopolitics of Western art music.

Repair Cafés and Precious Plastic as translocal networks for the circular economy

The literature on the circular economy is dominated by visions that either disregard the role of civil society in (transitions to) a circular economy or depict civil society actors merely as passive consumers. However, there are organized citizen initiatives that align with circular economy thinking and that envision a much more active role for civil society in (transitions to) the circular economy. This paper explores Repair Cafés and Precious Plastic as two examples of such initiatives based on exploratory questionnaire surveys conducted among the associated communities, supplemented with evidence from documents from the initiatives. Repair Cafés and Precious Plastic can be understood as translocal communities that strive toward creating a circular economy through, for example, local repairing and recycling of plastic waste. This article is the first to study translocal communities in the context of a circular economy. In theory, such communities can develop transformative potential to challenge, alter and/or replace dominant institutions. This requires them to develop a critical mass, a shared identity and a political voice. The study shows that networking (and thus the development of critical mass) occurs primarily in specific countries (in the case of Repair Cafés) and not necessarily community-wide (in the case of Precious Plastic). Evidence for a shared identity does exist in both communities, although more clearly in the case of Repair Cafés. The study does not provide evidence for an explicit political voice developing in either community, although in the case of Repair Cafés, the Repair Café International Foundation does take up lobbying activities. Thus, the ingredients for transformative potential in these communities are present only to a limited extent. This study contributes to the circular economy literature by showing how civil society actors can engage with (transitions to) the circular economy through organized citizen initiatives, a phenomenon that has thus far been largely neglected in the literature on circular economies. The study also adds to the limited pool of empirical knowledge on two rapidly growing citizen initiatives toward circular economies.

Geography of grassroots innovations in the Dublin Bay Biosphere Reserve

This article studies the geography of grassroots innovations against the background of plastic pollution and the Dublin Bay Biosphere Reserve. Grassroots innovations are networks of people and organisations that generate novel solutions to sustainability- related problems. Typically, they are responses to local deficits and therefore primarily use local resources and actors. However, this local embeddedness also limits them and makes their survival difficult. The article assumes that model regions like Biosphere Reserves can help to overcome local shortcomings and link isolated innovations. The mixed-methods approach of guided interviews and social network analysis showed that GRI are affected not only by the local area but by their social, territorial, and network embeddedness transcending boundaries. Using the different types of embeddedness, we were able to show that GRIs are locally and globally connected to GRI movements, creating translocal networks that foster more transformative actions and practices.

The act of (de/re)growing: Prefiguring alternative organizational landscapes of socioecological transformations

How does transformative change that restructures humans’ relations to the Earth come into being? The proposal for degrowth calls for a drastic reorganization of societies in order to deal with the current planetary socioecological and climate crises. Yet, there is a lack of understanding of how such socioecological transformations are brought into being. In this article, we examine prefigurative processes of socioecological transformations. We introduce the concept of the act of (de)growing, a prefigurative practice in which individuals engage at a personal level as they disentangle from organizational spaces governed by growth (act of degrowing), while entangling with nonhumans (cows, sheep, plants and seeds) to consciously make something else grow (act of growing) in the place that they inhabit. Drawing on 10 personal stories of degrowth in the Nordics, we identify four interlinked dimensions of socioecological transformations that bring new degrowth inspired organizational landscapes into being (disentangling from growth; organizing with nonhumans in place; the emergence of novel subjectivities in place; and the formation of translocal networks of support). We discuss the implications that these dispersed situated forms of socioecological transformations have for breaking with the systemic inertia of societal institutions built on economic growth.

A matter of time and contacts: trans-local networks and long-term mobility of Eritrean refugees

ABSTRACT Eritreans have experienced protracted conflict and displacement over the last half a century. Aside from marginalisation, immobilisation, highly constrained livelihood options and legal limbo, this has also created a complex and dynamic web of transnational networks of Eritrean refugees and diasporas around the world. In this paper, we argue that protractedly displaced people are not only entangled with forced immobility but also encounter opportunities to create new migration pathways. This ethnographic study shows how protractedly displaced people build up socio-spatial connections and sequential small-scale mobility, circumventing the multiple constraints the governance regimes have placed upon them.

Establishing new housing commons in Vienna in the context of translocal networks

We are currently observing an international trend towards the establishment of nonprofit-oriented, collaborative and self-managed housing models. In this respect, ideas have been circulating globally and initiatives mutually interacting. The SchloR and Bikes and Rails syndicate projects in Vienna, the focus of this paper, bear witness to this development. They belong to the Austrian umbrella association habiTAT, founded in 2014 along the lines of the German Mietshäuser Syndikat. Against this background, the present paper explores the ways in which mobilized housing commons are implemented in new locations and the role that translocal networks play in this context. The results of our analysis, which is based on 30, partly network-graph assisted, problem-centered interviews, reveal that the housing projects have made explicit use of translocal networks at national and international scale and that vertical linking is a key condition for those projects today. Moreover, way beyond their own needs, they contribute to set up a translocal European knowledge and expert network.

Remembering, forgetting and (dis)enfranchised grief in everyday settings in English and Welsh towns: Migrants' and minorities’ translocal and local memories associated with funerary spaces and practices

In this paper we explore migrants' and minorities' memories and memory-making associated with death, funerary and remembrance practices, with particular attention to how this intersects with experiences of migration and/or being part of a cultural or religious minority. The paper examines different spaces including bodies, homes, translocal networks, cemeteries and crematoria, centred on insights from focus groups, biographical and key participant interviews in four medium sized multicultural towns in England and Wales. These case studies afford an exploration of the complex and dynamic ‘ecologies’ of migrant and minority memories and sense of citizenship in relation to death, bereavement and remembrance spaces and practices. Participant accounts highlight memories of past practices, (post)colonial marginalization, disenfranchisement, changes in practices, the strains of transnational grieving, pragmatic compromises and collaborating to improve funerary provision as endeavours of everyday citizenship. These are explored through two broad interlinked themes: firstly, translocal memories of past and evolving funerary and remembrance spaces, customs and practices; and secondly, relationality and autonomy through the choice of where to situate the dead, and implications for associated future memory-making.

The Chinese Community of Malacca, 1795–2021: A Translocal Microhistorical Narrative

Abstract This article explores the shaping and reshaping of a Chinese community in Malacca, by focusing on issues of learning, faith, and power over several generations under British colonial and postcolonial Malaysian rule. Core social and religious institutions of the translocal kinship and commercial network of 1795 enabled the community to respond creatively to new global challenges. By 1840, a new generation had constructed a different translocal network with Singapore. As migration increased, so did the varieties of translocal experience in Malacca. As political challenges escalated, the community developed a pattern of response, mediation, participation, and integration, enabling community leaders to keep the peace. Subsequent generations of Hakka miners, Fujianese planters, and Hainanese merchants and workers participated with the deeply rooted Baba-Nyonya families in adapting this patterned local response to reform, war, and revolution. This “microhistorical” perspective enables us to explore how the legacies still matter in a rapidly changing new world.

The production of counter-space: Informal labour, social networks and the production of urban space in Dhaka

Access to public space for earning livelihoods is important for street vendors in global south cities. However, due to continuous population growth and the demand for lands by the real estate development sector, pressure on land is very high in the global south. Consequently, global south cities such as Dhaka provide ‘no place’ for its poor migrant citizens. Yet, the urban poor are able to appropriate public space for livelihoods. Drawing on a case study of Sattola slum in Dhaka, this article investigates how the urban poor access to public space for livelihoods and construct counter-spaces by breaking the planned order of the city. This article argues that the urban poor are able to construct counter-spaces with the tacit support of translocal social networks as well as with the support of a range of state and non-state powerful actors who are compromised by the benefits and profits they extract from vendors. This article draws on qualitative data generated through in-depth interviews with 94 informal workers and 37 key informants. This article contributes to urban sociology literature demonstrating that the urban poor are able to construct counter-spaces drawing on a range of everyday tactics and appropriating public space by quietly breaking the planned order of the city.

Indigenous Resistance to Criminal Governance: Why Regional Ethnic Autonomy Institutions Protect Communities from Narco Rule in Mexico

This article explains why some indigenous communities in Mexico have been able to resist drug cartels’ attempts to take over their local governments, populations, and territories while others have not. While indigenous customary laws and traditions provide communal accountability mechanisms that make it harder for narcos to take control, they are insufficient. Using a paired comparison of two indigenous regions in the highlands of Guerrero and Chihuahua—both ideal zones for drug cultivation and traffic—we show that the communities most able to resist narco conquest are those that have a history of social mobilization, expanding village-level indigenous customary traditions into regional ethnic autonomy regimes. By scaling up local accountability practices regionally and developing translocal networks of cooperation, indigenous movements have been able to construct mechanisms of internal control and external protection that enable communities to deter the narcos from corrupting local authorities, recruiting young men, and establishing criminal governance regimes through force.