Transnational Connections Research Articles

Ecumenical Social Activism and Transnational Connections Between Brazil and Britain: Theoretical and Practical Understandings of Ecumenism

Ecumenical Social Activism and Transnational Connections Between Brazil and Britain: Theoretical and Practical Understandings of Ecumenism

The Politics of Refugee Resettlement in the Asia Pacific: Belonging and ICT-enabled Transnational Settlement

Abstract This conceptual article examines the interplay of forced displacement and resettlement across the Asia Pacific, situated against the backdrop of unprecedented global displacement, rapid uptake of information communication technologies, and strong border governance regimes. Emphasising the centrality of the politics of belonging, this article distinguishes between refugee resettlement, focused on protection, and the broader concept of refugee settlement as part of a larger project of belonging. Recognising that less than 1 per cent of refugees globally are able to access resettlement pathways every year, we present the implications of ICT-enabled transnational settlement, using New Zealand and Australia’s refugee resettlement programmes to anchor this analysis. By examining ongoing transnational connections, particularly through social media, this article illuminates how refugees can negotiate relationships with nearby and distant places. It outlines a spectrum of opportunities and challenges within resettlement and settlement contexts, transcending traditional territorial boundaries defined by the state and local jurisdictions. This article concludes by considering durable and enduring solutions to forward the possibilities of ICT-enabled transnational settlement as it influences the articulation of safety and belonging in an increasingly interconnected yet unevenly mobile world.

“Neither of the East nor of the West”

What does it mean to do Islamic Studies within Religious Studies? Taking the cue from Thomas A. Tweed's intervention, this article discusses new theoretical and methodological approaches in Religious Studies and their relevance to researching Islam. Such approaches cross geographical, disciplinary, and intellectual boundaries while equally being emplaced in particular socio-cultural contexts that inform their perspectives. In order to overcome statist, normative, and essentialist understandings of Islam, the article explores three key themes: ambiguity, multi-locality, and aesthetics. When we approach the intellectual history of Islam, not only its diversity and plurality become obvious but also its culture of ambiguity, which is at ease with contradictions and inconsistencies. Recent reflections on diaspora religions decentre Islamic Studies from the Middle East and allow for exploring the multiple transnational connections between Muslim minority and majority contexts. Such approaches illustrate the multi-locality of Islam. Finally, the article explores what it means to approach Islam as an aesthetic formation in which rituals as embodied experiences and material sensory culture are central in forging and articulating Muslim individual and collective identities.

Transforming and thriving: Australian students in Vietnam through the New Colombo Plan

ABSTRACT Outbound student mobility has gained increased popularity over the past two decades. It involves an array of stakeholders including students, academics, mobility practitioners and home and host communities. Despite challenges, learning abroad creates a range of impacts on individuals, institutions, and society. Existing research on learning abroad largely concentrates on students’ motivations, activities and effects of outbound mobility on individual students. However, how learning abroad may potentially contribute to transnational connections is largely under-researched. This article responds to a critical gap in the literature by examining not only how learning abroad in Vietnam enriches individual Australian students personally, professionally and culturally but also how such developments could potentially have broader transnational impacts. The article draws on a study including interviews with 24 Australian students learning abroad in Vietnam through the New Colombo Plan. It elucidates the students’ intercultural, personal and professional growth, especially on the humanistic aspects of global citizenship, through their deeper understanding of Vietnam, their formation of a relational capability, and a sense of empathy with the Vietnamese people. The article also highlights the value of Australian students' intercultural experiences and engagement with Vietnam to the society. In particular, it unpacks how Australian students' learning abroad in Vietnam could potentially contribute to enriching Australia-Vietnam connections and collaboration to respond to critical socio-economic issues such as climate change, economic development and poverty.

Engaging culturally and linguistically diverse youth in semiotic analysis for community‐based inquiry

AbstractThis manuscript examines multimodal storytelling as community inquiry for an urban high school class of 30 first‐ and second‐generation bi/multilingual immigrant students, most of whom maintained transnational connections. We share how these students, in an A.P. Research class, engaged in community‐based inquiry and utilized various multimodal artifacts from a university cultural heritage collection, including a field trip to the cultural heritage archives, to analyze signs and symbols. We asked: How did students engage with semiotic resources and approaches to support inquiry about their school and neighborhood communities? Findings showed that students drew upon their linguistic and cultural experiences to analyze signs and symbols, yet in their digital storytelling presentations some student groups chose signs and symbols that reified stereotypical views of their neighborhood despite their insider status in the local community. We offer recommendations for using cultural heritage artifacts to advance multimodal meaning‐making in teaching and research.

Transnationality and stylistic ideology in semi-cubist Finnish art between 1914 and 1923

The article focuses on the changes in Finnish modern art and artistic discourse caused by World War I and Finnish Independence in 1917–1918. World War I changed artistic networks radically, because travel to France was no more possible, and Independence of Finland changed the art world with the ideas of national modernism. These changes centred in Finland around the role of cubism – seen as a logical continuation of Paul Cézanne’s art – and were expressed in both formal language and artistic discourse. Questions of “primitive” in art and its connection to cubism and to what is national in art were also essential in defining Finnish modernism and avant-garde in around 1917–1920. There was small exhibition of French cubism in Helsinki in 1915, but otherwise knowledge of cubism came via second-hand sources, such as lectures, art magazines and Der Sturm Gallery’s exhibitions. Norwegian art historian Jens Thiis had a strong impact on notions of cubism in Finland. It is in my interest to show that there were transnational connections between Scandinavia, Russia and Finland, and also more or less between Finland and oth- er “new states”, which were born after Austro-Hungarian, German and Russian empires collapsed. These connections can be seen in formal elements and iconography of kind of cubo-expressionism, which was a kind of fusion of cubist structuralism and expressionist emotion. This “semi-cubism” seemed to serve as stylistic ideology or ideological tool for those who had thoughts of national modernism in countries like Poland (formists), Latvia (artists like Jēkabs Kazaks), Estonia (artists like Jaan Vahtra and Märt Laarman) and Finland (art of the so called November Group). It is obvious that artists in Finland were not conscious of what happened on the southern side of the Baltic Sea, but there are so many parallels which were born by shared general views of the role of new art, that it is possible to see not only France, Norway or Russia, but also Poland, Latvia and Estonia as artistically close to Finland, when one tries to map the topography of Finnish semi-cubism in late 1910s and early 1920s.

‘If I were at peace, I wouldn’t be here’: Staging incarceration’s transgenerational, transnational ghosts and memory in Jay Kuo’s Allegiance

While a majority of the Second World War-based musicals tend to glorify America’s heroism and downplay or ignore its injustices, Jay Kuo’s (2015) musical Allegiance centres on the unlawful incarceration of over one hundred and twenty thousand Japanese American civilians held in American concentration camps during the war, which is a history that many Americans continue not to be aware of. Through foregrounding Jessica Nakamura’s framework of response-ability, this article considers the ways Allegiance activates it, through the use of spectral embodiment as a means to engage ghosts of Japanese diasporic war memory, especially as it relates to the portrayal of the historical figure Mike Masaoka and a staging of the Hiroshima bombing. Allegiance’s staging of ghosts is similarly interrogated within a musical where unsettled personal trauma conjures ghosts of the past that must be settled by characters like the protagonist, Sammy Kimura, who enters a dialogic relationship with them. Through analysing press materials, onstage performances, interviews and documentary content, this article highlights how transnational connections and transgenerational response-ability are staged to help cope with and remember Japanese and Japanese American experiences. It similarly discusses how the musical form aided and inhibited the show’s meaning to and resonance with audiences throughout Allegiance’s production history. Through settling and unsettling the dead, this article considers how Allegiance enshrines personal, communal and national memories about wartime incarceration into a piece of art that serves educational and reparative purposes for the production companies and audiences who experienced the show on and off-Broadway.

Redefining Home: Adaptive Transnationalism in the Migration of Tatar Women from Russia to Kazakhstan

This study explores the experiences of Tatar women who migrated to Almaty, Kazakhstan following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Employing theoretical frameworks of transnationalism and intersectionality, we analyze these women's migration experiences, religious practices, and identity formation processes. Based on in-depth interviews with ten Tatar women migrants, the research reveals how they navigate multiple identities, maintain and transform transnational connections, and construct new forms of belonging in their host society. Our findings demonstrate that these women are not merely navigating between two worlds, but actively creating new, transnational ways of being. Their stories highlight how migrants creatively adapt to new environments, negotiate multiple identities, and form communities that transcend traditional national and ethnic boundaries. Drawing on these insights, we propose a new conceptual framework of "Adaptive Transnationalism," which captures the dynamic process through which migrants actively reshape their identities, practices, and social connections in response to new cultural contexts, while maintaining and transforming ties to their places of origin. This framework offers a fresh perspective on how migrants actively shape their experiences and identities across borders, providing a valuable tool for navigating the complexities of modern migration and fostering more inclusive and adaptive societies.

Transnational social fields of Italian Bangladeshis in Europe and beyond: Towards a new geography of ways of belonging

AbstractIn view of the growing onward migration and multisited transnationalism among naturalized EU citizens, this article seeks to advance the current understanding of transnational social fields, cataloguing the complex interplays of migrants' ways of being, belonging, and in‐betweenness across different places and spaces. Drawing on multisited qualitative research with Italian Bangladeshis in Italy and the United Kingdom, the paper presents how their ‘ways of being’ are expressed by maintaining transnational attachments to the country of origin and the wider Bangladeshi diaspora. In addition, they maintain transnational ‘ways of belonging’ by incorporating the Bengali language, culture, traditions, and values, and transmitting them to the next generation. Beyond these multiplicities of being and belonging, the findings put forward two important, yet contrasting, observations. On the one hand, there is an ongoing pursuit of onward migration to the UK among a section of the community—often influenced by social networks and transnational connections with the recognised Bangladeshi diaspora in the UK. Apart from being in the ‘community comfort zone’ and language advantage in the integration process, many migrants perceive living in the UK as having a higher ‘prestige’, ‘class’ or ‘status’ vis‐a‐vis Italy in terms of life quality, wealth, cultural, and religious freedom. On the other hand, another cohort is emotionally and culturally embedded in Italian societies and is in a dilemma of whether to migrate onward. In this process, they constantly blend, shift, and negotiate their ways of belonging. The findings unfold how a new geography of belonging takes shape, characterised by fluidities, multifaceted identities, and everyday life practices in a transnational space.

Transnational Funds of Identity of Korean American and Migrant Youth

ABSTRACT Situated in the scholarship of funds of identity, I focus on three Korean American and migrant youth who were involved in a Korean Student Organization (pseudonym) at a largely white institution in the suburban Midwest of the United States. Specifically, the study investigates how Korean American and migrant youth who served as leaders and members of the organization have developed and expressed their funds of identity, which assist them in navigating and resisting white-centric and monolingual schooling experiences and in creating a variety of organization events and activities centering their home languages, ethnic traditions, and cultural practices. By pairing funds of identity with the notion of transnationalism, I also build on and extend the current discussion on funds of identity into what I term “transnational funds of identity” to shed light on Korean American and migrant youth’s border-crossing and transnational connections that foreground their identity formation as well as their engagement in the organization. The current study will provide more multifaceted and complex perspectives on Asian and Asian American students moving beyond the discourses of assimilation, stereotypification, and oppression, by centralizing Korean American and migrant students’ strengths, assets, and resistance through the lens of transnational funds of identity.

Lawyers against European Union: The Maastricht Judicial Review 1992–1993

This article argues that lawyers were important agents in the remaking of British Euroscepticism during the Maastricht treaty period and should be written into its history. It offers new subject matter, exploring how and why lawyers challenged the Maastricht treaty through the English courts. From its initial preparation to its ultimate failure, the legal case fused together a defence of high ideals, like the sovereignty of Parliament, with specific critiques of European ‘Union’; it invoked ideas of British and English exceptionalism, while building alliances across Europe, forging transnational connections between Eurosceptic lawyers across member states. Drawing from an unexplored archive of the legal team's court preparations and correspondence preserved by William Rees-Mogg, this study reveals the hidden role lawyers played in contesting the European Union.

Remittance as reactive transnationalism: The role of perceived unfairness among immigrants in South Korea

AbstractDespite numerous studies on the economic transnational connections of immigrants, focusing mainly on remittances to their home countries, the remittance behaviours and related factors of immigrants in South Korea, a country experiencing increased racial and ethnic diversity, remain relatively understudied. Applying a resource‐dependent and reactive transnationalism framework, this study examines the associations between assimilation, human capital, and immigrants' remittance behaviours. Additionally, we investigate whether perceived unfairness moderates these relationships, reflecting reactive transnationalism. Utilizing data from a 2021 Survey on Immigrants' Living Conditions and Labor Force (N = 7981), we delve into various remitting behaviours, including remittance frequency, the share of monthly remittances in expenditures, and the total remittance amount. The independent variables include assimilation indicators (length of stay in Korea and intention to remain), human capital factors (education and income) and perceived unfairness in the workplace. Ordinary least squares and logistic regression analyses were conducted to examine these relationships. Our findings support both linear and resource‐dependent transnationalism: assimilation and human capital levels are associated with immigrants' remittance behaviours. However, the interaction between perceived unfairness and reactive transnationalism was observed specifically for human capital, indicating that immigrants with higher human capital are more responsive to unfairness and discrimination. As a result, they may want to increase their self‐esteem by sending money back to their home country. This study not only contributes to understanding immigrant remittance behaviours in South Korea but also highlights the conceptual significance of examining remittance behaviours through reactive transnationalism, particularly the critical role of perceived unfairness among highly skilled immigrants.

Appealing to the World: Du Bois and the Transnational Politics of Petition

As a mode of radical, anti-colonial politics, the petition and related genre of the appeal would seem to hold little promise. This paper uncovers the radical and transnational politics of petitioning in W. E. B. Du Bois's work with and against the United Nations in the 1940s. Examining a range of petitions beyond the more widely examined Appeal to the World (1947), this article argues that Du Bois subverts the familiar genre conventions of the petition and appeal. The effect is not an appeal to a higher political authority to correct domestic injustices but to contest the shape of the international order itself by highlighting the transnational connection between colonial domination and racial exclusion within the domestic jurisdiction of imperial nation-states and the racial hierarchies of the international order. Instead of leaving the authority of the international order defined by the primacy of the sovereign state system intact, Du Bois contests this authority by exposing how racial hierarchy and colonial rule cut against enshrined divisions between internal state sovereignty and international law. The essay closes by exploring how other anti-colonial figures in the twentieth century such as B. R. Ambedkar and Malcolm X similarly turned to the transnational politics of appeal.

Duration of stay and the integration of migrants: (un)obvious relationships

The article presents the results of a study of the relationship between the duration of stay and the type of migration strategies with various aspects of the integration of migrants from post-Soviet states in Russian society. It is analyzed how at different time intervals (up to 5 years, after 5–10 years, after 10 years from the beginning of migration) improvements occur in status, quality of life, transnational connections (in relation to integration, a decrease in their “density”), language skills, interethnic contacts, the formation of Russian identity among long-term and circular external migrants. A research model is used that includes “relevant conditions” for each integration indicator. The empirical basis of the study was based on data from a nationwide survey of labor migrants conducted by the Center for Ethnopolitical and Regional Studies in 19 constituent entities of the Russian Federation (2017, sample of 7417 respondents). The results of the study show that changes in the status and frequency of interethnic contacts are not associated with duration of stay for either long-term or circular migrants, even when integration conditions are added to the analysis. The “density” of transnational connections changes significantly over time (the peak occurs between 5–10 years after the start of migration, and after 10 years it decreases), however, the interpretation of this connection requires further investigation. “Time” is positively related to such indicators of integration as language skills, quality of life, and identity formation. These connections do not disappear when “relevant conditions” of integration are added to the analysis, however, it is concluded that the duration of stay in itself is not a factor in progress in integration, but acts “together” with the context of migration, the motivation of the actors, their individual capabilities and available resources. resources that determine the trajectory and pace of the integration process.

The feeling of exclusion and/or inclusion in shared places: Syrian students' emotions and social imaginations in Istanbul

This article examines the dynamic relationship between the creation of place and the formation of identity, specifically focusing on how Syrian young people are either included or excluded in Istanbul. This dynamic process enables the students to engage in placemaking. The majority of the literature primarily centres on the potential for inclusion or exclusion within the context of migration. Nevertheless, I maintain my view that the dynamics between insiders and outsiders are closely interconnected in discourses about space. In this regard, it is worth exploring how the concept of Thirdspace enables the coexistence of both inclusion and exclusion within the same spatial context. Based on ethnographic observations, virtual ethnographies, and semi-structured interviews conducted with 30 Syrian students, I employ the notions of “social imaginary” and “emotional space” to demonstrate the coexistence of contrasting elements inside a shared location. While I utilised a framework that integrated geographical and sociological perspectives for my study, the unique aspect of this research lies in its adoption of the socio-spatiality approach, setting it apart from prior studies. While this approach opens space to the possibility of the simultaneous exclusionary and inclusionary functions of the spaces, the translocational positionality of the migrant groups fosters these contradictory interactions in the shared spaces. Gender differences and ethnicity (being Syrian) produce exclusionary functions, whereas being a student and Muslim increases integration into Turkish society. In addition to interactions within local relationships and transnational connections through religious communities, NGOs, and friend groups, these students not only resolve the tension between the past and present but also open the door to integration and bridge the future in the face of inequalities. In particular, women students solve the tension between cultural codes and their student identity with the possibility of transnational networks.

Introduction: International Knowledge Transfer and Circulation within the Brewing Industry

Abstract This special issue follows our conference, which was held in October 2021 and attended by beer historians and sociologists from the U.S., Europe and Australia. By taking beer as a lens to approach questions of knowledge transfer and circulation, we seek to refine our historical understanding of the global entanglements of the beer industry. This is all the more important as to-date the majority of historical beer studies have obscured transnational connections by solely focusing on the nation-state or smaller regional units.

Transnational Connections

In reference to recent interest in transnational queer studies, this essay takes steps to document the long-standing tradition of cultural connection and exchange with regard to homosexual images that has taken place across the Gulf of Bothnia and influenced the understanding of homosexuality, lesbianism included, in both Finland and Sweden. It argues that the cross-border exchange has not only nourished lesbian and gay culture and cultural production in both countries, but also influenced the way in which homosexuality – and thereby the countries themselves – have been viewed. In the article, Finnish cultural products, such as detective novels, films, scandal and porn magazines are searched for traces of the enduring idea of Swedishness being intrinsically intertwined with homosexuality. Whereas the image of Sweden was rather tainted by homosexuality in the 1950s, the public perception of Sweden in Finland changed markedly in the 1960s. In addition to ideas changing, people also started to travel between the two neighbouring countries, ensuring that the cultural exchange was by no means a one-way street.

‘Afghanistan’—the transnational connection between Haqqani Network and the Arab World

ABSTRACT This article explores the dynamics in the Haqqani Network’s (HN) connection with the Arab world which influenced the latter’s relationship with Afghanistan. The financial as well as ideological network that was established between the HN and the Arab countries has seen a trajectory from financing the Afghan War during the 1970s to clandestinely supporting the revival of the Taliban insurgency after 2001 and finally, participating in the Afghan peace negotiation process from 2010 onward – partly due to changes in the geopolitical priorities. After the Taliban takeover of Kabul in August 2021, the existing clandestine network is likely to change because many leaders from the Haqqani Network have occupied key positions in the Taliban’s interim government. Moreover, some of the countries from the Arab world are redefining their national interests by bringing significant changes to their foreign policies – which is impacting their interaction with the Taliban-led government in Afghanistan. Despite all this change, the relationship between the Arab world, Haqqani Network, and Afghanistan (including the present Taliban 2) is likely to continue as financial confederates (with the help of both overt and hidden networks) in the present and the future as well.

STRATEGY FOR ELIMINATING CORRUPTION THREATS TO UKRAINE'S NATIONAL SECURITY

The article reveals the strategy for elimination of corruption threats to national security. It is a system of knowledge about legal and organisational measures aimed at ensuring the supremacy of human virtues in public-legal relations at a level that excludes both potential and real threats to human rights, territorial integrity, safe living conditions of citizens and other constitutional values. It is a molar set, the content capacity of which is divided into at least two atomic units – legal norms and the implementation of legal norms. Taken together, both components of the strategy are capable of ensuring the preservation of these values and the development of the nation on this basis on an ongoing basis. The first component is intended to cover the content of legal relations. The second component involves the practical implementation of legal norms. These two variables equally saturate the functional and structural content of the security of national interests. Accordingly, the security of the nation exists only under the condition of the implementation of law-making and law-enforcement operations, which is possible only at the level of the institutionalisation of these processes. Any replacement of an institution by a person, of public interest by private interest, of law by its visibility, of freedom by force, determines the operational and/or strategic dysfunction of law, which leads to the loss of meaningful national values. It is determined that the hierarchy of initial relations of key concepts for understanding corruption distortions, the essential content of national interests and the relationship of corruption acts with the level of threats to Ukraine's national security form the ontological basis of the strategy for eliminating such threats. This basis should also include the principles of its creation, updating, implementation and monitoring of effectiveness. This is the introductory part of the strategy. In the substantive part of the strategy, it is necessary to specify the goal, tasks and areas of national interests, as well as the subjects of its implementation, effectiveness control and renewal. These subjects include all public authorities, civil organisations and each citizen. The main responsibility for the effectiveness of this approach lies not only with specialised anti-corruption bodies, but necessarily with all national public authorities. It is emphasised that there will be a system of control over such performers within the already existing infrastructure of public authorities and with detailed rules on the limits of control by citizens, the legal possibilities of which should be wide enough to ensure that this control remains an effective tool for ensuring the provisions of the specified strategy, including the possibility for citizens to use legal procedures of vigilantism. Separate sections of this strategy should be devoted to detailed rules for strengthening national security through transnational connections and digital technological resources. The secret part of the strategy should contain rules for using the nation's permanent and situational advantages, its individual features and other resources at a particular moment in time, as well as in the short, medium and long term. This part should also reflect the algorithms for determining the nature and qualities of these advantages, timely verification of their emergence and transformation. The author establishes that all these rules and algorithms should be combined with the rules for determining the changing nature of corruption acts and corruption subjects and their criminal accomplices.

Claudia Jones and Black Power: A Close Reading of the West Indian Gazette and Afro-Asian Caribbean News

When Claudia Jones was deported to Britain in 1955, the U.S. Government likely expected that the Communist threat she presented was finally neutralized. Yet, from the shores of Britain, Jones continued her radical activism. The West Indian Gazette and Afro-Asian Caribbean News (WIG), created by Jones in 1958, became an effective bullhorn to foster unity and solidarity amongst Black migrants in Britain toward many causes – at home and abroad. She called upon her previously established transnational connections to bring news of international developments to her British audience. The WIG’s coverage of the U.S. Civil Rights and Black Power Movements throughout the 1960s was also significant. Linking the United States and the UK to global changes, Jones kept a finger on the pulse of radical movements across the world and amplified them to her audience in editorials about uprisings in the Congo in 1960, revivals of Garveyism in Jamaica, and revolution in Cuba, for example. Drawing closely from the WIG, this article will analyze some of the continuities that rippled throughout the activism of Claudia Jones into the period of the Black Power Movement, as well as the overlapping activists, their strategies, and the important discussions the WIG was able to platform during its run. It will highlight that the many crossovers observed through the pages of the WIG evidence how a generation of activists may have been influenced by the knowledge transmitted through the life and work of Claudia Jones.