Transnational Framework Research Articles

Minimal Secularism: Lessons for, and from, India

Does liberal democracy require a strict separation between state and religion? In Anglophone liberal political theory, the separationist model of the First Amendment of the US Constitution has provided the basic template for the rightful relationship between state and religion. Yet this model is ill-suited to the evaluation of the secular achievements of most states, including India. This article sets out a new framework, minimal secularism, as a transnational framework of normative comparison. Minimal secularism does not single out religion as special, and it appeals to abstract liberal democratic ideals such as equal inclusion and personal liberty. Actual debates about secularism in India are shown to revolve around these ideals. The study of recent Indian controversies—about the Uniform Civil Code, the status of Muslims, and the rise of BJP nationalism—also sheds light on some blind spots of Western secularism and the conception of sovereignty and religion it relies on.

Beyond Reality and Fiction: William Demby’s Congo vivo

Set during the height of the Congolese Civil War (1960-1965), Congo vivo (Giuseppe Bennati, 1962), narrates the affair between an Italian journalist, Roberto (Gabriele Ferzetti) and Annette (Jean Seberg), the wife of a Belgian diplomat. The film was co-written by William Demby (1922-2013), a novelist, journalist, translator, and screenwriter, who like many African American soldiers who arrived in Italy during World War II as part of the U.S. Allied Forces, remained in the country for the better part of forty years. Written during Demby's period of intermittent expatriatism between the United States and Italy, and in the same period as his signature novel, The Catacombs (1965), I argue Congo vivo, a hybrid film with elements of documentary, ethnography, and narrative fiction, is situated within a transnational and transmedia framework and offers another perspective on Italian Third Worldism. I also argue that Congo vivo anticipates the filone films set within former colonial territories that index not only the decline of the Italian film industry and the rise of television, but also an emergent postcolonial condition.

Memory, place and agency: transnational mirroring of otherness among young Albanian ‘returnees’

ABSTRACT Return migration has been traditionally conceptualised within a framework of ‘homecomings’, emphasising primordial ethnicity at the expense of micro-level and cognitive aspects of migrants’ belongingness. Drawing on the narratives of Albanian-origin children and young people who moved (back) to Albania with their families from crisis-ridden Greece, this paper explores their experiences of otherness in the presumed homeland, and puts emphasis on their agency in the context of return migration. Memory emerges as an important aspect of agency in the process of what we term ‘the transnational mirroring of otherness’. Brought up in Greece, the Albanian-origin children are othered upon return because of their perceived ‘Greekness’ among the locals and limited ability to speak Albanian. Beyond establishing and maintaining transnational ties and identities, participants show initiative in positioning themselves against shifting transnational identification frameworks, as they contemplate a spatially mobile future.

The split Arab/Jew figure revisited

ABSTRACT In this essay, Shohat argues that the question of the Arab-Jew, in contrast to present-day ethnonationalist common sense, must be rearticulated as mutually constitutive categories, so as to address the complex imaginaries of both ‘the Arab’ and ‘the Jew’. Elaborating on her earlier dialogue with Edward Said’s account of the bifurcated Oriental/Semitic myth—one rendered as the Orientalist (the Jew) and the other as the Oriental (the Arab)—Shohat offers a genealogical reading of this gradual splitting, locating it prior to the partition of Palestine and even to the emergence of Zionism, and tracing it back to the dissemination of a colonial-inflected Enlightenment discourse. More crucially, Shohat asks where the indigenous Jew of ‘the Orient’, and more specifically the Arab-Jew, might fit conceptually within this split. Today, with the epic-scale reconceptualization of belonging in the wake of partition, diasporization and competing nationalist imaginaries, the Arab-Jew figure silently occupies an ambiguous position within the bifurcation. Yet a critical analysis of the Orientalist splitting that sidesteps the question of the Arab-Jew risks reproducing the fixed ethnonationalist lexicon that posits Jewishness and Arabness as irreconcilable. At the same time, this very ambiguity, Shohat argues, was already fomented with the imperial ‘translation’ of the Enlightenment project into a racialized idiom, now applied differentially to the Muslim and the Jew-within-the-Orient. This essay traces such representational ruptures back to the nineteenth century, examining various instances of what the essay regards as ‘the de-indigenization of the Arab-Jew’. To illustrate her thesis, Shohat examines the gendered imagining of both Jewish and Muslim communities within a relational and transnational comparative framework. Orientalist tropes such as the odalisque, the hammam and the un/veiled female had long been projected on to Muslim and Jewish women throughout the region but, with the emergence of imperial ‘minorities’ discourse, the exoticized Jew-in-the-Orient became the object of a gendered rescue phantasy, as vividly illustrated in Dehodencq’s painting L’Exécution de la juive. Rather than a document of Muslim antisemitism, however, the colonial visual archive inadvertently registers what Shohat defines as a ‘split-within-the split’, highlighting the novel formation of an ambivalent indigeneity for Arab-Jews within ‘the Orient’. Yet the aesthetic dispositions also inadvertently and paradoxically reveal an underlying, thoroughly syncretic and shared Judaeo-Muslim cultural geography. Here the pivotal figure of the Arab-Jew reveals an intricate landscape of belonging that offers an alternative conceptual framework in which to discuss the ruptures prior to the grand rupture of partition, and to illuminate the post/colonial transformation that dramatically impacted the narrative of Jewish at-homeness within Muslim spaces.

International Investment Law as Transnational Law

In the last twenty years, the international investment regime has attracted wide attention. Academics, policymakers and civil society have studied this regime using different analytical and normative frameworks, defending as much as criticizing international investment treaties and arbitration. Interestingly, however, there is not much literature analyzing international investment law through the lenses of transnational law. This limited interest is surprising given the transnational law origin of the regime – as shown by Sornarajah and Anghie – and the relevance of transnational law to understand the relationship between public and private law and international and domestic law in global economic relations. This chapter relies on a transnational law framework to show that these legal categories are contingent and only explain certain aspects of the international investment regime. A transnational law framework provides a valuable vantage point to assess the political economy of this regime, in particular, how it affects the relationship between states, foreign investors and local communities. The analysis begins from arbitrators’ ability to interpret the law or, as Michaels suggests, to dream of delocalized law.

Conceptual Development of Migration Theory: Assimilation, Transnationalism

The development of concepts of migration theory with focuses on the current theoretical framework of assimilation and transnationalism is analyzed in this article. The difficulties in the study of migration faced by researchers according to modern theories are analyzed. The critique of “groupism” is cited as an example.

Judicial diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific: theory and evidence from the Singapore-initiated transnational judicial insolvency network

ABSTRACT The promulgation of the Judicial Insolvency Network (JIN) Guidelines by the Supreme Court of Singapore in 2017 has triggered innovative cross-border insolvency developments in the Asia-Pacific. It is intriguing that the Guidelines were conceived not by Singaporean judges alone, but jointly with a transnational network of bankruptcy judges. This article undertakes the original contribution of examining the Guidelines in light of the overall need for participating jurisdictions to craft a transnational insolvency framework. It uses Hong Kong as a test case to illustrate trends of likely future convergence.

Sustainable engineering master module – insights from three cohorts of European engineering team

Mobility and transnational migration are current social developments among the population of the European Union. These developments in both society-at-large and companies, linked to the challenges of sustainability, lead to new requirements for working in the European Union. Teaching and learning in higher education needs to adapt to these requirements. As a result, new and innovative teaching and learning practices in higher education should provide competencies for transnational teamwork in the curriculum of tomorrow's engineers in order to ensure their competitiveness in the job market. A transnational project-oriented teaching and learning framework, which provides the future key competencies for young engineers was implemented in the course European Engineering Team (EET). Engineering students from four countries participated in a new project-based course that focused on the development of innovative and sustainable products and opportunities. The goal of this paper is to present results and lessons learnt from three cohorts of EET.

THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION: THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC AND TRANSNATIONAL LAW

The reflections made in this writing, bring to discussion the importance of transnational law, in the face of the occurrence of the current pandemic. From this, considerations are made about the transnational law produced by the WHO against Covid-19. Also, an analysis is made of the central categories and their relationship with the prefix ‘trans-’ and transnational law. Subsequently, the WHO is discussed, its emergence and performance in the elaboration of a transnational legal framework to be considered when internalizing its guidelines by each Member State. In the context of final considerations, it is emphasized, in addition to the importance that should be attributed to transnational law that the work of the WHO, as a transnational actor, practices materialized acts such as transnational law, both in terms of guidance and in connection with public health matters. The methodology used was based on the inductive method, using the bibliographic research.

Assessing Refugee Protection Claims at Australian Airports: The Gap Between Law, Policy, and Practice

Australia’s current approach to processing individuals who arrive by air and raise protection claims at or before immigration clearance at Australian airports has not been previously explored. This article reveals a set of policy and procedural instructions, recently released by the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Cth), which establishes the administrative process of ‘entry screening’. The article examines entry screening within the transnational framework governing Australia’s legal obligations towards individuals seeking international protection. While much scholarly and public attention has been directed towards policies such as offshore detention and interdiction at sea, the documents reveal that policies designed to deter ‘unauthorised maritime arrivals’ have similar manifestations — and consequences — for ‘unauthorised air arrivals’. The article then turns to an analysis of domestic law, arguing that the Migration Act 1958 (Cth) does not authorise the entry screening procedures and that the procedures contradict certain statutory guarantees and procedural fairness. The documents further indicate that DHA lacks accurate data on protection claims made in Australian airports. Finally, the article examines why the current practice of entry screening violates Australia’s international legal obligations of non-refoulement and non-penalisation.

Looking for Pura Vida

Using a transnational theoretical framework, this study explores U.S. families expatriating to Guanacaste, Costa Rica in search of educational alternatives to U.S. schooling. In order to meet the needs of this influx of U.S. families to the region, schools such as La Paz Community School in Flamingo, Guanacaste have emerged. This qualitative inquiry explores emergent themes from 16 semi-structured interviews conducted with US parents whose children attend La Paz. Findings reveal participants’ desire for a progressive educational alternative for their children that embraces a more collective vision of learning. For interviewees, frustrations with U.S. K-12 schools became symbolic of cultural criticism of US social norms and the desire to recreate a lifestyle removed from daily pressures in the United States.

Waiting for Gadaa: a critical exploration through transnational Siinqee feminism

In this autoethnography I critically engage the experiences and theories of waiting for liberation, dubbed waiting for gadaa, in the Oromo diaspora by using the Africanist analytic framework of transnational siinqee feminism. I organize my stories into two parts. In the first part, I introduce the work, starting from my personal experiences of waiting and connecting the dots of the personal and political and individual and collective stories. I tease out three salient epistemological principles of a transnational siinqee feminist conceptual framework for both the critical analysis of theories and experiences of waiting in the Oromo diaspora. In the second part, I explore waiting in theory and practice. I interweave the three siinqee principles, my research in the Oromo diaspora, and broader emergent theories of waiting to critically engage the complex textures of waiting for gadaa in the Oromo diaspora. I conclude by opening the principles of transnational siinqee feminism for a possible fit in broader emancipatory praxis.

Foreword: Ecocriticism in the Age of Dislocation?

ABSTRACTAnglophone environmental literary criticism has evolved within the bounds of regions and regionalism. Particularly during its early years, ecocriticism privileged local engagement with the natural world as a literary-activist mode. Recent approaches, however, emphasise translocal, transregional, and transnational frameworks. Moreover, intersections with studies of affect, ecofeminism, materiality, postcolonialism, risk, and other areas underlie the continuing theoretical diversification of ecocriticism. An Anthropocene Ecocriticism would confront the disorienting spatio-temporal scales of our age, resist longstanding local-global binarisms, place emphasis on the value of indigenous narratives, and embrace the environmental justice origins of the field.

Migrant votes ‘here’ and ‘there’: Transnational electoral behavior of Turks in the Netherlands

Abstract Whether there is a trade-off between ‘here’ (country of settlement) and ‘there’ (the country of origin) is one of the key political questions and concerns regarding political attitudes and behaviors of immigrant minorities. We take this issue by the horns and study three components of political attitudes and behavior within a transnational framework among Dutch-Turkish citizens in the Netherlands: turnout, political trust and interest, and party choice. The empirical data draws on original exit polls held during the Turkish presidential and parliamentary elections at a polling station in 2014 (n = 791) and in 2015 (n = 456). We find that that gender and country of birth influence electoral participation; social class (working class background as labor migrants) influences voting behavior. While there is a trade-off for political trust and voting behavior, there is no trade-off for political interest. These findings call for a more nuanced approach to transnational political behavior that is attentive to processes of convergence between ‘here’ and ‘there’ and the diversity within migrant groups.

A Sinicized World Religion?: Chinese Christianity at the Contemporary Moment of Globalization

This essay explores the rise of Protestant Christianity at the contemporary stage of China’s globalization as a unique social and cultural phenomenon. Globalization can be seen as not only a homogenization process in political and economic terms, but also a process in which religious ideas and moral principles spread around the world. While in an earlier phase of globalization lack of Christianity was once constructed as a moral argument to ban Chinese migration to the Christian West, in the current context of China’s aggressive business outreach and mass emigration Christianity has become a vital social force and moral resource in binding Chinese merchants and traders in diaspora. By linking the rise of a sinicized version of Christianity in secular Europe with China’s present-day business globalization, I hope to suggest a new transnational framework for studying Chinese Christianity, which has often been examined in the nation-based political context of church-state relations, and for rethinking it beyond the static, decontextualized system of world religions.

Caring across borders: The politics of belonging and transnational health

Health care supply, demand and responsibility are increasingly becoming transnational. More people seek care beyond state borders, while, at the same time, most health systems are still nationally organized. Though most of socio-anthropological literature focuses on “health tourism”, this article considers migrants’ health travels at the junction between the neoliberal framework of global health and politics of belonging. It explores the transnational medical trajectories of Moroccans and Ecuadorians living in Italy to take care of family/reproductive health. On one hand, parents’ transnational practices are influenced by “situations of belonging” – or not belonging – that they experience in Italy, including in medical encounters. On the other hand, migrants enact tactics to navigate the neoliberal framework of care. The article highlights the need for the development of a transnational framework to regulate the increasing transnational dimension of healthcare able to mitigate (rather than increase) economic and social gaps between states.

“I feel English as fuck”: translocality and the performance of alternative identities through rap

ABSTRACTThis article deploys the concept of translocality, in order to move beyond the transnational framework that underpins global hip hop studies. Over the last forty years rap music has become a vibrant and distinctive part of mainstream British life. Through rap young people construct identities that draw upon their local experiences while also connecting them with young people from other localities. These translocal identities affirm a multi-ethnic, urban experience of England in mainstream popular culture. Based on a year of ethnographic research in London and Bristol, we argue that a distinctive rap culture is produced through the performance, production, circulation, and reproduction of rap in and between English cities.

Cultural studies and the African Global South

ABSTRACTCultural studies exhibits multiple derivations from different historical conjunctures and places. This essay examines three instances of cultural studies emanating from within Africa, in relation to the field in the North Atlantic. What a “Southern” lens offers the North are different ways of making sense and a transnational framework that enables peer-to-peer conversations. This transe/trance quality is explained via a discussion of the scientifically unexplainable, superstition, and the noumenal. The immateriality of money and its associated human performances as reified by New York stock exchanges is the example through which transnational theoretical hybridity is examined.

Dancing Transnationally

This paper employs a transnational lens to explore traditional Croatian dance practices in Sydney, Australia. It looks first at individuals and their emotional ties with Croatia as expressed through participation in dance groups. Then, three strands of group activity are explored. Organisations provide structure for alliances between groups; pedagogical principles were brought from Croatia but have undergone modification for the Australian situation, and material exchanges across borders include costume purchase and financial remittances. The transnational framework produces a detailed analysis of dance in the Croatian community in Sydney.

Inventing Tourism in the Naval Port: The Case of the Brijuni Islands during the Habsburg Empire

The present paper presents the results of the archival and field research conducted in the framework of the author’s research project ‘Valorisation of the common European heritage of Pula as the former main Austrian naval port and Brijuni Islands as an elite resort’ in Austrian archives, with the focus on the Kupelwieser Collection kept in the Austrian National Library. The research aimed to offer a new perspective in the elaboration of the key initial phases of the development ofmodern tourismon the Brijuni Islands, by analysing their important function as an aristocratic residence near the main naval port in a comparative and transnational framework. The main research question was whether Brijuni followed a European model of development of an aristocratic resort near a major port. Combining archival and field research, the author has explored and compared some of the well-known island aristocratic residences in Europe and theMediterranean,which developed as popular seaside resorts in the 19th and 20th centuries, such as the Isle ofWight, Mallorca, Corfu, and Brijuni. An overview of the available recent theoretical literature provided comparative insights into the search for such a model of the successful symbiosis of resorts and ports. As a case study, the author analysed the development of tourism on the Brijuni Islands in the most dynamic and dramatic periods before, during, and after the First World War, bearing in mind their importance as an elite resort in close proximity to Pula as the former main Austrian (Austro-Hungarian) naval port. Keywords: aristocratic residences, resorts, ports, Brijuni, Pula, tourism history