Transnational Mobility Research Articles

Migration Trajectories of Russian-Speaking Workers in the Tourism Sector of Nha Trang (Vietnam)

The purpose of this paper is to explore an aspect of the structural mechanism of Nha Trang as a post-Soviet space by investigating the migratory trajectories of Russian-speakers working in the tourism sector of Nha Trang. Based upon the case studies of Russian-speaking workers, this paper unraveled transnational composition of the social space mediated by the Russian language as cultural capital, and showed importance of tourism economy for the transnational mobility of Russian-speakers. The complex social and political contexts that have been generated historically from the relationships between Vietnam and Russia or the former USSR produced Russian-speaking tourism economy and tourist enclave in Nha Trang, and Nha Trang became a node of mobility for Russian-speakers who have various forms of mobility that go beyond the static conceptual frameworks of “tourism” and “migration”. This paper examines the linkage between tourism and migration and educes the multiple intermediate forms of human mobility in order to promote a deepr understanding of the process of the emergence of Russian speaking tourism economy in Nha Trang, which has been rapidly developed in the last decade, from the social and political contexts.

THE IDENTITY OF THE “NEW ADAM” IN LESLEY MARMON SILCO’S NOVEL “GARDENS IN THE DUNES”

The article is devoted to the study of the uniqueness of conquest messianism, which is the basis of anthropomorphic nationalism of the literary process of the XIX – first half of the XX century, which contributed to the usurpation of American identity by images of a Christianized Edward Palmer. A review of scholars’ ideas on trends in the interpretation of modern literary works by authors of Indian origin is analyzed. It is noted that many literary critics point to cosmopolitanism as a useful concept for expanding and developing areas of postcolonial research, research within geographical and literary boundaries, and perhaps most provocatively, the study of North American Indians and Indigenous people. The presence of anti-American themes that sharpen the reader's attention against the European educational configuration of racial bodies and diseases is highlighted. An attempt has been made to clarify the understanding of true values by representatives of European and North American imperialism and Native Americans. The analysis of the given textual examples proves that there is a special emphasis on issues related to identity, culture and society in the context of increasing transnational mobility, technological progress and globalization. The article notes that the colonial invaders endowed America's alien and ecologically distinctive landscape with tropics in order to bring it as close as possible to the tropical Eden they had longed for on a new continent, instead of becoming a tropical hell created by colonial contacts, evictions, forced relocations, and expulsions of Native Americans from their sovereign lands.

Aquí and Allá: Transnational Dominican Theater and Performance by Camilla Stevens

Reviewed by: Aquí and Allá: Transnational Dominican Theater and Performance by Camilla Stevens Bretton White Stevens, Camilla. Aquí and Allá: Transnational Dominican Theater and Performance. U of Pittsburgh P, 2019. 269 pp. In this engaging study of contemporary Dominican drama and performance, Stevens makes a compelling argument for how theater can illuminate transnational subjects. By focusing on multiple aspects of Dominican migration and the diaspora, Aquí and Allá shows the complex nature of migration and transnational identity through the lens of theater written, published, and performed both in the Dominican Republic and the United States. As Stevens argues, since the 90s, these theatrical representations of Dominican subjects have become a way to counteract negative stereotypes of Dominican migrants for audiences in both countries, while they also [End Page 253] complicate how these transnational subjects see race, class, gender, and sexuality as they cope with the many aspects of transnational migration, from the initial departure to return migration. For audience members, Stevens is concerned with how theater provides local spaces for reimaging and expanding interpretations of Dominican identity. With close readings of approximately 15 plays and/or performances from the 1990s until 2015, Aquí and Allá deftly addresses how Dominican transnationals are viewed as minority figures whether in the United States or in the Dominican Republic. Since most have migrated due to the dire economic situation, Dominicans historically maintain strong cultural ties to the Dominican Republic, even when born abroad. Upon their return to the home country, many transnational Dominicans find that they are treated as outsiders due to linguistic, economic, and cultural differences. Indeed, as Stevens shows, the significance of the words aquí and allá shifts for the characters in these plays, depending on one’s location and perspective. Sometimes these transnational shifts become muddled for the characters themselves, giving a sense of both the separation and the connection of both national spaces for the transnational subject. The riskiness of this transnational mobility is especially evident in a chapter on deadly yola migration performances. It is also extremely complicated, as we see in chapters on works that upend traditional Caribbean masculinities, prompt ethical audience engagement through the treatment of sex trafficking and immigrant rights, and show characters’ arduous citizenship journeys. Stevens’s careful readings and engaging writing illuminate the texts and stagings of these understudied works, resulting in an important corpus of theater that treats contemporary, transnational Dominican experience. One of the book’s most intriguing theories is that these performances function as what Juan Flores calls “cultural remittances” (131). Given that many Dominican stories of migration are rooted in economic need and that remittances are essential to Dominican citizens’ survival, this parallel form of remittance, according to the author, is attractive because of its ability to create more expansive definitions of national identity. Likewise, Stevens’s exploration of Françoise Lionnet and Shu-mei Shih’s “minor transnationalism” dismantles the binaries evident in postcolonial theory and gives space to translocal works that are always a part of minoritarian discourse. Stevens’s analysis of the works featured in Aquí and Allá shows how transnational identity is integral to the Dominican experience. Additionally, she identifies how the artistic production of theater practitioners working in the minor transnational realm can awaken audience members to new subtleties within the Dominican experience, both aquí and allá, and the spaces in between. [End Page 254] Bretton White Colby College Copyright © 2021 The Center of Latin American Studies

The Holy See and the Mobilization of the Faithful (1859-1870)

In the middle of the 19 th century, the papacy saw its temporal power threatened. In 1849, faced with the Roman Revolution, Pius IX benefited from the help of the powers, that intervened militarily to restore the pope to his throne. It is however in a very different situation that the papacy finds itself about ten years later, in 1859, when the war in Italy ends. The disinterest of the powers pushes the Holy See to develop a diplomatic strategy based in part on seeking support from the Catholic masses. The papacy seeks to organize the mobilization of the faithful in order to constrain governments to defend the Holy See. This support of the masses gave rise to a vast transnational mobilization that took multiple forms. This article will pay particular attention to its financial and military dimensions. Thus, the article highlights the paradoxically modernizing character of the intransigent turning point for the Church. It led her to adapt her repertoire of action to this «modern civilization» that she intended to fight and to take advantage of some of the new means of action that characterized it. While denouncing liberal modernity, the papacy was entering the era of the masses.

Onward Migration Aspirations and Transnational Practices of Migrant Construction Workers Amidst Economic Crisis: Exploring New Opportunities and Facing Barriers

AbstractConsidering onward migration aspirations of Albanian migrants in Italy and Greece, this article investigates the reproduction of transnational practices in relation to preferred destinations before new settlements take place. Drawing on qualitative data, it introduces the concept of explorative transnational practices and sheds light on the interplay between aspirations and transnationalism, showing how the desire to leave the first country may be shaped by transnational ties, and how this may trigger occasional transnational physical activity to explore new destinations. On one hand, this version of transnational mobility may engender remigration, but, on the other, this may be transformed into income‐oriented work trips due to structural constraints (legal status, immigrant networks) and a lack of linguistic and economic capital, as well as other factors such as integration processes, intergenerational relationships and experiences in new destinations. This questions the very presumptions of the transnationalist approach that underscore agentic dimensions of transnational migrants.

Transnational Academic Mobility: A Case Study of Fifteen Academics

Academics around the world face many pressures to engage in transnational mobility (TNM) as a part of their scholarly work. This includes travelling abroad for conferences and symposia, teaching abroad, supervising graduate students abroad and participating in international research partnerships/collaborations. This is a case study of 15 academics at different stages of their academic careers, located in 12 different countries and representing a wide range of academic disciplines. The findings confirm the widespread and regular international travel that higher education academics participate in; and that while largely valuing their experiences abroad, most feel pressured to engage in TNM and those pressures are exacerbated for faculty in precarious and early-career positions.

History in Person: A Longitudinal Study of a Language Learner’s Experience at Home and Abroad

Abstract This study explores the longitudinal pathway of social identification traveled by a US learner of Chinese, Tom. Focusing on the historical production of persons, I analyze interactional recordings, instructional artifacts, and participant interviews collected over three years of qualitative inquiry. The analysis articulates how Tom’s narrative of intercultural encounters was reframed, rekeyed, and recycled at home and abroad. Along the way, Tom was identified as (i) an avid learner of Chinese in a language classroom in the USA; (ii) an ignorant foreigner while studying in China; and (iii) a political outcast upon his return to the USA whose intercultural experience abroad, nevertheless, afforded his classmates an opportunity to appreciate a more ethno-relative perspective. The consonance and dissonance of identification are results of interplay between history in person and history in institutionalized struggles. This interplay must be considered to understand the (re)making of language-learning identities across historical time, social space, and communicative modes. The findings illustrate how history, social identification, and engagement in intercultural communication mutually inform each other in and beyond transnational mobility.

Gestational surrogacy: Transnational procreative practice and work for women in contemporary society

Gestational surrogacy is spreading across the world and it is increasingly accepted as an available way to make babies: the procreative process, the procurement of gametes, the recruitment of women and the relationships between the various subjects are administered by international agencies. At the same time there are signs of resistance such as transnational mobilizations calling for the universal ban of a practice that is viewed as a form of commodification of women and children. The author introduces the articles included in this monograph issue, which is an original contribution to a sociological understanding of an unprecedented social practice with peculiar characteristics: the presence of a new social actor, the surrogate woman, and the intentional separation of the newborn from the woman he or she identifies as their mother (although they are not genetically related). Because of these characteristics, surrogacy’s impact on the social role and subjective experience of motherhood, its imaginary and narrative, as well as on the status of the child, is not comparable to other forms of assisted procreation and family formation.

Social Changes and Language Use in the Families of Banat Swabians Between the Two World Wars

The paper investigates language ideology and language use in the families of Banat Swabians between the two world wars. It is argued that the linguistic practices of the Banat Swabians cannot be understood without insight into the historical context and the most important ideological nuclei of the Danube Swabians, as the ethnic group to which they belong. The analysis is therefore based on previous research on the Danube Swabians, primarily carried out by historians, anthropologists and linguists, and on contemporary field research carried out within the German Banat community. The paper shows that the Banat Swabians in the interwar period are characterized by the heterogeneity of language ideologies and practices, which depends on their family and social status, as well as on the changing socio-political circumstances in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and Europe at that time. The language ideologies of the Banat Swabians, as shown in the paper, oscillated between national (standardizing) and local (vernacular). Language use was characterized by standard language culture and diglossia of Swabian (vernacular variety of German) and Hochdeutsch (literary, standardized variety). The social values attributed to local Swabian varieties in the school, in the local German press and within Swabian families also fluctuated between stigmatisation and admiration. As the Swabians inhabited areas where German was not the majority language, they praised and practiced multilingualism, especially in the public sphere. The language repertoire of all social strata included almost all the main languages of the Banat social environment – German, Hungarian, Serbian, Romanian, etc. Furthermore, we argue that the Banat Swabians perceived the entire area of the former Monarchy, and partly Germany, as interconnected cultural and social spaces. Transnational mobility was thus an integral part of their everyday and family life.

LGBT Refugees and the Visual Representation of Transnational Mobility

Abstract This article examines how photographic interviews can be used to represent the life stories of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender refugees. Transnational and cross-border movements have a significant impact on the photographic and narrative self-representation of such refugees. By focusing on the example of a photographic interview project, The Story That Travelled, this article demonstrates how ideas surrounding community, citizenship, and transnational mobility are interpreted and visualized by refugees who have fled their countries of origin because of their sexuality and/or gender. In addition, this article considers how digital technologies impact lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender refugees and their experience and negotiation of borders.

Cosmopolitan Whiteness

Abstract Previous scholarship on the immense popularity of skin-whitening frames this practice as revealing women’s desire to emulate whiteness and upper class White populations. Others have focused on whitening practices to highlight the working of racialized color hierarchy and European/Euro-American hegemony in local and global contexts. This article breaks away from these established theoretical trajectories by arguing that desire for “whiteness” is not the same as desire for “Caucasian whiteness.” Examining advertisements for skin-whitening products in the Indonesian version of Cosmopolitan and skin-tanning products in the American version of Cosmopolitan, the author points out the construction of “cosmopolitan whiteness.” Whiteness is not simply racialized or nationalized as such, but transnationalized. Whiteness is represented as “cosmopolitanness,” embodying transnational mobility.

What academic mobility configurations contribute to high performance: an fsQCA analysis of CSC-funded visiting scholars

Against the backdrop of globalization, the world is witnessing increasingly frequent transnational mobility, placing scientific mobility in the spotlight. Highly competitive researchers with an international vision are regarded as engines that, for any nation, drive scientific and technological progress and social development. Over the past two decades, the China Scholarship Council (CSC) has provided sustainable financial and policy support to promote academic mobility. This study aims to identify complex antecedent configurations contributing to the high research performance of scholars after their research visits funded by the CSC. Fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) is employed to conduct a causal analysis on 630 researchers who received CSC academic mobility funding in 2012. Then, bibliometric indexes and fsQCA are combined to identify the antecedent configurations (combinations) that lead to the high research performance of these researchers. From experimental results, we identify six combinations (configurations) of visiting scholars and four combinations of postdoctoral researchers that lead to high research performance after their research visits. In more details, active international collaboration before their visits plays a core role in the high research performance of scholars after mobility. Meanwhile, the reputation of institutions and the academic position constitute an important part of the combinations that lead to high research performance. Additionally, the role of the duration of the research visit in the high performance of researchers cannot be ignored. Gender is not a crucial part of the causal combinations that explain high performance. This study provides insights to design and improve similar academic mobility programmes worldwide.

Memory, homecoming and the politics of diaspora tourism in China

Diaspora tourism has become a significant form of transnational mobility that underlies many issues in the field of tourism and migration studies. Despite a considerable body of research that focuses on tourism motivations of home return and its social functions in collective identities and meaning-making, the political roles of diaspora tourism in shaping ethnic bonds and transnational networks need to be further acknowledged. Since 2014, a group of Muslims from Kazakhstan have travelled to China to celebrate their return after over 140 years of displacement from their homeland. Interviews with local officials and residents in Xi’an illustrate the political factors of host governments and local Muslim communities in organising the formal group tourism events. Unlike informal and personal travel, such officially organised diaspora tourism does not serve as a simple act of homecoming. The host governments have used it as a political tool to shape transnational networks and domestic ethnic governance under the discourse of ‘Belt and Road’ initiative. To fulfil this political agenda, the official narrative of diaspora tourism involves a process of remembering and forgetting, and the creation of itineraries that authenticates the imagined ancestral homeland while effacing the unsettled past. The itinerary of tourism events and related cultural practices focuses on a shared ethno-religious identity and common interests of cultural and business exchange between the selected diaspora representatives and host communities. However, due to its political nature, the sustainability of diaspora tourism does not only relate to funding and resource management. Such organised diaspora tourism is also closely associated with the shifting ethnic and migration policies of the host nation-state.

Transnational Narratives in Englishes of Exile

Transnational Narratives in Englishes of Exile

Pentecostalism in Mongolia

Abstract Pentecostal missionaries arrived in Mongolia as early as 1910 but the socialist government expelled all missionaries in 1924. By the time socialism collapsed in 1990, there were no more than 20 Christians in the whole nation. However, estimates suggest that there are now around 100,000 adherents, most of whom are Pentecostal. While some scholars have analysed the history of Christianity in Mongolia, little research has explored this significant subset. Mongolia Assemblies of God (MAOG—Монголын Бурханы Чуулган) was one of the first and fastest growing Christian denominations. It currently comprises around 2000 adherents, as well as over 200 graduates from its ministry training college. Using MAOG as a case study, this research argues that the rise of Pentecostalism in Mongolia is owing to its ‘ends of the earth’ mission; cultural protest movement; lure of modernity; imagined community; empowerment through transnational mobility; theology of divine ‘calling’; and contribution toward civil society.

Family-mediated migration infrastructure: Chinese international students and parents navigating (im)mobilities during the COVID-19 pandemic

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated responses such as border closure, lockdown measures and flight curtailment have severely disrupted transnational infrastructures that sustain, channel, organize and condition international migration. This infrastructural disruption has led to the double exclusion of temporary migrants from both sending and host societies. In this context, we explore how Chinese international students in the United Kingdom and their parents in China navigate transnational (im)mobilities during the pandemic. In doing so, we develop the conceptualization of “family-mediated migration infrastructure” to elucidate the role played by transnational family relationships in brokering information, mobilizing resources, and coordinating disjointed acts of institutional players in order to sustain transnational (im)mobility. We also reveal a distinctive emotional double-bind in the process of family-mediated infrastructuring, which requires members of transnational families to strategically perform emotional engagement and detachment in complex ways. Our findings highlight the functional resilience and emotional vulnerability of family-mediated transnational migration infrastructure, and render visible the intimate fabrics that contribute to sustaining transnationalism during the pandemic.

"I Wish I Were a Plumber!": Transnational Class Re-Constructions Across Migrant Experiences Among Hong Kong's Professionals and Managers.

This study examines processes of class construction within a transnational community of professionals and managers who are emigrants, returnees, and non-migrants. Building on Bourdieu's class analysis and literature on transnational migration, we examine how class statuses are supported by moral claims based on varying transnational mobility strategies. We draw our results from qualitative interviews with 45 Hong Kong respondents in Hong Kong and Canada. We find that despite Hong Kong emigrants' loss of economic capital due to de-professionalization, their cultural and symbolic claims frame an alternative set of norms about their life successes. Returnees claim to have the best of both worlds having amassed economic capital, while making social distinctions from stayers in terms of their globalized cosmopolitan imaginaries. Stayers appear envious of emigrants' and returnees' flexibility and seek to accumulate economic capital for future retirement migration or to send their children abroad. Respondents' moralizing discourses reveal a social field defining within class distinctions apart from hyper concerns of upward mobility through material gains. Nuanced class distinctions articulate values around freedom of space, time, and expression not readily accessible to residents remaining in Hong Kong.

Athletic naturalisation, nationality and nationalism – Naturalised players in Hong Kong’s representative (national) football team

The increasing transnational mobility of athletes is accompanied by the growing presence of naturalised athletes in national teams, raising questions about the implications for nationalism and national identity in sports. Hong Kong offers a unique context to examine these issues as a Special Administrative Region of China which has its own representative (‘national’) team despite its non-sovereign status. Using in-depth interviews with 24 informants (fans, players, coaches, etc.), this paper examines how naturalised players from overseas and Mainland China are perceived by stakeholders of Hong Kong football. We found that informants articulated an ‘instrumental-plus’ discourse about these players, and a ‘civic-plus’ conception of nationality. Implications for sport and nationalism in the Hong Kong–China context and beyond are discussed.

Marriage as Ruse or Migration Route: Jewish Women’s Mobility and Sex Trafficking to Argentina, 1890s-1930s

The victim narrative of the international anti-white slavery movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century highlighted the suffering of prostituted women entrapped by violent men. Due to both antisemitic exaggeration and the reality of Ashkenazi Jewish networks of international sex work management in this period, Jews faced particular scrutiny as traffickers, and organized internationally with non-Jewish reformers against the phenomenon. Reformers often decried the shtile khupe, a Jewish religious marriage ceremony without a civil component, as a key trafficking technique. Drawing on League of Nations archives, court records, and the Yiddish, Spanish, and English press, this essay provides a granular social history of marriage and associated relational strategies for cross-border migration and structuring Jewish sex work on the ground in early-twentieth-century Buenos Aires. Evidence from sex workers and their managers pushes against these victimization narratives, reframing marriage as a method to achieve transnational mobility and improve labor and living conditions. Historical and contemporary feminist responses to trafficking share rhetorical strategies and critiques – in both past and present, transnational sex work can be analyzed in a migratory rather than coercive context, centering individuals making difficult choices from among limited options.

Transnational mobility networks and academic social capital among early‐career academics: beyond common‐sense assumptions

AbstractAcademic mobility is increasingly presented as indispensable for a successful academic career. This imperative is rooted in the assumption that mobility contributes to academic excellence because it allows academics to build transnational academic networks. Based on biographical interviews and an analysis of the mobility networks of early‐career academics at three universities (Zurich, Cambridge, and UCLA), we examine the composition of these academics’ networks at different times and discuss the role of transnational ties within them. We find that increased mobility does indeed result in more transnational networks, but it does not increase academic social capital. The additional transnational ties mainly consist of transnational kinship and friendship relations. Furthermore, the mobility of early‐career academics triggers various forms of mobility among their family members. Finally, early‐career academics can build transnational academic ties without necessarily becoming mobile themselves, thanks to the mobility of higher‐ranked academics.