Transnational Mobility Research Articles

Mobility and immobility during COVID-19: A narrative inquiry into the wellness of international high school students in Canada

Through the conceptual and analytical lens of intersectionality, this article explores the wellness of international high school students (IHSS) in Canada during COVID-19. Two research questions guided this study: 1) What does wellness mean to IHSS? and 2) How did the pandemic impact their wellness? We employed narrative inquiry as our methodology and the three commonplaces of narrative inquiry—temporality, sociality, and place—set dimensions for our inquiry. In-depth interviews were conducted with thirty IHSS from 11 different countries and two focus groups with international student coordinators in a public schoolboard in Western Canada. Our research reveals that transnational mobility and pandemic-induced immobility clashed and compounded to generate new layers of understanding of wellness for IHSS through their lived experiences. Anchoring in participants’ understanding of wellness as something that allows one to utilize potentials and thrive in life, we analyzed the impacts of transnational mobility and immobility on their physical, social, mental, and emotional wellness. Our findings show that the immobility incurred by COVID lockdowns crippled an extensive range of learning opportunities for accumulating the intellectual, social, and cultural capitals that IHSS wished to pursue through transnational mobility. It also accentuated and compounded the challenges associated with transnational mobility, which were manifested in social, emotional, mental, and physical dimensions. Implications of the study include practical recommendations for developing educational strategies, resources, and policies at the micro, meso, and macro levels to better support IHSS.

Hokkien Chinese diaspora visitors’ image construction of their ancestral hometown: the role of the tourist gaze

ABSTRACT This study examines how diaspora tourists’ secondary and primary image of their ancestral home is constructed and how the tourist gaze is implied within. The study focuses on the Hokkien Chinese diaspora travelling to their ancestral hometown of Quanzhou, China. 58 foreign-born Hokkien Chinese participants were interviewed. A thematic analysis of the transcripts revealed the significant influence of the collective and romantic gaze in forming both secondary and primary images of Quanzhou. Visiting Quanzhou emerges as a strategy for survival, maintaining cultural connectivity and fostering transnational mobility. The significance of homecoming visits organised by families and diaspora organisations as catalysts for cultural, educational, social, and business mobility are discussed, highlighting the importance of incorporating the diaspora's transnational experiences into heritage tourism studies. Insights into how the Hokkien Chinese diaspora’s cultural heritage and transnational connections to their host communities in Quanzhou are essential in constructing the diasporic destination image are provided.

Управление обучением технике безопасности иностранных студентов в вузах КНР

Under the background of internationalization of education and cultural diversification, transnational mobility is increasingly becoming the main form of socio-economic and cultural exchange between countries. With the continuous deepening of the internationalization of universities, the scale of foreign students as cultural messengers connecting China and foreign countries is also increasing from year to year. As a result, the probability of various emergencies has significantly increased, and the broad attention of society to the settlement of emergencies related to foreign students has set new tasks for the leadership of universities. This article provides an in-depth analysis of the current situation and the reasons for managing safety training for foreign students, identifying and classifying safety risks for them, etc., and suggests measures to build a safety training management system for such students.

Alien Domesticity: Settler-Capitalist Invasion and the Limits of Representation in Ling Ma's Severance

Abstract: This article reads Ling Ma's Severance (2018) for its account of the racial entanglement of transnational mobility, settler capitalism, and homemaking, a dynamic referred to as alien domesticity . The novel narrativizes how the transnational circulation of capital, peoples, and labor over the past four decades has complicated the domestic character of US settler-racial form—and the settler-capitalist character of the domestic novel. I posit alien domesticity as a revision of Amy Kaplan's "manifest domesticity," engaging Asian American and settler colonial studies critiques of the racial logic of settler capitalism to read Severance as a contemporary assessment of American middle-class homemaking and its part in a racial civilizing project. Insofar as it frames Candace Chen's transnational labor with her unsettled movement among various domestic spaces, Severance thus discloses the function of alien domesticity: ultimately, I contend, Candace's competing duties of representation result in her transnational alienation from the novel's domestic narrative.

Returning empty-handed or going somewhere? Tales from social division networks of re-migrants in the polarized post-COVID-19 era: A phenomenological study

This study poses the following questions: What are the reasons for cross-border re-migration? How are social division networks formed? We conducted a phenomenological study of social division networks for Laotian re-migrants in polarized post-COVID-19 Thailand. Chain referral sampling was used to recruit participants in 20 online semi-structured interviews, which were conducted from December 2021 to April 2022. Thematic saturation (codebook development, codebook refinement, code saturation, emerging themes, and confirming theory) was used to analyze the interview transcripts. Three themes emerged from the participants’ responses: the reasons for re-migration, the role of network capital, and social divisions of re-migrants in polarized post-COVID-19 Thailand. Our findings provide useful insights into the importance of group connections with strong supply network ties to promote transnational mobility; this facilitates the movement of cross-border re-migrants between home-sending and host-receiving countries.

New imperialisms in the making? The geo-political economy of transnational higher education mobility in the UK and China

Higher education (HE) mobility programmes around the globe have been key initiatives over the past thirty years, driven by combinations of supranational and national state-led knowledge economy policies, university strategies, and decisions made by individuals regarding employability, credentials, or academic tourism. In this paper we argue that mobility too often is understood through the prism of internationalism, itself umbilically tied to and nourished by Enlightenment liberal thinking, such as Kantian cosmopolitanism, and the romantic figure of the wandering scholar. This has the effect of reducing our understanding of transnational mobility to individual actors, their desires, and experiences. In this paper we ask: to what extent and in what ways can HE transnational mobility projects be understood as forms of imperialism? In this regard we examine the literature on imperialism and argue for a more capacious use of the term; as taking economic, political and cultural forms. We use these to examine the links between the expansion and securing of empires historically, the state’s spatial projects and global market making. We do this through the prism of two nations, the UK and China, comparing their state’s transnational HE strategies, selectivities and outcomes.

Academic Career Mobility: Career Advancement, Transnational Mobility and Gender Equity

Academic Career Mobility: Career Advancement, Transnational Mobility and Gender Equity

Reimagining the Agency of International Students of Color During Global Pandemic and (Neo)Racism

The global imaginary contributes to the perpetuation of neo-colonial and neo-liberal mentalities, which reinforce the political, cultural, and social dominance over international students. Through an exploration guided by interrelated theories of agency and transnational social fields, this study employs a narrative inquiry methodology with a constructivist research approach to comprehend and investigate the agency of international graduate students of Color amidst transnational mobility during the COVID-19 pandemic within a four-year public research institution in the United States. The research findings demonstrate that specific contexts and spaces shape the agency of international graduate students and (trans)form their present and future. This article reveals four distinct forms of agency: agency as negotiation in uncertainties, agency as resistance to forms of (neo)racism, agency for personal growth and (trans)formation, and agency within transnational futures.

International lives and Finnish rhythms: Mobile professionals’ children, time and agency

This article investigates temporality in the everyday lives of 9-year-old children of international professionals in Finland. The children’s transnational mobility causes ruptures and discontinuities in their position within various timescapes. The institutional timescapes of schools in different countries appear to be somewhat incompatible, which can be challenging for these mobile children, especially if their sojourns are temporary. At the same time, the timescapes of the Finnish school system provide children with particular agency beyond the school setting, since school days are relatively short. Children also view differing timescapes differently depending on the length of their stay in the country. The article shows how past, present and future timescapes, and potential ruptures within these, become entangled when mobile professionals’ children negotiate their position and agency within various timescapes.

Women as Bangles, Bangles as Women: Migration, Gender, and Female Agency in Bangladeshi Writer Nashid Kamal’s The Glass Bangles

Migration, women, and agency are central research topics in the world literature in English. These topics have fascinated literary researchers since the late twentieth century and enabled debate on how and to what extent migration from post-colonial countries to the West shapes women’s sense of selfhood and identity. The article joins that debate, engaging with Nashid Kamal’s The Glass Bangles, a lesser-known Bangladeshi novel in English. It focuses on the rural, middle-class, and disadvantaged heroine Sheila. It examines how the novel represents the cultural dynamics of diaspora and what images of gendered migration the heroine’s translocal and transnational mobility reflect. The article frames the discussion with Judith Butler’s “gender and precarity” and Elora Shehabuddin’s “subaltern rationality.” It works on the textual metaphor of the glass bangles and their implications, as metaphors are powerful rhetorical devices to reflect migrants’ struggles, pains, and hopes. Accordingly, the article contends that, although romantic and, thus, debatable, Kamal’s novel deserves appreciation for presenting a robust vision of precarious women’s resilience and empowerment.

Fabriquer la traite, négocier la protection : échelles, acteurs et enjeux d’un dispositif transnational de contrôle des mobilités (Tunisie, Côte d’Ivoire)

Fabriquer la traite, négocier la protection : échelles, acteurs et enjeux d’un dispositif transnational de contrôle des mobilités (Tunisie, Côte d’Ivoire)

The reproductive silk route: transnational mobility of oocytes from Europe to Brazil

Assisted human reproduction has been deterritorialised into reproductive connectivity networks capable of adapting to contradictory laws, technological development and the mobility of people, reproductive substances, knowledge and capital. We reflect on the reproductive market and the dynamic capacity of cross-border reproductive care (CBRC), thanks to oocyte vitrification for egg donation, and on the legislative gaps that favour these flows. The purpose of the present study is to show the reproductive flows of oocytes from Europe to Brazil, which seem to have erratic route changes, leaving Spain and passing through other European countries, where they are stored, before arriving in Brazil. We carried out a qualitative study, based on documentary analysis of Brazilian Ministry of Health records on oocyte importation, the EU Coding Platform (System for Tissues and Cells), 10 in-depth interviews with key informants and legislative analysis on reproductive technologies in Spain, Brazil, Slovakia and Italy. This flow of oocytes underscores the flexibility and adaptability of transnational reproductive care.

Welfare as flourishing social reproduction: Polish and Ukrainian migrant workers in a market-participation society

The historical link between labour and welfare is increasingly considered in the transnational register, largely because labour mobilities demand a rethinking of nation-based social protection systems. Transnational labour mobilities also illuminate other dimensions of boundary-crossing, including formality–informality, citizenship–non-citizenship and production–reproduction. These additional considerations call for going beyond the problem of transnational welfare access. We argue that the prism of social reproduction enables such a rethinking of the labour–welfare relationship. In this article, we conceptualise an expanded notion of welfare as flourishing social reproduction, in contradistinction to the principle of welfare deriving primarily from paid work and labour market participation. We apply this theorisation of welfare to our qualitative case study of the experiences and interests of Polish and Ukrainian migrant workers in Germany, Poland and the United Kingdom employed in care provision, food production and housing construction sectors. In the geopolitical setting of uneven and combined Europe, embodying high levels of differentiation together with advanced transnational social protection, we explore the role of differentiation of migrants in labour markets (along work, migration and citizenship axes) and the extent to which transnational mobility facilitates the improvement of social reproduction. While the low-waged labour of Polish and Ukrainian men and women working in care, food and housing furnishes their own and local workers’ social reproduction needs, we find that migrant workers’ welfare as flourishing social reproduction remains wanting, even for those with already privileged access to the current ‘gold-standard’ transnational social protection offered by the EUs freedoms of movement framework. Welfare remains centred on individualised paid work logic, leaving a vast range of needs unmet and work and workers excluded, bearing implications for prevalent transnational social protection efforts.

Havana's Transnational Gentrification: Highest and Best Use from Elsewhere

AbstractThis article addresses the two processes of market making and transnationalization in Havana through the lens of gentrification theory. Using a case study situated between Global South and East, this article looks more closely at transnational families and migrants as agents of gentrification in Havana, analysing how they create and exploit the rent‐gap. Returning to the central ideas of ‘highest and best use’ and ‘circulations’ in N. Smith's rent‐gap theory, I analyse how increased transnational mobility has affected the commodification and potential use of housing in Havana. Based on interviews with transnational owners who purchased housing to upgrade and convert into an Airbnb, this article shows how the “highest and best use” of a property is evaluated from elsewhere. It also demonstrates the complexities of transnational gentrification in a southern socialist city and insists on the need to understand more broadly the gentrification–migration nexus.

Voicing a path to the afterlife: Rituals for the dead, transnational mobility and the changing soundspace of Islam among Mongolian Kazakhs

This article explores the role of sound and space in the negotiation of Muslim identity within rituals for the dead among the Kazakhs of Mongolia, a Turkic-speaking community that forms the majority population in the west of the country. Mobile pastoralists practising a syncretic form of Islam that integrates ancestor-spirit worship, Mongolian Kazakhs traditionally commemorated the dead at funeral and memorial feasts conducted in the portable nomadic yurt, and involving men’s recitation of the Qur’an and women’s performance of laments. The political and social transformations of the post-Soviet period, however, have wrought changes in the architectonics of the rituals. Increased transnational mobility in the wake of Kazakhstan’s independence has led to memorial feasts being held in venues ranging from mud-brick houses in western Mongolia to urban apartments, restaurants or mosques in Kazakhstan. The emergence of revivalist trends in Islam has prompted debates around the legitimacy and correct performance of female lamentation. Based on ethnography in Mongolia and Kazakhstan, the article examines how changes in the spatial and sonic configuration of the rituals reflect and shape evolving concepts of religiosity and gendered relations among the transnational community of Mongolian Kazakhs. The author introduces the concept of ‘soundspace’ to underscore the significance of spatiality, embodiment and emplacement in the production of sonic religious expression and experience.

A Regime Analysis: Evidence from Sri Lankan Migrant Domestic Workers’ Journeys to Saudi Arabia

In this article, I use qualitative methods to examine the concept of a regime for migrant care based on Sri Lankan women’s transnational mobility as migrant domestic workers to Saudi Arabia. My work thus contributes to the growing body of literature on migrant care regimes from a Global South perspective, which to date has still received insufficient scholarly attention. The Sri Lanka–Saudi migrant care regime, shaped by a transnational consciousness of the possibilities for accumulation and production through reproductive labour, is located at a convergence of “translocal” gender, care, employment and migration systems. The regime is (re)produced through the relations and tensions between the family, the state and the market in an interchange of the dynamics of capitalist market forces and structural relations on various levels. The colour “brown” has emerged as a new racial classification in the global domestic sector, where power and subjectivity are constantly evolving. I argue that domestic work, which continues to be constructed as “women’s work”, represents an embodiment both of the subordination of women and of their personal autonomy. This, in turn, has broader implications for the meaning of feminine/masculine, motherhood/fatherhood, home and work. KEYWORDS: paid domestic labour; migrant domestic workers; care regime; Saudi Arabia; Sri Lanka

Welcoming The Opportunities: Deciphering Contemporary Mobility of Indonesian Professionals to Japan

The research on how transnational mobility of professionals from developing countries is facilitated and constructed are still developing. Drawn on qualitative data from in-depth interviews with Indonesian professionals in Japan between 2018 and 2020 as a case study, this article discusses all the factors that facilitate the mobility of Indonesian professionals to Japan, including the individual narratives related to both Indonesia and Japan. The case study of Indonesian professionals in Japan demonstrates that the intersections of not only credentials, skills, and transnational economy between Japan and Indonesia, but also the various emerging channels such as scholarship regimes and the changing in Japan�s domestic labor market and recruitment systems have created a set of opportunities that increasingly pave the way for foreign professionals to build a career in Japan while contributing to the homeland. The transnational mobility of working professionals from developing countries to Japan could be seen as a form of welcoming such opportunities and it makes working in Japan as one of the options global talents can choose

A retirement mobilities approach to transnational ageing

Transnational ageing processes are usually studied by focusing on the various cross-border practices and mobilities of different categories of ageing migrants. This paper introduces a retirement mobilities approach as an analytical framework that draws on both transnational studies and the new mobilities paradigm to widen the theoretical and empirical debates. It argues that both migrant and non-migrant populations, as well as human and non-human cross-border circulations, have to be taken into account when studying transnational ageing. Based on a mixed-methods study combining original data from a quantitative survey conducted in Switzerland with residents 55+ and semi-structured interviews held in Spain and Switzerland with older adults receiving a Swiss pension, we demonstrate the heuristic value of this approach. Indeed, empirical findings indicate that older adults with and without a migration background represent an internationally mobile population with similar mobility aspirations and transnational lifestyles. However, the motivations driving these two groups’ transnational mobility differ significantly. Moreover, transnational circulations of financial resources, and in particular retirement pensions, are interlinked with mobility in old age. To conclude, a retirement mobilities approach sets a new research agenda, inviting scholars to examine transnational ageing beyond the ageing-migration nexus.

Views about cooperative marriage among sexual minority and heterosexual Chinese international students

AbstractObjectiveWe investigated heterosexual and nonheterosexual Chinese international students' views about cooperative marriages and romantic relationships.BackgroundCooperative marriages and romantic relationships are those in which two partners, one or both of whom self‐identify as nonheterosexual, consent and pretend to be a heterosexual couple as a means of relieving social pressures that require involvement in heterosexual relationships (Kam, 2013).MethodIn total, 265 Chinese international students (Mage = 23 years) participated in an online survey; 210 self‐identified as heterosexual and 55 as members of sexual minority groups.ResultsStudents who identified as members of sexual minority groups reported few aspirations and unfavorable attitudes toward cooperative marriages and relationships. Of the students identifying as members of sexual minority groups, those who envisioned future residence in foreign countries reported fewer aspirations for such relationships than their nonheterosexual peers who anticipated returning to China. Moreover, regardless of sexual identities, students who reported higher endorsement of traditional cultural values held less negative attitudes toward such relationships. For students who identified as members of sexual minority groups, stronger acculturation to the U.S. culture was associated with more negative attitudes toward such relationships.ConclusionOur study found that Chinese international students identifying as members of sexual minority groups held unfavorable views about cooperative marriage and it highlighted the role of transnational mobility and cultures in these views.ImplicationsOur study implied the importance of cultural responsiveness in how health practitioners could better support individuals of diverse sexual identities and cultural backgrounds.

The experiences of Mexican language teachers in transnational contexts

ABSTRACT The article examines the transnational mobility experienced by two language teachers of Mexican origin, one who migrated to the United States and the other to the UK. Drawing on autobiographies and in-depth interview data, the analysis shows the complex relationship of different factors in shaping how the participants experienced their transnational mobility processes. These factors include differences in their sense of agency, the link between their bilingualism and their professional identities, and the emergence of different positionings regarding their previous and current work contexts. The article concludes by outlining the implications that the findings have for policy and practice.