Transnational Orientation Research Articles

How Political Conflict Shapes Online Spaces: A Comparison of Climate Change Hyperlink Networks in the United States and Germany

We examine how the political context in which actors are embedded relates to their online communication. We argue that the degree of contentiousness of an issue (high vs. low conflict) is a decisive factor in explaining the distinct network structures generated by the actors’ hyperlink patterns. Comparing two such networks originating in the United States and Germany in the area of clilmate change, we found systematic differences between them that result in distinct political hyperlink topologies, which reflect the underlying issue context. These differences become visible in the reciprocity of the actors’ hyperlink communication, the fragmentation of the networks along the political divide, the recognition issue opponents receive from the media, and the transnational orientation of climate advocates and skeptics. This research implies that hyperlink communication is responsive to the political context, and that countermovements, in particular, manage to reap the benefits from online communication mobilization efforts.

The role of societal actors in shaping a pan-European consciousness. UEFA and the overcoming of Cold War tensions, 1954–1959

ABSTRACTIn the last two decades, the historical analysis of European integration has become more differentiated, as several research reports have convincingly revealed. In particular, social and cultural approaches have received growing attention. Hence, some authors have started to focus on the history of European football and particularly on the origins and development of Union of European Football Associations (UEFA). Against the backdrop of these studies and the current status of research, this article seeks to analyse the questions of whether and how far UEFA, as a societal actor, has contributed in its formative phase to an increasingly transnational orientation in European football. Apart from the competitions on the pitch and the different conflicts of national associations, this article investigates the extent that UEFA has fostered transnational cooperation and communication that contributes, in the long run, to a Pan-European collective consciousness. One that transgresses Western or Eastern political alliances. The research has been completed by reading various mainstream and sports European newspapers, and two interviews have been conducted with Pierre Delaunay, general secretary of UEFA from 1955 to 1959, and with Jacques Ferran, former journalist of French newspaper L’Equipe.

Transnationalism and Identification among Chinese Immigrant Youth

This paper examines transnationalism and identity construction among Chinese immigrant youth in Canada, an often-ignored population and inadequately addressed research area in transnational studies. I argue that the transnational practices within immigrant families have nurtured transnational orientation and identification among Chinese youth. I also interrogate simply using the frequency of homeland trips to evaluate the degree of second-generation transnationalism, by highlighting the different lens that Chinese youth engage in framing their perception of homeland.

Negotiating contradictions: educación among Dominican transnational mothers in New York City

ABSTRACTThis paper examines how a transnational orientation shapes Dominican mothers’ contradictory attitudes towards education in New York City. Through this ethnographic study, which draws on 36 interviews, community walkabouts, and participant observations in community-led adult education classes, we show how Dominican mothers struggle with conflicting values; on the one hand, they embrace the idea of schooling for individual advancement, integration in the US, and critical thinking, while on the other hand, they regret the diminution of a collective, family orientation and respect for parents. Overall, this study shows that contradictions are not a sign of confusion or denial, but rather a struggle to transform cultural practices that satisfy multiple worlds. A deeper understanding of these contradictions could help educators and educational institutions consider how these transnational tensions motivate parent engagement and their hopes for their children’s education.

Older migrants in Luxembourg – care preferences for old age between family and professional services

ABSTRACTBased on biographic and qualitative network interviews with first-generation migrants from Portugal, Italy, and Germany, aged now 65 years and older, we reconstruct their preferences for later dependency on long-term care in old age (‘hands-on’ care). We regard the interviewees’ assessment of their situation as ways of achieving agency by taking into consideration the formal and informal options for care. Our results show that older adults’ care preferences are influenced by aspects associated with old age that are not specific for older migrants, and at the same time, by aspects that are strongly connected to the fact of being a migrant such as language, culture, and transnational orientation. We find a clear preference for paid care work. Challenges or even barriers in regards to care homes are related to language and culture, which lead to an anticipation of marginalisation and social isolation inside these institutions. Furthermore, it becomes evident that the different contexts of migration strongly correspond with class-specific social positioning.

An Old Model Adapted for a New Era: Preparing Law School Graduates for the Global Legal Profession

In this essay the increasingly transnational nature of law practice and in turn legal education is viewed through the lens of a new law school – Peking University School of Transnational Law. It describes the efforts of this law school, which was expressly created to prepare its students for modern law practice and the special challenges that working across boundaries present. It describes why the law school decided to follow the American J.D. model of legal education, why and this old model seemed well suited for a modern environment, how it was adapted to the school’s transnational orientation, opposition that the school encountered from the leadership of legal profession and legal education, and the success of the initial graduates in the marketplace.Though the paper focuses on a single law school, larger and broader issues regarding the future of the legal profession and legal education are examined and explored in the context of this legal education experiment, which has received considerable worldwide attention.

Aras Ören and the (West) German Left

AbstractExamining both published and unpublished materials overlooked by existing scholarship, this essay sheds light on the transnational formation of literary and political genres through discussion of Aras Ören. As a poet and activist, Ören was one of the earliest and most significant contributors to the emergence of Turkish‐German literature and was affiliated with political circles and aesthetics of writers such as Bertolt Brecht. While focusing on Aras Ören's key role within Die Rote Nelke (an anti‐fascist union of progressive artists allied with communist class struggle), the essay traces the circulation of Turkish working‐class viewpoints into the world of German literary politics. Two years after joining Die Rote Nelke in 1970, Ören became the chair of its disciplinary collective “Group of Writing Workers,” which actively strove to include workers as well as artists in their cultural–political activities. Ören's transnational orientation shaped his milieu through his poetry and his writings about the politicization of literature, the politics of aesthetics, and the social responsibility of the artist in West Berlin during the early 1970s.

Changing landscapes, changing narratives: socio-cultural approach for teaching global migrants

Given the proliferation of new media technologies today’s immigrant children and youth are experiencing the effects of time–space compression in the domain of interpersonal interactions. Increasingly, they are able to simultaneously engage in developmental activities across their native and host societies. If migration is no longer a one-way binary choice, but rather a culturally dialectical process involving fluid articulation of consciousness and identity across multiple cultural landscapes, how can we structure teaching and learning to support cognitive development of immigrant children and youth as they gradually assume the responsibilities of adulthood? This work builds on socio-cultural theory in order to describe sense-making, a psychological process situated in interaction with extant social, cultural and physical environments, which employs language actively woven into a narrative as a tool for organising consciousness and perception. Practical recommendations stemming from this theoretical framework are explored in order to enable the tools for curriculum design that support bicultural and transnational developmental orientations.

The global corporate elite after the financial crisis: evidence from the transnational network of interlocking directorates

AbstractWhat impact did the recent financial crisis have on the corporate elite's international network? Has corporate governance taken on an essentially national structure or have transnational networks remained robust? We investigate this issue by comparing the networks of interlocking directorates among the 176 largest corporations in the world economy in 1976, 1996, 2006 and 2013. We find that corporate elites have not retrenched into their national business communities: the transnational network increased in relative importance and remained largely intact during the crisis lasting from 2006 to 2013. However, this network does not depend – as it used to do – on a small number of big linkers but on a growing number of single linkers. The network has become less hierarchical. As a group, the corporate elite has become more transnational in character. We see this as indicative of a recomposition of the corporate elite from a national to a transnational orientation.

Brokering the Immigrant Bargain: Second-Generation Immigrant Youth Negotiating Transnational Orientations to Literacy

Abstract This article explores how the children of immigrants queried and enacted the immigrant bargain narrative in their orientations to literacy and schooling at an afterschool program in New York City. The Mexican American elementary school students in this study expressed a common “immigrant bargain” narrative, a working-class immigrant family story of parents’ past and present sacrifices redeemed and validated through their children’s future academic merits (Louie 23; Smith 123). Language differences, transnational movements, and family histories affect how the children of immigrants imagine their parents’ migrations and their own transnational identities and literacies. Their identities as students, for example, compelled them to perceive their academic work ethic as repayment for their parents’ sacrifices, doubled with sometimes unreasonably high academic expectations for literacy achievement measured by merit. Literacy mentors and educators unfamiliar with the immigrant bargain should be attuned to its power for autobiographical writing, expressing both what motivates and constrains family migrations and second-generation students in their own academic goals. Afterschool program organizers, youth mentors, and school counselors especially should consider how the narrative builds confianza , or trust, and offers space for encouraging a transnational orientation to literacy in dialogue with immigrant families’ academic motives, goals, and preferences.

Beyond “filling in the gap”: the state and status of Latina/o Feminist Media Studies

Against the socio-economic and cultural backdrop of the ongoing Latina/o media “boom,” this critical literature review delineates the location and status of contemporary Latina/o Feminist Media Studies. Departing from a critique of current mainstream Feminist Media Studies research and citational practices, it traces the influence of rapidly expanding transnational Latina/o media markets, the gendering of Latinidad, and transnational feminisms on recent Latina/o Feminist Media Studies scholarship. As it not only breaks with exclusively domestic analyses of intersectionality and accurately reflects twenty-first century media’s transnational orientation, this essay argues that the theoretical paradigms and thematic concerns of Latina/o Feminist Media Studies must ultimately be reframed as central, not marginal, to Feminist Media Studies research.

Target earning/learning, settling or trampolining? Polish and Chinese immigrants in Ireland

This article provides a theoretical and an empirical analysis of the migration patterns and experiences of Chinese and Polish migrants in order to understand the human geography of these movements and the qualitative parameters and dimensions of contemporary migration into Ireland. Using theories of transnationalism, I argue that there are three general types of immigrant transnational orientations in the interviewees studied: target earners, target learners and trampoliners. Immigrant abilities to imagine a future in Ireland were shaped in large part by structural conditions such as: their visa status, race, gender and class backgrounds, the ability to move across borders freely, educational backgrounds and occupational skills. Their orientations were often expressed in terms of their communication with home, Ireland and many countries in between, through the use of digital media and technology.

An old model adapted for a new era: preparing law school graduates for the global legal profession

In this essay the increasingly transnational nature of law practice and in turn legal education is viewed through the lens of a new law school—Peking University School of Transnational Law. It describes the efforts of this law school, which was expressly created to prepare its students for modern law practice and the special challenges that working across boundaries present. It describes why the law school decided to follow the American J.D. model of legal education, why and this old model seemed well suited for a modern environment, how it was adapted to the school’s transnational orientation, opposition that the school encountered from the leadership of legal profession and legal education in the United States, and the success of the initial graduates in the marketplace. Though the paper focuses on a single law school, larger and broader issues regarding the future of the legal profession and legal education are examined and explored in the context of this legal education experiment, which has received considerable worldwide attention.

Globalisasi Media dan Transformasi Politik Internasional

Abstract: Globalization affects almost everything, moreover international politics. In this respect, media that have transnational orientation, as serious patrons of globalization, keep transforming international politics in three dimensions which are from power politics to image politics, international politics mediation and the widespread utilization of media as propaganda.

Successful Earners and Failing Others: Transnational Orientation as Biographical Resource in the Context of Labor Migration

AbstractThe article discusses how post‐2004 Polish immigrants in Great Britain narrate success and failure in their lives. It identifies and analyses inter‐related narrations specific to the transnational form of migration. It considers migrants’ transnational orientation as a resource for narratively producing a successful biography. The article makes use of a biographical perspective and embeds the analysis in theories of biographical action, while adding new knowledge to the scholarship of migration. It argues that failure is relative to a normatively, locally fixed expectation of success.

Second generation identities: The case of transnational young females of Russian descent in Israel

The present paper explores the transnational orientation of second-generation female immigrant teenagers of Russian descent in Israel and their position regarding these two cultures and the respective part they play in the participants’ identity negotiations. Comparisons are made with findings of two previous studies on gender-based adaptation styles of youth of similar origin, who arrived during mid-to-late adolescence. This is in order to investigate the impact of age at arrival on gendered features of identity construction. Comparative analyses are also performed, with pertinent findings, among additional second-generation transnationals, such as Vietnamese and Filipino in the United States. These serve as heuristics in an attempt to disclose common characteristics in second-generation identity construction processes among young female transnational migrants.

The Community Structure of the European Network of Interlocking Directorates 2005–2010

The boards of directors at large European companies overlap with each other to a sizable extent both within and across national borders. This could have important economic, political and management consequences. In this work we study in detail the topological structure of the networks that arise from this phenomenon. Using a comprehensive information database, we reconstruct the implicit networks of shared directorates among the top 300 European firms in 2005 and 2010, and suggest a number of novel ways to explore the trans-nationality of such business elite networks. Powerful community detection heuristics indicate that geography still plays an important role: there exist clear communities and they have a distinct national character. Nonetheless, from 2005 to 2010 we observe a densification of the boards interlocks network and a larger transnational orientation in its communities. Together with central actors and assortativity analyses, we provide statistical evidence that, at the level of corporate governance, Europe is getting closer.

Transnational Orientation, Cosmopolitanism and Integration among Albanian-Origin Teenagers in Tuscany

Research on transnationalism and integration is increasingly focusing on the intersections between the two concepts. However, the debate is polarised between the country of origin and the host country when migrants' identity and belongingness are concerned. In the case of the children of migrants, the literature also largely lacks references to locality, mobility and cosmopolitanism. This paper explores the integration of Albanian-origin teenagers in Tuscany and the relationship between their transnational orientations and their integration strategies. Findings show that both the social and cultural institutions and the spatial ‘units’ to which these teenagers refer in their integration discourse go beyond their country of origin and their host country. Firstly, there is a translocal dimension to their references—to Florence, Prato and Tuscany and the place of their parental origin in Albania. Secondly, their views and perceptions of integration contain a strong cosmopolitan orientation—both conceptually and spatially. The qualities of space and locality impact on transnational ties, giving rise to cosmopolitan orientation and practices.

Landscape, nation and globe: Theoretical nuances in the analysis of Asian Christianity

This brief afterword comments on the papers from this special issue, arguing that each explores current complexities of interactions between national and transnational orientations, but also helps to nuance understandings of the global through the invocation of history. As a result, we not only observe the interplay between colonial and post-colonial regimes of religion and politics, but also gain an appreciation of transnational religious impulses that were in operation well before the last few decades of explicitly ‘global consciousness’. Christianisation has a significant history in the regions covered, but it cannot be understood through crude, unilinear models of development or progress.

Romani Routes: Cultural Politics and Balkan Music in Diaspora by Carol Silverman (review)

Romani Routes: Cultural Politics and Balkan Music in Diaspora. By Carol Silverman. (American Musicspheres.) New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. [xxvii, 398 p. ISBN 9780195300949. $55.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, index, companion Web site.This book discusses Romani (Gypsy) musicians and musical styles from the Balkans. It introduces and discusses numerous musicians primarily from Bulgaria and Macedonia to show how over a thirty-year period from the 1980s to the mid-2000s, Romani musicians modernized in order to serve their own communities in life-cycle celebrations, coped with paradoxes of Communist cultural control, and became the object of world music fads.The author, Carol Silverman, is a cultural anthropologist who has been researching Romani culture since the 1970s. She worked with Romani people in the United States and also conducted long-term research in Bulgaria and Macedonia. Her work has even extended to legal advocacy. Silverman is also an impresario and a performer of Balkan music. The ethnographic research for this book included participating in the life-cycle events of Romani households, observing and discussing music festivals and mass media as they relate to Romani people, assisting and observing the activities of Romani-rights NGOs that formed in the Balkans after 1989, conducting lengthy retrospective interviews with important Balkan Romani musicians, touring and performing with Balkan Romani musicians, observing European DJs, and discussing many issues with Romani interlocutors. In some chapters, Silverman explains politics of music-making that are local to Macedonia and Bulgaria. However, almost all of the musicians and Romani communities Silverman discusses have a transnational orientation, whether they have emigrated, concertized internationally, or experienced the change of national borders around them. The Romani ethnoscape thus extends to neighboring Balkan countries, Turkey, the United States, and Western Europe.Three introductory chapters explain the Romani communities, musicians, and countries covered in the book, provide a theoretical framework, and delineate key musical genres. Silverman discusses how theories of hybridity, diaspora, transnationalism, essentialism, and identity apply to Roma. Here she explores several aspects of contemporary identity formation, including the significance of Romani anthems and some activities of the Romani human rights movement since the 1990s. Silver - man outlines a conceptual framework developed for areas to the west and north such as Hungary, Russia, and France in order to explain some general issues concerning Romani music such as the fact that its originality has been questioned, that it is often virtuosic, that it can contain improvisation, and that it often has mesmerizing effects on non-Roma. She returns to a Balkan framework (specifying Ottoman and Turkish influence at many turns) to outline some basic genres of Balkan Romani performance. These include oboe and drum music; cocek/kyuchek music; a trend of modernizing urban ensembles starting with the calgiya idiom of the late Ottoman period; and outsiders' Orientalized, sexualized images of Romani women entertainers. Silverman also traces fashions within Balkan Romani communities from calgiya through Bulgarian wedding music, rap, and Kosovo Romani music.Chapters 4, 5, and 6 discuss Macedonian Romani households and life-cycle celebrations. Chapter 4 delineates how since the 1960s Macedonian Roma resettled in New York and other North American cities and since then have maintained extended family connections while dispersed between Macedonia, Western Europe, and the United States. Silverman stresses the key role of life-cycle ceremonies, especially weddings, in maintaining family ties. She argues that via communal viewing and discussion of home wedding videos, Roma constitute a transnational identity. Silver - man outlines a valuable fieldwork exchange: she sees women exercising significant power within Romani ceremonies and daily life, yet some of her female inter - locutors disagree with her. …