Transnational Settings Research Articles

Language Management in Transnational Multilingual Families: Generation 1.5 Parents in Finland

In today’s globalized world, more children are born to parents who speak two or more languages between them. These families manage complex language dynamics, with diverse language practices influencing communication among family members. The complexity intensifies when multilingual and multicultural parents move with their children to a country with a new majority language, while keeping connections to their original society. In such cases, balancing heritage and host country languages affects both cultural preservation and integration into a new society. Based on semi-structured interviews with seven Generation 1.5 Russian–Hebrew bilingual parents living in Finland, this paper explores their strategies for managing their children’s multilingual development. The study poses two key questions: What are the language management strategies reported by the parents? What are the major challenges these parents face in maintaining heritage Russian and Hebrew languages in Finland? Thematic data analysis using ATLAS.ti software highlights the parents’ persistent commitment to maintaining multilingualism within their families, focusing on preserving existing social connections and fostering new ones for the entire family. The findings reveal key aspects of parental language management, parental involvement and home environments, along with reported challenges, both personal and institutional, in maintaining Hebrew and Russian as heritage languages in Finland. This study offers a new perspective on language management strategies in multilingual families, handling a less-explored language combination. By analyzing individual language management approaches, this study reveals common strategies used to support multilingualism and balance heritage languages with those of a new environment, thereby contributing to discussions on linguistic diversity and multicultural integration in transnational settings.

COVID-19 Deaths in Transnational Settings: Disrupted Bereavement and Pandemic-Related Prolonged Grief Disorder in the Latinx Immigrant Population.

The Latinx immigrant population experienced one of the highest COVID-19 death rates. Those left behind have exhibited rising rates of mental illness, particularly, pandemic-related prolonged grief disorder. The Latinx immigrant population is uniquely vulnerable to this disorder as a result of disrupted culturally appropriate bereavement practices, constrained social support, and concurrent COVID-19 stressors and immigration-related trauma. Despite a rising call for research on pandemic-related prolonged grief disorder, little is known about the true prevalence, cause, and appropriate treatment protocol behind this disorder in the Latinx immigrant population. Four areas of research critical to the identification and understanding of pandemic-related prolonged grief disorder in this population are recommended: 1) death and bereavement in transnational settings, 2) immigrant social networks and disrupted bereavement, 3) COVID-19 stressors and grieving, and 4) prolonged grief disorder and mental illness comorbidities. An understanding of these four contributing areas to Latinx immigrants' vulnerability to prolonged grief disorder is imperative to providers' development of assessments and treatment protocols needed to identify and treat prolonged grief disorder in this population.

Mobile People in Closed Networks? Complementary Methods of Studying Social Simultaneity in Transnational Settings

ABSTRACTSocial simultaneity describes individuals active in multiple social contexts. Migrant networks serve as a case study where social network analysis (SNA) has recently been applied to evaluate their assimilation and transnationality. Yet, networks are sometimes insubstantial, as all nominated nodes and bridges are part of the network graph except they are not part of the social grouping. This research attempts to look beyond the social networks metaphor as it reviews critical group size theory and complements SNA with network survey and ethnographic interpretation. The article questions the structural approach and argues that interaction among alters may not be accurately recorded by this method. A respondent‐driven sampling method was used to select and survey 55 egocentric networks out of some 248 Romanian migrant networks in Spain. Results endorse precautions of critical group size theory that do not fit prescriptions of SNA. Resilient social networks and strong reciprocity and exchanges support the moderate transnational space types within the surveyed case. The article concludes that smooth social embeddedness and neoteric cultural diversity eventually reveal characteristics of third‐generation migration in Europe. Despite this, the number of Romanians in Spain decreased at the end of COVID‐19 pandemic.

The Search for Legitimacy over Yugoslavia: Rudolf Bićanić and the Power of Gold

Abstract While historical narratives of the communist legitimation of power in Yugoslavia have often marginalized perspectives of lesser-known civil servants, this study highlights the crucial role of Dr. Rudolf Bićanić, a renowned Yugoslav economist. Departing from the diplomatic, foreign political, and military perspectives when investigating the Yugoslav émigré government actions, this article explores the ideas espoused, networks created, and actions performed by Bićanić across diverse transnational settings. Bićanić’s lens as a vice-governor of the Yugoslav National Bank demonstrates that the debates regarding the future social and economic policies shaped the transition process between the two Yugoslav states. Driven by a mission to enhance peasant living conditions in Yugoslavia, Bićanić embarked on a brief yet impactful governmental career from 1941 to 1945. The article posits that Bićanić’s anti-government propaganda disseminated through the United Committee of South Slavs and his financial malversations led to the transfer of economic and political legitimacy over Yugoslavia in April 1944 to the National Liberation Council. With this action, Bićanić accelerated the signing of the Tito-Šubašić agreement in June 1944, which empowered him to negotiate the post-war reconstruction aid and loans in Washington, DC, carving a unique path for Yugoslavia between socialism and capitalism.

Ageing in networks: The unbounded geographies of non-migrant and migrant older adults

We propose ‘ageing in networks’ as an optic that shows how the social networks of older adults extend beyond their residential neighbourhoods to extra-local and transnational settings. The paper brings together literature on ageing and social networks in mobilities and migration research to identify shared thematic framings between non-migrant and migrant older adults. Our approach broadens the analytical frame to encapsulate how ageing individually and in communities takes place through local and international mobility and via digital technologies. Ageing in networks also illuminates the importance of connecting their social protection needs with those of the people in their care assemblages.

Queer processes of Hong Kong as a global formation post‐2019: LGBTIQ+ Hong Kong migrants and their experiences in Taiwan

AbstractAlthough Hong Kong has always been transnational and its overseas communities longstanding, the queer experiences of diasporic Hongkongers have rarely been explored. Through interview‐based research, this article examines the experiences of LGBTIQ+ Hongkongers who migrated to Taiwan after the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests, with the intention to accomplish three broader theoretical objectives. First, it introduces an intersectional approach to understanding the current Hong Kong diaspora by exploring how queerness came to shape and politicize a changing Hong Kong identity. Second, it considers Taiwan's role in global queer migration by investigating how it became a place of exception for LGBTIQ+ Hongkongers and, by extension, other ethnically Chinese queers. Lastly, it highlights how Hong Kong and Taiwan are linked by a structure of queer Sinophone consciousness, demonstrating how queerness and Chineseness are mutually productive and most amplified in transnational settings.

Gendering the beginning of life: Taiwanese gay fathers' navigation of preimplantation genetic diagnosis-assisted sex selection in transnational third-party reproduction.

Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) has been used not only to avoid genetic diseases and increase conception success rates but also to perform non-medical sex selection, particularly in the surging cross-border reproductive care (CBRC). In the context of commercialised biomedicine, assisted reproductive technologies, such as lifestyle sex selection, have been tailored to meet intended parents' preferences. However, there is a lack of analysis on how individuals' reproductive decisions on PGD-assisted sex selection were shaped within the sociocultural norms and CBRC. This article explores Taiwanese gay fathers' navigations on sex selection while seeking third-party reproduction overseas because of local legal constraints. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 53 gay fathers (to-be), I analysed how 'individual preferences' were dynamically shaped by local sociocultural norms and embedded within transnational settings of routinising PGD in chosen repro-destinations. The findings showed that gay fathers mobilised strategic discourses on non-medical sex selection from both the local and the global to negotiate their decisions in coherence with their LGBTQ+ identity and their role as sons carrying familial responsibility to procreate male heirs. This article proposed a nuanced understanding of gay fathers' reproductive practices of 'gendering the beginning of life' through PGD-assisted sex selection.

‘My parents told me to love my country’: positionalities of second-generation diaspora Eritreans in a transnational setting

ABSTRACT The article explores positionalities of second-generation diaspora Eritreans and their ambivalent attitudes towards their ancestral homeland and their residence country, considering the influence of their parents’ history on identity formation. It is based on long-term observation, narrative interviews, and a social media analysis to explore their self-perceptions, which originate in competing narratives about Eritrea’s past and present . Socialization in a democratic country, but also experiences of xenophobia and exclusion in their residence country shape the second-generation diaspora’s positionalities. Some engage in political or civil movements that strive for change inside Eritrea, support refugees in distress or disadvantaged groups in their country of residence, while others try to distance themselves from their heritage. I conclude that positionalities of young Eritrean diasporans are manifold and complex and do not fit in categorizations such as being either government supporters or opposition activists, as they are often described in the media.

Doing old(er) age in a translocal context: Turkish-born women’s experiences of ageing, care and post-mortem care practices

This article elaborates on how Turkish-born women in Sweden do old age in relation to gender and migrancy and aims to understand the fluid process of doing over their life course. It draws upon 20 in-depth and semi-structured interviews with Turkish-born women aged 60–78 and aims to address the tensions between agency and intersecting power positions. Theoretically, the article relies on critical feminist gerontology and doing old age to address the negotiations and performances of the interviewed women. The findings show that there are several ambivalences and dilemmas in how the women do old age in a transnational setting. Intergenerational and gendered old age care comes to fore as a significant negotiation site. The women negotiate identity categories with both imagined others and the social actors in their lives (such as their children) over their life course, which implies the situated and relational aspect of doing old age.

Witness Reporting as Resistance and Recovery–The Swedish Missionary Alma Johansson and the 1915 Armenian Genocide

ABSTRACT Western missionaries became important eyewitnesses of the 1915 Armenian genocide, and many reported on the events. This article analyses witness reporting from a biographical and gendered perspective, taking into account the significance of studying local activism and transnational networks in a humanitarian setting. Taking the witness accounts of the Swedish missionary Alma Johansson as an example, I discuss the conditions and strategies for women to reach out and form opinions in a transnational setting. I also analyse how gender shaped the humanitarian message. Using a narrative analysis, the article further explores the dual motives of the witness accounts of Alma Johansson—the aims of public resistance and private recovery. She wanted to protest openly against the violence and the perceived silence of the world concerning the genocide, at the same time as having to work on her personal trauma. The article assumes that witness narratives can be a catalyst of change, and that these two motives, resistance and recovery, were deeply connected.

Negotiating senses of belonging and identity across education spaces

A multitude of educational programs attempt to facilitate young people’s engagement with ideas and practices of active citizenship. For young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander or Indigenous people in Australia, such interventions are often subject to complex experiences of senses of belonging and non-belonging. This paper responds to calls from researchers to develop better understandings of young Indigenous people’s own senses and practices of belonging and to better understand the ways in which these perspectives and practices are spatially influenced at the level of local communities, ‘country’ and cultural groupings, and within larger state, national or transnational settings. Their testimonies illustrate the tensions that young Indigenous people must navigate in a settler colony that has never truly recognised Indigenous sovereignty but show that sovereignty remains intact. Focus groups were conducted with 58 young Indigenous people in Melbourne and regional Victoria who were participating in an Indigenous youth leadership program designed to foster formal and informal active citizenship practices, and to nurture a strong, affirming sense of Indigenous identity. The testimonies of these participants provide valuable insights into educational sites as spaces in which young people experience a spectrum of weak to strong senses of belonging. They also provide insights into the possibilities of engaging the challenges faced by many young Indigenous people in educational settings, challenges that include race discordance and exclusion, deficit discourses and gaps and distances in educational practice. They highlight the need to recognise the aspirations of young Indigenous people and the capacities of colonial education systems to meet them, and the imperative to celebrate young Indigenous identities in meaningful, non-tokenistic ways.

Contesting the boundaries of marianismo and entrepreneurial identity: meanings of motherhood amongst Latin American migrant women entrepreneurs

PurposeTo critically analyse how Latin American migrant women entrepreneurs living in Ireland and the UK negotiate their entrepreneurial and motherhood identities in transnational settings. The paper explores (1) how motherhood influences the choices of becoming entrepreneurs; (2) how women reconcile the social imaginaries of motherhood from their country of origin in the new contexts of settlement; and (3) the impact of these transformations on their businesses.Design/methodology/approachThis paper draws on six biographical case studies (three in Ireland and three in the UK) and employs the theoretical lens of translocational positionality to analyse entrepreneurship as context-specific and relational processes that bring together a multiplicity of social and geographical locales.FindingsLatin American women entrepreneurs navigate their roles as “good mothers” and “good businesswomen” by simultaneously (1) complying with core values of marianismo that confine them to traditional gender roles and (2) renegotiating these values in ways that empower them through entrepreneurship. Finally, juxtaposing these two contexts (Ireland and the UK), this study (3) illuminates the similarities of the ever-continuing gender power struggles of egalitarianism for Latin American migrant women in both contexts.Originality/valueDespite the agreed need for exploring motherhood as one of the critical aspects shaping family and business cycles, this area needs to be sufficiently analysed in its intersection with ethnicity or migratory status, particularly with participants from the global South. This article aims at bridging that gap.

Science in Transnational Settings: Knowledge Exchange in Expeditions in 1920s Republican China

The 1920s to the 1930s in Republican China witnessed rising academic interest in exploring Chinas frontier regions, both from abroad and within the nation. This paper examines the nature of foreign exploration in China at that time and the resulting exchange of knowledge that shaped sciences development worldwide. The exchange was facilitated through an elite network of international specialists in Beijing, while Chinese academics and local residents became increasingly indispensable to foreign investigatorsthanks to their local knowledge and control over the sites. Together, they not only contributed to the establishment of indigenous scientific institutions but advanced the geology, archaeology, and paleoanthropology fields internationally. However, the nominally objective work of Western scholars often masked hegemonic inclinations, both explicit and implicit, which tended to vary according to the country sponsoring each investigator. By the late 1920s, rising Chinese objections to foreign exploration caused conflicts between imperialist motivations and nationalistic powers. Thus, it would be equally a reductionist reading of history to simply assume Republican Chinas intelligentsia were the victims of imperialist aggression or to draw a rosy picture of transnational collaboration. This paper suggests that early twentieth-century Republican China offers a rich example of the intersection of scientific internationalism, imperialism, and nationalism.

Coming of Age in the Arab Diasporic Künstlerroman: Sinan Antoon’s The Corpse Washer (2013) and Nada Awar Jarrar’s An Unsafe Haven (2016)

This study explores the künstlerroman from an Arab diasporic viewpoint. It aims to illuminate the first years of the formative process that the Arab diasporic artist undergoes in The Corpse Washer (2013) by Sinan Antoon and An Unsafe Haven (2016) by Nada Awar Jarrar as Arab diasporic künstlerromans. The article traces the childhood of Antoon’s Jawad and Jarrar’s Anas as young aspiring Arab artists against the backdrop of the novels’ socio-political contexts, which include religion, family, and the political conditions in the protagonists’ countries. Since Arab diasporic writers relocate the genre into an Arab transnational setting, this study draws attention to the violence and suffering in the lives of artists as children and the fact that they are brought up in an Arab household that does not feature in the traditional genre plot. It as well explores the environment the characters grow up in like social class and religious milieu and expounds on the way each character has seeds of artistic sensibility from a young age. The Arab characters face the issue of generational conflict about art as a proper career choice. Their parents play a role in the suppression of their artistic aspirations since they assume that they have a better-planned future for their children. Due to family expectations, religion, and political unrest, the characters have their future planned for them by others. The article concludes that the Arab diasporic künstlerroman provides alternative coming-of-age stories where the artist of Arab descent faces more challenges than his counterpart in the traditional genre.

Transferring Deceased Bodies, Building Transnational Communities. The Case of Kyrgyz and Tajik Migrants in Russia

Based on ethnographic fieldwork with Central Asian hometown organisations in Russia, this paper focuses on the interplay of funerary practices and the construction of transnational communities among Kyrgyz and Tajik immigrants. In particular, the authors examine how good death and the moral economy of death are enacted in a transnational setting and contribute to reinforcing forms of “transnational moral territoriality” (Lacroix, 2019). Through experiential learning on the ground, community leaders have learnt to take care of and send home a deceased fellow citizen, organising routine procedures and emergency funds. In doing so, they actively contribute to the stabilisation of transnational community practices. Inspired by the growing anthropological literature on transnational community building elsewhere, the authors contribute to this body of scholarship by focusing on post-Soviet hometown associations (whose members sometimes refer to themselves as “activists”), their impact on migrants’ daily lives, as well as community-building and death-related practices abroad that are socially, culturally, or economically significant.

Polish immigrants’ access to colorectal cancer screening in Norway – a qualitative study

BackgroundThe Norwegian colorectal cancer (CRC) screening programme started in May 2022. Inequities in uptake of CRC screening is a concern, and we expect that immigrants are at risk of non-uptake. Immigrants from Poland are the most populous immigrant group in Norway. The purpose of this study was to identify and explore factors that may facilitate Polish immigrants’ access to the Norwegian CRC screening programme.Material and methodsThis study was based on qualitative interviews with ten Polish immigrants in Norway. The participants represented a convenience sample that varied in terms of gender, education, employment, time in Norway, place of residence, Norwegian language skills and ties to the Norwegian-Polish community. We performed thematic content analysis to understand CRC screening from the perspective of Polish immigrants, using transnationalism and Levesque’s conceptualization of accessibility as theoretical frameworks.ResultsWe grouped our findings into three themes; “understanding of CRC development and the need to access health care”, “binationalism” and “improving accessibility through information”. Within these themes, various factors influenced the participants’ accessibility to CRC screening, namely knowledge about the screening and about causes, development and prevention of the disease, language, choice of screening country, trust in health personnel’s competence, information needs, methods and sources, as well as participants’ perception of the faecal immunochemical test screening user manual. These factors were further influenced by communication between the Polish community in Norway and Poland, as well as travel between the countries.ConclusionWe identified several factors that can be targeted with an aim to increase Polish immigrants’ access to the Norwegian CRC screening programme. Effective measures could include increasing cultural competence among health care providers and providing information in Polish through Polish-speaking health care professionals, general practitioners and internet portals used by the Polish-speaking community. Focusing on accessibility in a transnational setting, our findings may be of interest for policy makers and service providers planning preventive health measures for immigrants.

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Cambodian American Listening as Memory Work

Cambodian American Listening as Memory Work

Paperwork: Following the trail of (identity) papers in transnational commercial surrogacy

Transnational surrogacy—the carrying of a child by a woman in one country on behalf of persons in another—is strongly shaped by documents. Of these, identity documents are particularly crucial as they establish the belonging of a child born through such an arrangement both to its parents (birth certificate) and to a country (passport). However, the acquisition of these documents is subject to national laws that may contradict one another in transnational settings where citizens of more than one country are involved. As a result, in the last few years, there have been several cases of children stuck in legal limbo without clear parenthood and citizenship. Based on ethnographic research in India and Germany, we analyze how in such a transnational setting, documents and documentation become part of the making and unmaking of persons and belonging.

The Adaptive Proculturation Process of Being a Psychotherapist as a Kazakh Asylum Seeker in Sweden

The term acculturation is important for describing and analyzing how for example migrants gradually become accustomed to a new host society. The term proculturation is similar but emphasizes the real-life experiences of migrants, as well as the fusion between familiar and unfamiliar ideas, things, and experiences. However, so far there is a dearth of studies which have aimed to explore such a construct empirically. The current article used a limited but meaningful example, the lived experiences of a Kazakh migrant in Sweden whose occupation is being a psychotherapist. The aim was to understand the cultural identity of this individual as regards processes of migration from A (Kazakhstan) to B (Sweden), as well as related proculturation processes. Moreover, the focus was also on the specific and precarious work conditions for a person who does not have the possibility to work officially as a psychotherapist during an extensive residence permit application process. Information derived from a semi-structured interview indicates that basic cultural identity markers (woman, Kazakh, Russian-speaking, Muslim) remained constant after residing in Sweden for more than 5 years but that some elements of the more secular-liberal Swedish culture (e.g., the Swedish language, increased alcohol consumption) were appropriated. The person used social media apps like WhatsApp as a technological tool to practice the profession as a psychotherapist in a transnational setting, which constitutes a different strategy than how Swedish as well as Kazakh psychotherapists generally perform this profession.