Transnational Space Research Articles

Towards becoming a transnational language educator

The issues surrounding the personal and professional lives of TESOL educators in transnational landscapes have gained increased attention in the past decade. Existing research on transnationalism underscores the significance of expatriates’ experiences, particularly those who originate from ‘non-center’ and whose careers lead them to work in ‘periphery’ countries, setting their experiences apart from those of (im)migrants. This study examines the experiences of ‘non-native’ English-speaking (NNEST) teachers working in transnational contexts, their motivations for relocation, and the challenges they face in adapting to new societies. Guided by the concept of ‘becoming’, the research investigates the key turning points and types of becomings encountered by these expatriate teachers in their journeys towards a transnational identity. Drawing on theories of the ‘Third Space’, the article attempts to understand the ideological transformations that occur within transnational spaces. The findings offer insights into the complex and evolving process of becoming transnational for expatriate ‘non-native’ language educators. By understanding their journeys of self-transformation, this study contributes to the literature on transnationalism and offers valuable perspectives for policymakers and educational bodies. The outcomes of this study endeavor to enhance support for NNESTs by recognizing their transnational experiences as pedagogical resources.

Review: Finnish Settler Colonialism in North America: Rethinking Finnish Experiences in Transnational Spaces, edited by Rani-Henrik Andersson and Janne Lahti

Review: <i>Finnish Settler Colonialism in North America: Rethinking Finnish Experiences in Transnational Spaces</i>, edited by Rani-Henrik Andersson and Janne Lahti

Brave global spaces: Researching digital health and human rights through transnational participatory action research

In this paper we reflect on our experience with applying Transnational Participatory Action Research (TPAR) to a multi-country study of digital health and human rights of young adults living with and affected by HIV in five low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), and identify some lessons learned for future projects. First, we propose a definition of TPAR based on our experience and our analysis of power in the project. We present an overview of the research design and implementation, which melded diverse working cultures and research methods. Next, we describe how we adapted outputs, working methods and terminology to meet the diverse and specific needs of civil society organizations, community-led networks and academics working in diverse national and transnational spaces. This required us to understand and adapt to the different temporalities at play. The creation of brave spaces and the development of an intersectional lens were key to addressing tensions that naturally emerged in our collaboration. Finally, we summarize lessons learns and challenges for the next stage of the project.

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.

From Roots to Routes: Transnational Spaces and Identities of Syrian Youth Within Everyday Geographies of Istanbul

AbstractThis article highlights the importance of understanding migration beyond past and present negotiations, arguing that Syrian students' everyday geographies are crucial for negotiating the future, contributing to the ongoing discourse on spatiality and migration studies. Space‐based interactions are constructing the future of young migrants both within national and international contexts. This study utilized virtual ethnographies, in‐depth interviews, and participant observations in Istanbul to explore the everyday experiences of Syrian students, providing insights into their future and current routes. It employs Massey's concepts of routes and roots, recognizing the duality between them from sociological and human geographical perspectives. It is discussed that understanding roots and routes can be achieved through an intersectional approach that integrates religion, education, age, and gender. This research study argues that categorizing students as local or global is insufficient due to the intertwining of perceptions of space with local and global dynamics in the context of multiple identities.

Transnational social fields of Italian Bangladeshis in Europe and beyond: Towards a new geography of ways of belonging

AbstractIn view of the growing onward migration and multisited transnationalism among naturalized EU citizens, this article seeks to advance the current understanding of transnational social fields, cataloguing the complex interplays of migrants' ways of being, belonging, and in‐betweenness across different places and spaces. Drawing on multisited qualitative research with Italian Bangladeshis in Italy and the United Kingdom, the paper presents how their ‘ways of being’ are expressed by maintaining transnational attachments to the country of origin and the wider Bangladeshi diaspora. In addition, they maintain transnational ‘ways of belonging’ by incorporating the Bengali language, culture, traditions, and values, and transmitting them to the next generation. Beyond these multiplicities of being and belonging, the findings put forward two important, yet contrasting, observations. On the one hand, there is an ongoing pursuit of onward migration to the UK among a section of the community—often influenced by social networks and transnational connections with the recognised Bangladeshi diaspora in the UK. Apart from being in the ‘community comfort zone’ and language advantage in the integration process, many migrants perceive living in the UK as having a higher ‘prestige’, ‘class’ or ‘status’ vis‐a‐vis Italy in terms of life quality, wealth, cultural, and religious freedom. On the other hand, another cohort is emotionally and culturally embedded in Italian societies and is in a dilemma of whether to migrate onward. In this process, they constantly blend, shift, and negotiate their ways of belonging. The findings unfold how a new geography of belonging takes shape, characterised by fluidities, multifaceted identities, and everyday life practices in a transnational space.

From the Translocal to the Multi‐Sited Transnational: Tracing Rohingya Refugee Networks in India

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the transnational and translocal experiences of the Rohingya in India, a stateless, refugee community forcibly displaced from Myanmar, onward migrants from Bangladesh, who currently occupy a legally precarious space in India. Drawing on approximately 90 interviews conducted with refugees, community leaders and NGOs across three Indian cities, along with informal group discussions and field notes, this paper makes two arguments that shed light on the complex, multi‐factorial ways in which networks are rebuilt in displacement as well as the emerging characteristics of Rohingya onward migration in Asia. First, that early generations of Rohingya in India leveraged translocal network building spaces and encounters to rebuild their networks with others in the community and create translocal networks of care and support with local civil society actors, cementing the notion of a ‘Rohingya refugee community’ in India. Second, that the gradual internationalisation of the Rohingya crisis as well as the transnationalisation of the Rohingya diaspora in the last decade through multiple waves of displacement, onward migration and resettlement schemes has prompted a shift towards multi‐sited transnationalism, particularly reflected in the emergence of multi‐sited transnational families, digital transnational spaces among younger refugees and extended diasporic networks.

Global Transit, Imperial Performativity, and Survival: European Jewish Refugees in the Philippines Under US Tutelage and Japanese Occupation, 1937–1946

Abstract By late 1941, some 1,300 Jews had escaped from National Socialist-controlled Europe to the Philippines. This essay problematizes the existing historiography on this rescue by going beyond examinations of its mechanisms and the politics of memory. Instead, it introduces a rereading of the refugees’ struggles by focusing on their continued being-in-transit and mandated imperial performativity, which allows for analysing transnational spaces shaped by their seemingly mundane everyday practices, from walking to cooking. During the early years, American, Filipino, and Jewish community leaders expected the performance of imperial norms and policed interactions between the refugees and native Filipinos. Some of the refugees succeeded. Some even managed to open shops. Others failed or rebelled and soon found themselves in peril. The late 1941 invasion by Japanese forces subjected Philippine society to new racial hierarchies. Jewish refugees, suspected of collaborating with the enemy, had to engage in different imperial performances in order to survive. By late 1946, many Jewish survivors had managed to leave, mostly to the United States, where they encountered new challenging power asymmetries of a different kind.

Gig work in transnational spaces: infrastructures of migration and the simultaneous lives of migrants in the gig economy

ABSTRACT This article explores how platform-mediated gig work is entangled in the migration process across transnational, national and local scales. Drawing on the concepts of simultaneity and migration infrastructure from critical transnational migration studies as well as qualitative interviews with migrants, the analysis focuses on the figures of three migrant gig workers from both EU and non-EU countries to elucidate two matters. First, we analyse how different forms of citizenship produce different ways of responding to the migration infrastructure that results in frictions and/or smoothness across different times and spaces in the migration process. Second, we analyse how migrants who perform platform-mediated gig work on a local scale in Copenhagen, Denmark, establish particular transnational lives. Thus, this article contributes a timely transnational perspective on the relationship between the growing gig economy and migration.

The pasts, presents and futures of transnational and global Irish Studies: “Snapshots”

ABSTRACT As with any other discipline, we are periodically drawn towards reviewing the trajectory of Irish Studies, contemplating possible future directions: What is happening now? What should come next? Four scholars at varying stages of their academic careers and located in tertiary institutions in Ireland, USA, and Australia address these questions with specific reference to the transnational or global aspects of Irish Studies, a key focus of this special issue. Their brief “snapshots” take us on a journey starting with gendered migrant histories and the methodological challenges facing the often-disappointed researcher seeking the experiences of Irish-speaking diasporas, before engaging with new ways of confronting age-old questions about both Irish migrants’ implication in the dispossession of Indigenous populations and the historical racialisation of Irishness in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand. We are then introduced to research into revolutionary Ireland’s collective global consciousness and the development of a Global Irish Studies which seeks to create a sustainable dialectic between Irish and non-Irish-based scholars, finishing with the assertion that Ireland has always been a porous and transnational space, and that while it may have been hiding in plain sight as it were, the international and relational aspect of national literatures are profound and unavoidable.

Linguistic landscaping in Kathmandu’s Thamel ‘Chinatown’: language as commodity in the construction of a cosmopolitan transnational space

ABSTRACT This study explores the linguistic landscape of a new unofficial 'Chinatown' in Kathmandu, Nepal. Located in the tourist hub Thamel, this Chinatown came into being recently because of globalisation and China's outbound tourism boom. Using authentic photographic data, this study examines how the use of Chinese and various semiotic elements (e.g. colour) contributes to the making of a commodified ethnic enclave and space of consumption, where a foreign culture is inscribed and embedded in the existing built environment. Unlike the traditional old-world Chinatowns, simplified Chinese characters are omnipresent in this Chinatown and many Chinese-run business names are highly up-to-date and reflect the latest trends in their home country. The exclusive use of monolingual Chinese is also commonplace. Interestingly, awkwardly hand-copied Chinese and Google translated Chinese are used as part of local businesses' marketing repertoire in what can be called 'linguistic jugaad'. Additionally, some local businesses resort to creative, affective and playful language to attract and engage with Chinese tourists. Contributing to research on ethnic enclaves and urban sociolinguistics, this study highlights language as commodity in transforming/constructing a cosmopolitan transnational space in our globalised and mobile world, illustrating how South-South population flows can leave material traces in a place's linguistic ecology.

Ideals and realities: Chinese singleton daughters negotiating family size preferences and migrant motherhood in Spain

ABSTRACT Chinese young women’s fertility choices have attracted growing interest in the last years, however, the effects of women’s singleton status and transnational motherhood experience on their fertility behaviours remain understudied. Using 12 qualitative interviews with Chinese migrant mothers in Spain, we firstly examine how women’s family size preferences are constructed by their singleton status associated with changing gender norms and strong normative expectations of future family caregiving obligations; secondly, we explore the challenges faced by participants towards realizing their fertility expectations in transnational spaces from a gendered perspective. We find that although singleton status can contribute to women’s larger ideal family size, their gendered roles as only-daughters and migrant mothers increase care responsibilities, which negatively influence their childbearing decisions. By situating singleton daughters’ experiences within a broader institutional and sociocultural context, our study offers a unique opportunity to examine how changing gender norms, care, and responsibility structure fertility norms of one generation at the micro level.

Spatialities of shabaab: exploring the intersections of lifestage, space and mobility amongst refugee young people in urban Jordan

ABSTRACT Refugee young people in countries of first asylum navigate daily life through a set of deeply challenging, and often traumatic, structures, circumstances, and expectations. Attending to the complex interaction and relationship between identities, structures of legality, space and place facilitates an important critical lens to examine and understand refugee young people’s experiences, including their sense of belonging, hopes for the future and their conceptualisation of life stages of murahik (adolescence) and shabaab (youth) in shifting transnational spaces. Based upon participatory and exploratory research conducted in 2022 with Syrian & Iraqi refugee shabaab, this paper uses a socio-spatial justice framework which centres young people’s voices and explores the everyday places and spaces that these young people access, inhabit, frequent and avoid within the cities of Amman and Zarqa, the urban and economic heartland of Jordan.Using an approach which is sensitive to the role of identity, policy and structural constraint ensures plural insights into the spatial and mobile lives of young people and illustrates the diversity of their experiences, particularly highlighting the role of gendered identities and diverging refugee policies in impacting these diverse experiences, contributing to the growing research field on refugee youth and spatiality.

HETEROTOPIA IN TASTE: A STUDY OF RUKMINI SRINIVAS’S TIFFIN AND SHOBHA NARAYAN’S MONSOON DIARY

Rukmini Srinivas’s Tiffin Memories and Recipes of Indian Vegetarian Food and Shobha Narayan’s Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes are cookbook memoirs that present the author's close association with food while in their home country and abroad. Shobha Narayan and Rukmini Srinivas state that they have difficult encounters with food while visiting a foreign country. They recollect their taste memory from childhood, through their cookbook memoirs by incorporating their favourite recipes in them. The challenging scenario with food in the transnational space as an Indian diaspora in the United States of America has made them discuss it along with their own solutions. The transnational space of the immigrants in a foreign land can be observed as a heterotopia where the diaspora resides in a state of crisis, especially in association with the food that they consume due to the different cuisines to which they have to adapt.

Dimensions of Transnational Feminism: Autonomous Organizing, Multilateralism and Agenda-Setting in Global Civil Society

The importance and impact of feminist mobilization across borders is well documented, but the impact of autonomy as an aspect of such organizing has not been explored in the transnational context. We argue that to understand the impact of transnational feminist mobilization, at least two distinct types of feminist mobilization require further conceptual development and empirical exploration in the transnational context, namely, autonomous as contrasted with multilateral mobilization. We offer a conceptual framework for distinguishing and studying these two forms. Further, using a mixed-methods study design, we empirically distinguish domestic and transnational dimensions of feminist activism and illuminate the impact of both multilateral feminist organizing and autonomous feminist organizing in the transnational space. Our analysis reveals that domestic and transnational organizing are distinct but related phenomena. We also find that in online organizing spaces, autonomous feminist campaigns amplify the messaging of geographically dispersed grassroots and individual activists more than multilateral ones. It further suggests that autonomous movements may offer more potential for representing marginalized groups of women, though this potential may not always be realized. The paper offers new concepts and empirical insights for the study of transnational feminism, thereby enabling a new research agenda. Further, this research contributes to the study of the ways that Transnational Social Movements can enrich global civil society and deepen global democracy.

Connecting Memory with Transnational Space Making: The Case of German-Kyrgyz Relations

Abstract In the 19th century, Mennonites of German origin began to found numerous settlements in Central Asia. Of the once large number of German settlers, only a few remain in the Republic of Kyrgyzstan today, most having emigrated to Germany after the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, the village of Rot-Front in Kyrgyzstan is an exception: there are still German-Mennonite families living there who maintain a relationship with those who once left. The aim of this article is to investigate these relations with regard to the creation of transnational spaces. Memory can play a central role in the process of formation of such transnational spaces. This article explores these processes through the lens of cultural geography, applying insights of theories of practice to the study of memory landscapes using the case of the village of Rot-Front in Kyrgyzstan. The study is based on a case study approach, including field observation, qualitative interviews, biographical records and discourse analysis. The results of the study unfold in four ways: First, the formation of a collective identity is the main characteristic associated with the village of Rot-Front. Second, the role of artifacts play a minor role in memory practices. Third, the individual memory of Rot-Front is idealized by today’s ‘senior’ generation and fourth, the close exchange between those who emigrated and those who stayed is the basis of a transnational social space of Rot-Front, which will exist only as long as the generations have a personal bond with Rot-Front.

Governing Corporations in National and Transnational Spaces: Cross‐Level Governmental Orchestration of Corporate Social Responsibility in South Korea

AbstractThe loose spatial and temporal coordination of national and transnational governmental corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies enables multinational corporations (MNCs) to externalize irresponsible behaviours. Political CSR (PCSR) and ‘government and CSR’ studies show how governmental authority shapes CSR at the domestic and transnational levels but provide only limited insights into how to govern MNCs across levels and over time. Combining the concept of orchestration with insights from power transition theory, we theorize cross‐level governmental orchestration as power‐imbued, dynamic, and involving multiple modes of orchestration. Through an analysis of how the South Korean state has deployed CSR domestic and transnational strategies over 30 years, we induce three configurations of cross‐level governmental orchestration, blending coercive, directive, delegative and facilitative modes of orchestration, and identify the mechanisms behind Korea's transition from one configuration to another. Our results: (1) contribute to PCSR and ‘government and CSR’ studies by conceptualizing a systemic and dynamic view of cross‐level orchestration of governmental CSR strategies; (2) advance transnational governance studies by consolidating orchestration theories and considering coercive power, and (3) add to power transition theory by explaining how regulatory capacity‐building enables shifts of cross‐level orchestration configurations.

Tactical Partnerships in an Awkward Dance to Commodify Identities within Haiti's Transnational Space

This article analyzes the outcomes of a fortuitous gathering that brought together three groups of Haitians of different nationalities and of very distinctive financial circumstances at a festival to celebrate the patron saint of Ré, a small rural community located in Haiti's South Department. It shows the ways in which, Ré, although poor, neglected, and isolated, became, during that relatively brief period, the site of an encounter that transformed the hamlet into a microcosmic representation of Haiti's transnational space and a nodal point of transnational social relations where individuals who lived and evolved in unequal social environments, in Haiti and abroad, built upon their experiences, needs, and aspirations to benefit from that chance meeting in many different ways, but most especially, to express their different and contrastive assessments of their homeland's realities and their visions for its future.

China's Smart Diaspora Governance: Extraterritorial Social Control Through Digital Platforms

This article investigates the transformative impact of information communication technology on China's extraterritorial governance practices directed at Chinese populations residing overseas. Employing textual analysis on official documents, media reports, and data from qualitative interviews with ethnic Chinese association leaders in Europe, we contend that e-governance and social media platforms, notably Weixin, are instrumental in reshaping transnational space by facilitating enhanced overseas social control. Digital technology enables local Chinese officials to extend domestic security and judicial practices by empowering overseas Chinese association leaders as on-the-ground liaison and information conduits. The implementation of e-government services further amplifies the local party-state's access to, and the collection of data pertaining to Chinese emigrants. Drawing on a case study of Qingtian County in Zhejiang province, we posit that China's diaspora governance needs to be understood in the broader context of China's swiftly evolving digital landscape, where Weixin assumes a pivotal role as a digital infrastructure.

Weaving transnational spaces: Peruvian and Colombian suitcase traders moving across South American borders

ABSTRACT Our study addresses suitcase trading that involves buying goods from one country and transporting them across borders in portable packages, so as to avoid government taxes. Although a globally common practice, and a significant source of income for many, we have scant understanding of suitcase trade practices in South America. Therefore, we examine how Peruvian and Colombian suitcase traders establish and sustain transnational spaces by engaging in repeated cross-border trade activities between (1) Peru and Brazil, entailing routes of 3,500 km, and (2) Colombia and Venezuela, involving routes of only 1 km. Further, to analyse the spatialities of transnational practices, a focus absent in many studies on transnationalism and transnational spaces, we propose a perspective that combines mobilities, connections, and meanings. Our study, which employs ethnographic, biographical, and participatory methods with 40 suitcase traders, reveals that transnational space is not just an abstract entity in which transnational social practices occur. Instead, it is structured by frequent or occasional mobilities along specific routes and means, by socioeconomic connections between geographically distant or proximate sites, and by the meanings that individuals give to their transnational practices. Our findings emphasize that the perspective of spatialities helps us understand the heterogeneity of transnational spaces.