Transnational Work Research Articles

In/out of Nigeria: transnational research and the politics of identity and knowledge production

This article explores the murkiness of fieldwork and writing that often comes with simultaneous positioning as insider/outsider. I engage with two key themes: First, identity, legitimacy and representation and, second, the gray spaces between theory and reality. The first theme examines the contradictions of being perceived as both an insider and outsider; the complexities of identity and language while at ‘home’ in the field, and the challenges of performing the native informant role while back ‘home’ in Canada. The second theme explores the uncomfortable dilemma of engaging with the ‘Rush to Theory’ from the global south. I will examine how the theories are sophisticated and provocative, yet prove unsatisfactory in terms of having practical applications. I conclude the article by positing that, despite the challenges of doing transnational work, transnational subjects invariably contribute to the creation of a new politics of knowledge production and to the attainment of social justice.

A Rede Latino-Americana de Justiça de Transição e o desaparecimento forçado em El Salvador: potencializando medidas de justiça de transição por meio de redes transnacionais de atuação

O artigo tem como objetivo refletir sobre a experiência de El Salvador na abordagem transicional do crime de desaparecimento forçado, verificando a possibilidade de que redes de colaboração entre organizações de direitos humanos possam cooperar no aprimoramento de políticas públicas de justiça de transição. A pesquisa foi realizada no âmbito da Secretaria Executiva da Rede Latino-Americana de Justiça de Transição. A metodologia serviu-se do trabalho transnacional promovido pela rede, permitindo que medidas transicionais sejam implementadas a partir da atuação dos próprios membros da rede. O referencial teórico parte de que a justiça de transição se mostra como um paradigma plausível de racionalidade transversal, em que sua formatação permite o intercâmbio de experiências ainda que em situações contextuais diversas como regimes pós-ditaduras e regimes pós-conflito. Os resultados da pesquisa indicaram que El Salvador é um dos exemplos de medidas transicionais obtidas por organizações e atores de direitos humanos. Concluiu-se que organizações da sociedade civil podem pautar medidas de justiça de transição de modo mais efetivo por meio da atuação em rede.

Encountering Dancing Shakespeare/s: José Limón’s <i>The Moor’s Pavane</i>, Dada Masilo’s the bitter end of rosemary and Gregory Maqoma and Helge Letonja’s <i>OUT OF JOINT</i>

This article engages with three contemporary dance works, each representing a different Shakespearean encounter. Its starting point is Modernist American choreographer José Limón’s The Moor’s Pavane (1949), a seminal (and perhaps now iconic) instance of a choreographer negotiating narrative: Shakespeare’s Othello. It then discusses two contemporary and localised South African dance works that also ‘encounter’ Shakespeare: Dada Masilo’s the bitter end of rosemary (2010), in which a choreographer/dancer negotiates character (Ophelia); and the recent transnational work of Gregory Maqoma and Helge Letonja, OUT OF JOINT (2017), in which the choreographers respond to an idea derived from a ‘poetic’ Shakespeare. Shakespeare is navigated and ‘encountered’ by these selected choreographers in differing contexts as a type of intertextual – and embodied – site of recognition for making meaning. The article explores the intricacies of intertextual dialogue between a literary Shakespeare, choreography and the dancing body. It considers the layered potential for Shakespeare/s to be a site of localised and contemporary embodiment: a trigger or a touch point for contemporary dance-makers that allows ‘Shakespeare’ to be viewed as a dialectic, a space of tensions and revisions. This is framed by the author’s own ‘encounters’ with Shakespeare as a South African.

Language, communication, and the politics of hope: Solidarity and work in the Italian migration infrastructure

Cet article décrit le rôle du langage dans les coopératives sociales, des organismes qui œuvrent auprès de travailleurs transnationaux en Italie pour promouvoir leur accès à l’emploi et à l’indépendance socio-économique. Cette contribution soutient que, tout comme l’État, dont la gestion des inégalités se définit par des idéologies du colonialisme et un nationalisme genré et racialisé, les coopératives italiennes gèrent la contradiction entre les promesses démocratiques libérales d’égalité et une sélection sociale par le truchement d’un processus de mystification reposant sur le langage. Ceci mène alors à la reproduction de hiérarchies qui viennent compliquer l’accès des travailleurs transnationaux à l’égalité sociale.

Addressing global social relationships in transnational social work research processes and institutions

ABSTRACTIn the last two decades, scholars and practitioners have adopted the term ‘transnational social work’ to capture the complexity of cross-border flows and their effects on people. This paper pursues the idea of transnational social work research (TSWR), specifically seeking research practices that are promising for promoting social justice in the face of global challenges. We argue that when powerful institutions set research priorities, they may obscure local concerns and reproduce unequal social relations and global inequalities. We begin by describing how transnational social work bodies have understood ‘social justice’ and the theoretical underpinnings that support it. We then propose a definition of TSWR and discuss what populations and topics comprise the transnational sphere as well as the analytical commitments signalled by the term ‘transnational.’ We illustrate how TSWR can play a transformative role by discussing challenges that we have faced to our social justice commitments as researchers in the transnational sphere. Finally, we propose promising strategies for conducting TSWR that address power imbalances within social work research and the transnational arena.

Beyond drive-by race scholarship: the importance of engaging geopolitical contexts

In transnational rhetorical scholarship critical race work is imperative, but it can be tricky. Critical race work attends to how violences (actual, structural, verbal, and textual) serve to mainta...

Exploring the Transnational Mobility and Work Experience of Young Koreans in Singapore

Exploring the Transnational Mobility and Work Experience of Young Koreans in Singapore

Rhythms of ‘Free’ movement: migrants' bodies and time under South Korean visa regime

ABSTRACTIn 2005 the South Korean government granted a large-scale amnesty to the most predominant undocumented migrant group in the country, Korean Chinese. This change quickly caused Korean Chinese migrants to be exposed to new rhythms of transnational life imposed by work visa time limits. How do the rhythms of migration and temporal regulation – how long to stay and how often to move around – shape and reshape transnational working bodies and transnational spaces subjected to human flows and fluctuations? I argue that rhythms of ‘free’ movement strongly condition the migrants' temporal relationships with places and affect their ethnic working-class subjectivity. This case study of post-amnesty Korean Chinese migrant female workers contributes to research on the actual material forces of transnational temporality as well the visceral dimension of transnational migration, where state-imposed rhythms intersect with market-driven rhythms to reconfigure transnational time–space linkages, transnational bodies, and thereby transnational subjectivities, through rhythms of ‘free’ movement.

Scripts of Servitude: Language, Labor Migration and Transnational Domestic Work

Scripts of Servitude: Language, Labor Migration and Transnational Domestic Work

Collective action and agency in Baltic Sea marine spatial planning: Transnational policy coordination in the promotion of regional coherence

Despite the increasing attention given to marine spatial planning and the widely acknowledged need for transnational policy coordination, regional coherence has not yet improved a great deal in the Baltic Sea region. Therefore, the main objectives in this article are: (a) to map existing governance structures at all levels that influence how domestic marine spatial planning policy strategies are formed, (b) to identify specific challenges to improved regional cooperation and coordination, and (c) to discuss possible remedies. Based on data from in-depth case studies carried out in the BONUS BALTSPACE research project, it is shown that, despite the shared goal of sustainability and efficient resource use in relevant EU Directives, action plans and other policy instruments, domestic plans are emerging in diverse ways, mainly reflecting varying domestic administrative structures, sectoral interests, political prioritisations, and handling of potentially conflicting policy objectives. A fruitful distinction can be made between, on the one hand, regulatory institutions and structures above the state level where decision-making mechanisms are typically grounded in consensual regimes and, on the other hand, bilateral, issue-specific collaboration, typically between adjacent countries. It is argued that, to improve overall marine spatial planning governance, these two governance components need to be brought together to improve consistency between regional alignment and to enhance opportunities for countries to collaborate at lower levels. Issue-specific transnational working groups or workshops can be one way to identify and act upon such potential synergies.

Absent or involved: changes in fathering of Estonian men working in Finland

The aim of my article is to find out how living in the transnational space between two countries with significantly different histories changes family life. I discuss how working in a different country than one’s homeland can change the way one thinks about family and at the same time encourage people to try out new caretaking patterns. I focus on the trend towards more a inclusive family role of Estonian men working in Finland. My results show that transnational working does change the father’s role inside the family; it gives them the possibility to spend more time with their children and even to acquire the main caretaker role during the non-working period. Also, the fieldwork shows that men start to appreciate not only providing for economic well-being, but also being emotionally and socially more present in family life while at home.

From Hearing to Heresy: The Temporary Slavery Commission, the Congregational Church, and the Foundations of Anti-Colonial Organizing in Angola

This article offers a narrative of the effects of transnational work spurred on by the League of Nations in Geneva. It begins with the Report on Employment of Native Labor in Portuguese Africa, which was presented to the League of Nation's Temporary Slavery Commission in 1925. From there the story moves to Angola where the Portuguese government attacked Congregational Missions, missionaries, and Angolan protestants who were perceived to be involved in the Report's production. Despite this violence, Angolans flocked to mission schools and churches in numbers that far outpaced the ability of foreign missionaries to meet demand. As a result, Angolan pastors and teachers took the helm in spreading mission activities into villages and areas where services were requested. By the 1960s, these Angolan-controlled networks would become important organizing centres for anti-colonial resistance. This article argues for the importance of the Angolans' reactions to state oppression during the interwar years and how it contributed to the post-World War II, anti-colonial revolution.

The "Bare Life" of Thai Transnational Migrant Workers in Taiwan

In 2009, in an area of Taiwan distinguished by family-operated factories, a young Thai fell victim to sudden unexplained death syndrome. His Indonesian female lover may have been an indirect cause of his death, as her previous lover may have paid for the use of black magic against him. The victim's older brother originally wanted to seek revenge, but his ageing mother dissuaded him. The brother was, in turn, involved with an Indonesian woman in Taiwan, whose child by him he continued to support after her return home. This loyalty led his Taiwanese lover to stab him in his sleep. While he survived, these episodes serve to illustrate the lives and losses of Thai and other transnational migrant workers.

Labor, Discipline, and Resistance: Transnational Migrant Workers ‘on the line’

Unauthorized workers are foundational to neoliberal production regimes in the United States. The economic indispensability of such ‘disposable’ laborers in the era of flexible accumulation and the new energy they bring to labor activism promise to shape the emergence of the 21st century working class. This article explores the dynamics of labor discipline among undocumented workers, situating the current experiences of transnational migrants within a broader cultural history of the recruitment, disciplining, and exploitation of workers from vulnerable populations. Currently, conditions of illegality and deportability make transnational workers particularly vulnerable to labor rights violations and wage theft. The structure of immigration law, which frames and facilitates exploitation, serves the interests of capital and disciplines workers to perform their role as a subordinated class. Nonetheless, the confluence of labor militancy and immigrants’ rights activism over the past decade provides hope for social and political change based in solidarity and worker agency.

In the Rhythm of Cree Samba: transculturality and decolonization in Tomson Highway´s Theatre

The voice that comes from Indigenous artists, writers and activists in the Americas, in artistic works which can be related to Mary Louise Pratt’s concept of autoethnographic expression (1992), inevitably engages with discourses constructed about them in order to reconstruct or deconstruct colonial narratives. However, some artists seem to go beyond the discussion of a colonizing voice versus a response from the colonized, since they engage with practices that include Indigenous knowledge in a global perspective. This is the case of Cree Canadian artist Tomson Highway. He creates a transcultural and transnational work that challenges territorial and genre conventions in a kind of practice that can be related to what Diana Taylor (2007) denominates hemispheric performance. Highway is an artist and a cultural agent that participates in the exchange of knowledge between cultures and in the continuation of Cree/Ojibway storytelling. His openness to artists and critics from many different countries, as well as the experience of travelling abroad as a musician in his cabaret shows, underline the value of his plays as a means of cross-cultural dialogue which creates knowledge. In this article, I demonstrate that Highway’s shows in cabaret style employ transcultural phenomena and explore how his experiences in Brazil and his knowledge of Brazilian music have been integrated into his theatrical production. I propose a poetics of tricksterism as Highway’s strategy to engage with the world in a global perspective and at the same time reinforce Indigenous cultural and spiritual traditions.

Virtual Partnerships: Engaging Students in E-service Learning Using Computer-mediated Communication

Computer-mediated communication has important implications for future classroom learning which is no longer spatially bound or centred around text books. It has the ability to incorporate real-life learning whereby students can make important contributions towards solving global problems without having to leave the campus. This study looked at the impact of virtual communication processes and online tools on student and partner engagement in an on-campus undergraduate unit which enables Australian students to create communication campaigns for a non-government organization in India. The study found that the communication exchanges provided students with opportunities for intercultural dialogue, both in real and virtual spaces, and how to use Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and media within a social justice framework within a transnational working environment. Internet technologies have become part of the daily communication pattern of a new generation of students, who see it as their natural environment in which to learn, play and work. It is thus important to expand students’ use of the global digital network from superficial social interactions towards activities which enable them to become active and informed global citizens.

The Transnationalization of Labor Mobility: Development Trends and Selected Challenges Involved in Its Regulation

Internationalization of value chains and of for-profit as well as non-profit organizations, and as a result of cheaper and safer mass migration, transnational labor mobility is of increasing importance. The article presents the development of the different types of cross-border labor mobility (from long-term labor migration over expatriats/inpatriats up to business traveling); it analyses crucial aspects of labor conditions and how the collective regulation of working, employment and participation conditions in general is affected: could local or national forms of labor regulation cope with these new conditions? What are the main challenges when it comes to collective bargaining and the monitoring of labor conditions? The article is based on a three year international and comparative research in Germany and Mexico. First, different ideal types of transnational labor mobility are distinguished that have emerged as a result of increasing cross-border labor mobility. Then potential sources of labor related social inequality and challenges in the regulation of the working, employment and participation conditions for transnational workers are discussed. Finally, some conclusions are drawn for further research.

From author to saint: the appropriations of Victor Hugo and Les Misérables in colonial Vietnam

This paper argues that during the French colonization of Vietnam the emergence of Les Miserables as a transnational work and Victor Hugo as a global figure can be traced back to their successful and seamless integration into local literature and religion. Based on the concept of appropriation, a process in which the target text “takes over” the source text, subjecting it to different forms of transformation, a rereading of Hugo and his masterpiece will be proposed through three of these forms: a translation of Les Miserables by Nguyen-Van-Vĩnh, an adaptation of the same novel by Hồ-Biểu-Chanh, and an indigenization of Spirit Hugo in Caodaism by Phạm-Cong-Tắc. In the light of anticolonial resistance, this study investigates the extent to which the subversive act of literary and cultural appropriation carried out by these three Vietnamese authors in the 1920s can be seen as a reversed assimilation that transgresses the boundaries between dominant and dominated, colonizer and the colonized.

Tough Times: Adult Educators, Microaggressions, and the Work Context

This paper examines the roots, types, and effects of microaggressions in the workplace and discusses implications for adult educators who work in a domestic and transnational context. In a domestic context, the literature describes microaggressions as being based on differences in race, gender, sexual orientation, culture, and professional role, which can negatively impact the work and welfare of adult educators. There is little consideration of the transnational work context, but the current scholarship points to difficulties in history and power differentials as being roots of microaggressions. Future directions are discussed that aim to re-shift the workplace culture to one of respect and inclusion for adult educators.

Transnational work and workplace as infrastructure: Sino-British international branch campuses and academic mobilities

Transnational education is growing apace in recent years, with international branch campuses (IBCs) becoming an increasingly prominent feature in Asia’s higher education landscape. This paper examines a Sino-British IBC in China as an inroad for illuminating the mobilities such set-ups entrain as a migration infrastructure tied to transnational work and workplace. Using Bourdieu’s concepts of field, capital and habitus, we interrogate the processes of ‘branch-making’ in relations to the IBC in question, teasing out its strategies in recruitment, and, as part of its social and material environment, opposing circumstances that motivate the re-mobilisation of academic migrants. The paper argues for a need to consider not just interventions of the state or individuals’ personal decisions in comprehending skilled migration, but also how the workplace possesses the power to shape movement and generate mobilities.