Communities Across Borders

Paul Kennedy, Victor Roudometof, Paul Kennedy, Victor Roudometof

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781134526994
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Communities across Borders examines the many ways in which national, ethnic or religious groups, professions, businesses and cultures are becoming increasingly tangled together.

It show how thisentanglementisthe result of the vast flows of people, meanings, goods and money that now migrate between countries and world regions. Now the effectiveness and significance of electronic technologies for interpersonal communication (including cyber-communities and the interconnectedness of the global world economy) simultaneously empowers even the poorest people to forge effective cultures stretching national borders, and compels many to do so to escape injustice and deprivation.

1 Transnationalism in a global age

Paul Kennedy and Victor Roudometof

Cultural diasporas … are no longer confined to the rich. In dress, in religious or political orientation, in music, people in the poorest ghettos link themselves to transnational ‘communities of taste’ in an active way.

(Giddens 1994: 188)

This collection of readings endeavours to extend the frontiers of our understanding concerning the increasing significance of transnationalism in national and global life. Most of the literature on transnationalism to date has concentrated on the experience of new immigrants. These experiences suggest that their ethnic, religious or national diasporic relations and connections span national borders, thereby establishing the claim that such relations represent a qualitatively new phenomenon. As important and interesting as this rapidly expanding literature is, it cannot encompass – nor does it claim to do so – the actual range of transnational communities increasingly shaping the everyday lives of people across the world. While lip-service is often paid to the need to widen our explorations of transnational communities beyond migrants and diasporas, little research of this kind has so far been conducted (for an important exception, see Sklair 1995, 2001).

Our contribution to this on-going debate on the meaning, definition, nature and basic features of transnational communities rests on our claim that transnational communities and cultures need to be understood as constituting a much wider and more commonplace phenomenon than the existing research might lead us to suppose. We argue that transnational relationships have to be understood as manifestations of broader social trends that are not confined to the experience of immigrants; rather, they are extending into and shaping the lives of people engaged in many other kinds of associations, clubs and informal networks as well as into cultural life at large.

This selection of readings aims to furnish evidence in favour of a common conceptual framework that is capable of accommodating the growing diversity of vibrant transnational communities and cultures flourishing in global social space and to incorporate case studies as valid examples of this framework.Therefore, our discussion in this introductory essay will provide for a general theoretical and conceptual framework. We shall begin by discussing the (Giddens 1994: 188)

current state of affairs in the related literature on transnationalism, globalisation and diaspora. Our overview is meant to highlight the achievements as well as the contested points in recent research and to lay out the fundamentals of our approach toward the topic. Next, we turn to the concepts of ‘community’ and ‘culture’ and critically examine the manner in which the decoupling of locality from territory has caused important transformations in the meaning and nature of these two central sociological concepts. Then, we proceed to outline our classification of the new transnational and global communities, including the reasons for drawing a distinction between the two, as well as the reasons the two should be considered within the same broad category. Towards the end of the chapter we also indicate briefly the manner in which the individual essays in this volume relate to the central themes of our argument.

Transnationalism, globalisation and diaspora

Despite important contributions focused specifically on enhancing our understanding of transnationalism in a broader and deeper sense (Appadurai 1990, 1991, 1995; Giddens 1990, 1994; Hannerz 1992, 1996; Lash 1994; Beck 2000a), the theorisation of the transnational experience (and its ties to globalisation) remains incomplete. The strong leaning of the literature has been directed towards research mainly concerned with migrants, diasporas and transnational nation-state building (Basch et al. 1994; Danforth 1995; Cohen 1997; Smith and Guarnizo 1998). This tends unwittingly to accentuate the special significance of such communities in world culture and politics while downplaying the contribution of other equally important non-ethnic/ national communities in the global arena. There are also important terminological issues, which remain unresolved. Namely that some (mainly US based) researchers have used the term ‘transnationalism’ to designate the experience of post-1945 new immigrants into the USA. In contrast, other (predominately British) researchers have opted for the term ‘diaspora’, a word that has expanded its reach to include new groups of expatriates, refugees and immigrants (including such cases as the Kurds, Palestinians, Armenians, and so on) (Safran 1991; Anthias 1998; Van Hear 1998).

The arguments about transnationalism have reflected the general tenor of the debate between proponents and opponents of globalisation (Held et al. 1999). That is to say, the assertion that transnationalism is a novel phenomenon, intimately connected to the social, economic and cultural transformations of our global age (Albrow 1997), has been criticised by researchers who have pointed out that the transnational experience pre-dates the post-modern world of e-mail, faxes and instant wireless electronic services (Dominguez 1998; Hanagan 1998; Mintz 1998; Van Hear 1998: 241–56; Danforth 2000; Roudometof 2001). Historically, transnational connections, cultures and communities were the ‘normal’ state of affairs. This ubiquitous quality was temporarily concealed during the relatively recent age of the modernising nation-state. Affiliations and supranational organisations based on religion, ethnic diasporas and transregional trading associations were among the many transnational collectivities that preceded the modern nation. Alongside numerous local and subnational identities, such collectivities were suppressed, submerged and rendered deviant compared with the myth of a single, national people asserted by the ascendant modern nation-state (McNeill 1985; Vertovec and Cohen 1999). In any case, it was the rise of the nation-state that accelerated and massively deepened the processes associated with globalisation (Mayall 1990; Held et al. 1999). Moreover, the global formation of an international society of nation-states compelled many ancient diasporas to seek and to assert a new ‘national’ relationship to their homelands, in many instances marginalising yet other ethnic minorities and other subgroups so that they were driven to seek security by migrating elsewhere (Roudometof 1999).

In this regard, Anderson’s (1983, 1993) work on modern national community is of direct relevance to our argument. Anderson (1983: 6) suggests that ‘all communities larger than “primordial” villages of face-to-face contact (and perhaps even these) are imagined’. It follows, therefore, that even vast entities such as nations are communities based on imagined bonds. Indeed, this is the only way a nation can experience commonality, shared goals and a boundary; namely, as an imagined community constructed around the idea of a ‘deep, horizontal comradeship’ (Anderson 1983: 7). Of central significance for nation-state building was the arrival of the printed word in the vernacular, harnessed to market capitalism. Through the development of a mass market for books and newspapers – boosted eventually by state-sponsored mass education programmes – it became increasingly possible for the members of a national community to experience the ‘simultaneity’ (Anderson 1983: 39) of their shared experiences with numerous others far beyond the immediacy of the small face-to-face community.

As Hannerz (1996: 20–1) reminds us, Anderson’s insights convincingly demonstrate how ‘the leap out of the local’ was made possible by the ability of people to engage in a ‘common intelligibility’ through developments in media technology. However, he goes on to point out that while writing binds together those of the same language it also creates discontinuities between nations and peoples who employ different languages. On the other hand, the new symbolic codes associated with the advances achieved in, and the dissemination of, the visual media technologies of the last hundred years have proved to be far less bounded and restrictive (Castells 1998a). In Anderson’s (1993) view, mass migration and mobility – stimulated by the technological advances of the last decades – lead to pervasive feelings of nostalgia for the homeland. Such feelings permeate immigrant communities, thereby giving birth to the ‘long distance nationalism’ of ethnic diasporas, refugees, Gastarbeiter or illegal immigrants. This interpretation flows from Anderson’s (1983) earlier work – with the important difference that now place of residence and locality have become disjoined.

Obviously, none of the above is meant to refute the fact that many transnational communities have been born out of the experience of social injustices, global inequalities and chronic insecurities. Global economic restructuring, the post-1989 capitalist boom and the ascendancy of neoliberal economic policies have further accentuated such experiences. Migrant encounters with radicalised social exclusion in host countries have further intensified the exposure of people everywhere, but especially in poor countries, to conditions of great economic and social uncertainty (Goldring 1998; Smith and Guarnizo 1998). Thus, as Schiller et al. (1992: x) remark, ‘transnational migration is shaped by … the encompassing global capitalist system’ and ‘is becoming increasingly a global phenomenon as populations in capital-dependent countries are everywhere forced to migrate to centres of capital in order to live’.

Indeed, membership and participation in such migrant or diasporic communities have long provided strategies of escape from poverty, discrimination and oppression for both individuals and their families – even if many kin remain behind in the home village (see, for example, Chan 1997; Smith 1998). Migrant communities have often offered a way of vitiating the worst aspects of poverty and oppression experienced by entire regions, countries or peoples (for example, Cohen 1997). In Portes’s (1997, 2000) formulation, the transnational communities of the new immigrants represent a process of empowerment for the underprivileged groups – or what he calls ‘globalisation from below’ to be sharply contrasted with ‘globalisation from above’, i.e. global financial integration and the spread of capitalism worldwide.

As we will suggest later on, however, transnationalism is not only an escape mechanism or a mode of coping with global capitalist transformations for migrants. It may be equally valuable to other disadvantaged groups of non-migrant origins living permanently within the heartlands of many nations. Consider, for example, the cases of discriminated and disadvantaged groups (such as women or stateless and tribal peoples) whose demands for land rights, regional and cultural autonomy or independent statehood have been persistently ignored or marginalised. Such groups have often striven to seek the attention and support of global human rights or environmental or development groups in an attempt to strengthen their national or local demands (Boli et al. 1999: 75–6). At the same time many such underprivileged communities (such as the Kurds or Palestinians) are involved in a variety of activities that display a global frame of reference. Such groups simultaneously might demand independent statehood (in their appeals in global forums) while orchestrating transnational political solidarity as well as cementing cultural ties built around family networks spread across a number of nations.

Nor are some Third World governments averse to taking a leading role in cultivating transnational connections (Basch et al. 1994; Smith 1998; Smith and Guarnizo 1998). The motive for adopting a strong state presence lies in the desire to exploit the economic benefits, i.e. foreign exchange earnings from remittances, investment flows into impoverished villages and regions and the export of home products to satisfy the needs of nationals living abroad. ‘In the face of the neo-liberal storm’ (Smith and Guarnizo 1998: 7), these goals have assumed a new significance during the last two decades. Alongside this state-fostered economic transnationalism, certain Third World governments (such as Mexico) also seem intent on promoting the status and presence of their national culture in the world as a whole. Referred to by Smith (1998: 228) as the ‘global nation’, this image consists of a worldwide community of nationals with their shared cultural meanings and identities. In Mexico’s case, this is accompanied by all the signifiers which denote ‘Mexicaness’ – and which are always and immediately recognisable as instances of ‘the Mexican global nation’ (Smith 1998: 229).

In this regard, the constitution of transnational national communities provides an excellent example of what Robertson (1992) has referred to as the global construction of locality, i.e. the construction of local identity drawing upon, and with specific reference to, globality. While the construction of national identity provides a solid example of this process, we should point out that the conceptual opposition between globalisation and the nation-state obscures the foundational role played by the nation-state in the institutionalisation of key political, economic and cultural features of contemporary globalisation. Furthermore, confining one’s attention to the nation-state and the transnational flows of peoples detracts attention from the equally important flows of cultural practices ranging from popular music or ethnic food to types of social movements.

Thus, our approach toward the entire genre of transnational studies aims to rectify the strong emphasis of the US-based literature on ‘new immigration’. We aim to accomplish this goal in a twofold manner. First, our volume includes studies of groups traditionally not included under the definition of transnationalism, either because they were conceived of as ‘older’, more established ethnic communities or because they are residing outside the USA (in Canada, Australia or the UK). Second, our goal is to open up the theoretical space in order to allow for the examination of additional transnational groups that do not fall within the category of ‘new immigrants’. Such groups have not been traditionally included in the study of transnationalism.

Our purpose in presenting both immigrant and non-immigrant studies in a single volume is to emphasise the strong similarities that exist between all kinds of transnational and global communities irrespective of their migrant or non-migrant origins and experiences. Until now, we believe, much of the existing literature has ignored or played down these important shared characteristics and experiences. In this volume, we hope to move towards remedying this deficiency. In order to stress these shared features, our enterprise is organised equally around the themes of both transnationality and community. Indeed, we begin by discussing the nature of community and how it is that communities remain valid and viable in late modern societies.

Community in an age of globalisation

Communities are units of belonging whose members perceive that they share moral, aesthetic/expressive or cognitive meanings, thereby gaining a sense of personal as well as group identity. In turn, this identity demarcates the boundary between members and non-members. Communities therefore are constructed symbolically through an engagement with rituals, signs and meanings; they provide a container within which individual members negotiate meanings and construct and reconstruct different kinds of social relationships over time (Cohen 1979: 15–20).¹

The classical sociological tradition stressed the ‘withering away’ of community under the forces of modernisation. Following Ferdinand Tönnies’s Community and Society (1887), the division between Gemeinschaft ‘communal’ relations and Gesellshaft ‘modern’ social relations provided the backdrop for the theorisation of community (for a discussion, see Featherstone 1997). The conceptual opposition between the two types of relations was particularly popular in the first half of the twentieth century. In the second half of the twentieth century, a more nuanced perspective gradually evolved, stressing the interpenetration of ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ and suggesting that the use of these concepts as ideal types should not degenerate into them turning into caricatures or stereotypes (Bendix 1967). Sociologists such as Talcott Parsons or Edward Tiryakian (1991) argued that communal relations remain important for contemporary social actors. Indeed, modern units like the nation provide for ‘societal communities’ that serve the same function as the older, more ‘traditional’ premodern communities.

The new transnational connections enshrined by globalisation bring about further important changes in the nature, orientation and character of communal relations. Indeed, there are important differences between premodern and early modern communities and the communities of late modern (or post-modern) societies, and it is only by clarifying these differences that we can hope to understand how and why communities are able to flourish in global social space.

First, the communities of premodern and early modern societies were mostly based on what Beck (2000a) – with intended irony – calls ‘natural’ relations of narrowly defined allegiances. These relations might be compulsory (Beck 2000a: 164), but they might also involve a strong sense of inclusiveness based on ‘natural’ criteria. Such criteria included blood lines or descent (kinship), locality and residence (neighbourhood) and – once modernity was firmly under way – the nation and its association with what Beck calls ‘state-organised citizens’ solidarity’ (Beck 2000a: 155, 163).

Second, in premodern and early modern societies, communal relations were basically relations of locality, thereby allowing for the construction and maintenance of all-embracing, multipurpose and intertwining relationships based on direct, face-to-face contacts. Thus, territory and social propinquity in everyday life coincided. Third, as Hannerz (1996: 26) suggests, such locally circumscribed communities were likely to endure. They could offer their members ‘broadly inclusive long-term relationships’, highly charged emotional relations and mutual understandings. In addition, they might typically involve ‘close surveillance’ of members and highly effective mechanisms of social control. In other words, there was a broad symmetry in terms of the scale and directionality of interaction flows taking place among members (Hannerz 1996: 96–7). Last, because locality could more or less guarantee that any community was endowed with a ‘clearly demarcated system of communication’ it also generated understanding, security and common experiences (Beck 2000a: 155–6).

It is therefore clear that physical proximity, defined by locality and residence, was central to the conventional understanding of community. Of course, it was far from the only structural constraint. Other constraints were also important. These included the restrictions on people’s rights to move (including kinship, religious, customary and positional loyalties and obligations); the limited range of economic opportunities elsewhere against the immediate availability or prospect of land, employment, mutual assistance, protection or charity; and the impediments of cost, danger, risk and inconvenience associated with physical mobility and communications.To a considerable extent most, if not all, of these constraints have declined in significance for the majority of people across the world.

Unlike the era of the first state-led drive to modernity, with its scientific certainties, neat territorial containment of society, economy and nation, continuing compromise with the traditional structures of class, gender and family and the unquestioned assumption that nature could be bent in the service of human need in perpetuity, we are now in transition to a new, more ‘open, risk-filled modernity characterised by general insecurity’ (Beck 2000a: 19). This second or reflexive modernity must confront an entire array of new phenomena, including the information revolution with all its repercussions, a revolution in gender relations, the rise of widespread environmental threats, the reconfiguration of state sovereignty and a growing trend towards post-national citizenship (Beck 1992, 2000b; Soysal 1994; Castells 1996; S...