INTRODUCTION: THE EMERGENCE OF A TRANSNATIONAL OPTIC

The study of migration has changed a lot in the last twenty years. Most scholars now agree
that many migrants today and in the past kept different ties to their home countries even as
they became part of the countries where they settled. Migration has never been a one-way
process of assimilation into a melting pot or a multicultural salad bowl. Instead, migrants
are, to varying degrees, simultaneously embedded in the many sites and layers of the
transnational social fields in which they live. Even though the political and cultural
importance of nation-state borders remains clear, more and more social activities take place
across borders. These changes in the study of migration are similar to debates in other
fields. History is no longer just about making simple comparisons between different
countries. It is now the study of how people in different places, like the Black Atlantic or the
Indian Ocean Rim, interact with each other. International relations needed to rethink its
fundamental conceptual categories in order to account for cross-border relations between
nonstate and subnational actors.

THEORETICAL DEVELOPMENTS AND DEBATES

Since the beginning of the nation-state, sociology has been used to make it better. Some of
the first arguments in the United States were about how to make newcomers feel like they
belonged. These talks keep going on. On the one hand, the new assimilation theory says
that most immigrants get to the same socioeconomic level as native-born people over time.
However, it also says that ethnicity and race matter and that both native-born and
immigrants change over time. Segmented assimilationism says that migrants can become
part of the (white) mainstream, stay ethnic, or join the underclass and move down the social
ladder. Both views agree that patterns of assimilation, acculturation, and integration depend
on the country and circumstances of departure, the characteristics of the immigrant, the
abilities of the immigrant enclave, and the political, social, and economic circumstances of
the sending and receiving communities. In the 1990s, scholars who study transnational
migration added a third point of view to these discussions. They said that some immigrants
kept working in their home countries even after they moved to a new country. They talked
about how migrants and their children take part in family, social, economic, religious,
political, and cultural processes that happen across borders while they become part of the
places where they settle. Even though the first versions of this point of view were new, they
also had problems that are common among new ways of doing things. They tended to see
transnational migration everywhere, but in reality, transnational practises of migrants vary a
lot in size and scope. New research results were happy because they said that migrants
could escape the poverty and powerlessness that capitalism had put them in by living in
different countries. Critics pointed out these flaws. Some people had problems with the
words and definitions, saying that it wasn't clear, for example, what the difference was
between global, international, and transnational. In response, people came up with other
words, such as "translocalism", "bi-localism," and "trans-state activity". It is too easy to say
that transnationalism is incompatible with assimilation, and he describes three types of
transnationalism: bi-local, bi-national, and pan-ethnic. These three types of transnationalism
have different relationships to migration assimilation. Others said that migrants have always
kept ties to their home countries and that there wasn't much new about this. Still others,
who agreed that transnational ties were important for the first generation, thought that
their children might not care as much about them. Some scholars questioned the size and
importance of the phenomenon, saying that too many claims were based on case studies,
especially those of Latin American and Caribbean migrants, who have a special social and
historical relationship with the United States. When some sociologists did surveys and found
that only 10% to 15% of the Dominicans, Salvadorans, and Mexicans they looked at
participated in "regular and sustained" transnational political and economic activities, this
made the situation even worse. Lastly, many people thought it was too soon to give up on
national borders and that, contrary to what some people said, the nation-state system
wasn't going away anytime soon. Important steps were taken by later scholarship to fix
these problems. This kind of work has started to "sketch the lineaments of transnationality,
clarifying its shape, contours, and structure and at the same time pointing to the processes
and agencies that support transnational trajectories and edifices." This more recent body of
work has made clear the social spaces where transnational migration happens and the social
structures it creates, as well as the different sizes and shapes it takes, how it relates to
processes of integration and long-term transnational involvements, how it compares to
earlier forms of cross-border membership, and how long it lasts.

ARENAS, FORMS, NOVELTY, AND DURABILITY

Basch et al. (1994) defined transnationalism as "the ways immigrants make and keep social
ties" Transnational migration takes place in fluid, changing social spaces because migrants
are part of multiple societies. Arenas have multiple levels and locations. They include the
home country, the host country, and other places that connect migrants to fellow citizens
and religious people.

Both migrants and nonmigrants occupy them because the flow of people, money, and
"social remittances" (ideas, norms, practises, and identities) is so dense, thick, and
widespread that even nonmigrants' lives are transformed (Levitt 2001). (1999) Transnational
practises may be rare, but social, cultural, and religious practises are common in response to
elections, economic downturns, life-cycle events, and natural disasters. When combined,
their efforts can change whole regions' economies, values, and habits. Scholars have studied
what social spaces cause and are caused by transnational migration and what social
structures are built in those spaces. Morawska (2003) suggests thinking of migration as
structuring to describe structure and agency in transnational domains. Besserer (1999) and
Kearney discuss migration circuits (1995). Guarnizo (1997) and Landolt (2001) discuss
transnational social formations. (2002) prefer transnational livelihoods. "Transnational life"
refers to activities and relationships that connect migrants and their children to their home
country. Faist (2000a,b) says area size and stability lead to different transnational
topographies. Dispersion and assimilation (weak simultaneous embedding in sending and
receiving countries and short-lived transnational ties); transnational exchange and
reciprocity (strong simultaneous embedding but short-lived social ties); transnational
networks (weakly embedded and long-lived); and transnational communities (strongly
embedded in at least two countries and enduring). "Social fields" are networks of social
relationships through which ideas, practises, and resources are exchanged, organised, and
changed for different people. Vertovec (2004b, p. 971) says transnational migration involves
three "modes of transformation" in three major domains: perceptual, or migrants'
"orientational 'bi-focality' in the socio-cultural domain"; conceptual, which affects the
"meaning of the analytical triad, 'identities-orders-borders'"; and institutional, which affects
"forms of financial transfer, public-private relationships, etc." People behave differently in
cross-border social spaces. Parameters and levels of analysis are disputed. Smith and
Guarnizo (1998) distinguished transnationalism from above (global capital, media, and
political institutions) and below (local, grassroots activity). Portes (2001, 2003) argued that
the analysis should be limited to people involved in transnational economic, political, or
sociocultural activities. Itzigsohn et al. (1999) distinguish between narrow, highly
institutionalised transnationalism and broad, occasional, loosely linked transnationalism.
Guarnizo (1997, 2000) says core transnationalism consists of normal, regular, predictable
activities. Expanded transnationalism involves migrants who only do it occasionally, like
during political crises or natural disasters. Other scholars advocate a broader approach that
links informal and formal social, cultural, and religious practises.

Today's transnationalism is more diverse in form and content, and "depending on the
specific constellation of factors, it can involve single or multiple cross-border activities
(regular or prompted by specific situations) carried by individuals, immigrant families, or
ethnic groups through informal or institutional channels; or it can be limited to the private
lives of people on both sides of the border." "Being" and "belonging" are different. "Ways of
being" are social relationships and practises, while "ways of belonging" show a conscious
connection to a group.

Many tell the story of U.S. immigrants through a transnational lens. Authors like Chan,
Foner, Morawska, and Gabaccia have written about "old" immigrants from the Industrial
and Progressive eras. Many immigrants planned to stay briefly and kept close ties to home.
30-40% of them returned. People who moved away from family always sent them
"something."

In 1900-1906, American immigrant colonies sent $90 million in money orders to Italy,
Russia, and Austria-Hungary. Migrants participated in nation-state building and identity
politics in Greece, Korea, China, Italy, Hungary, and other countries. Chiang Kai-shek and
Garibaldi lived in multiple countries and used popular ideas about nation and race to build
strong nation-states. Even though early researchers may have exaggerated how new
transnational migration was, there are real historical differences between earlier and more
recent forms.

Many non-industrialized countries rely on migrant remittances. These countries have

implemented policies and incentives to ensure this continues.

The U.S. labour market welcomes skilled, fluent English speakers. Poorly educated and
language-challenged migrants are less welcome. These people live transnationally because
they can't find a job in their home country or the U.S.

Professional migrants who can benefit from opportunities in both countries choose
transnational living. The growth of international economic and labour markets, media
globalisation, and transportation and communication revolution have made international
travel and communication faster, easier, and more common. Many migration scholars agree
that transnational practises and attachments are widespread among the first generation,
but fewer believe they persist among subsequent generations. People's language skills are
deteriorating, and survey results show that children of immigrants have no plans to move
back home.

Generation as a linear process with clear lines between experiences doesn't capture
transnational life because it suggests migrants and nonmigrants have different ways of
socialising and social networks. Because of constant immigration, we must rethink the
concept of a generation.

Each generation is a mix of cohorts and generations at any given time. Socialization and
social reproduction often cross borders in response to two social and cultural contexts. Most
people in the second or third generation won't do transnational activities as much as their
parents did. Children who never visit their ancestral homes are often raised with people,
values, goods, and claims from elsewhere. They have the skills and social connections to
become transnational activists.

Children of nonmigrants are also raised in social networks permeated by remittances.

Transnationalists don't deny the importance or longevity of national or state borders,
differences in economic, military, or political power between states, or the importance of
national loyalty in people's speeches. They see many and enduring links between citizens
and the government. States drop and add functions. The state's influence on whether
migrants can make political claims demonstrates its importance in shaping transnational
practises. Transnational practise has been studied extensively, particularly in the following
areas:

(a) the economic realm, including different kinds of remittances, their impact on
development, class differences in migration, and ethnic entrepreneurship;
(b) political transnationalism, the changing role of the state and the boundaries of political
belonging;
(c) transformations in social life, especially in structures of family and kin and in class, race,
and gender relations;
(d ) what happens when culture travels; and
(e) the importance of religion as it relates to migration.

TRANSNATIONAL MIGRATION BY DOMAIN

Economics:

Transnational migration is a side effect of late capitalism, which makes large industrialised
countries dependent on cheap labour and small, non-industrialized countries dependent on
the money workers send home. Others say transnational social fields are strong during "high
points of globalisation," or times of strong economic connections. Migrants send a lot of
money home. According to the World Bank (2006), migrants sent $167 billion to developing
countries in 2005. Official numbers may show only half of what people send. This would
create a $300–$400 billion global remittances market. At least 36 countries, including
Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, El Salvador, Haiti, Samoa, Yemen, and Jordan, rely
on remittances. Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, El Salvador, Haiti, Samoa, Yemen, and
Jordan. Individuals and groups use these funds. They care for relatives left behind. Small and
large businesses get funding. They fund public-works and social-service projects in sending
communities. 10% of people who send money to Latin America are members of "hometown
associations" that work with NGOs. About 2,000 Mexican HTAs bring in $60 million annually
in the U.S. Sending nations act quickly. "3 for 1" is a Mexican government programme that
matches migrant earnings with local, state, and federal funds. Guatemala and El Salvador
have similar programmes (Fox & Rivera-Salgado 2004, Goldring 2002, Orozco 2006, Popkin
2003). States try to attract emigrant investors. Nonresident Indians (NRIs) can open low-tax,
high-interest bank accounts in U.S. dollars or British pounds since the 1970s. It recently sold
bonds to foreigners for almost $10 billion (Baruah 2005). Class influences economic
activism. Silicon Valley high-tech workers have "transnational livelihoods." The Nigerian
"suitcase entrepreneur" sells traditional African goods. Transnational entrepreneurs include
the CEO of a multimillion-dollar software company with franchises in Boston, London, and
Karachi (Levitt 2007). In the middle is a Boston suburb's Brazilian baker. Due to racial
hierarchy, he or she may be in the lower class in the US, but they're as important as the
mayor of a small town near Governador Valadares. Because 40% of labour migrants move
between developing countries (especially in Asia), subregional contexts are important.
Studies of Asian transnational migration have examined links between state policies, local
institutional and cultural contexts, and human rights. Transnational labour and capital flows
and the ways they depend on each other have been put into four groups:

(a) a transnational business class of highly mobile, skilled professional, managerial, and
entrepreneurial elites;
(b) a large number of immigrants filling unskilled and semiskilled low-wage jobs in the urban
service economy;
(c) expressive specialists in cultural and artistic venues; and
(d ) world tourists attracted by the city’s cosmopolitan ambience.

Incorporation has multiple effects. Small businesses that look ethnic may be part of
transnational social fields. When viewed globally, ethnic entrepreneurship can help people
and communities advance. Migrants can avoid structural disadvantages in the host country
by using cross-border social networks and bicultural or bilingual skills. Cross-border ties help
ethnic groups integrate horizontally and vertically. Not only money is affected. Social capital
can help ethnic communities break down class and location barriers and ease second-
generation mobility.

Micro-actions have macro-repercussions. Some countries use future remittances as

collateral for loans. States, bilateral, regional, and global organisations (like the World Bank
or the International Organization for Migration), and NGOs have jumped on the
"remittances as a development cure-all" bandwagon. Ethnic entrepreneurship alters the
business's environment. Chinese business networks, ethnic food production, and the
Bhangra music industry have helped Birmingham's economic growth. Politics Transnational
political practises of migrants include voting or running for office, joining political groups,
parties, or campaigns in two countries, and building a nation from scratch. Sociologists
discuss three action areas. "Homeland politics" is when migrants get involved in their host
country's politics about their home country. Expat voting, election campaigns, and running
for office are examples. Many researchers study how long-distance nationalism affects
fundamentalist religions. They also examine how migrants use the countries they move to
for home country foreign policy. In Europe, there is much research and theory about how
Turks and Kurds change sending states' functions, from politics to business marketing.
Immigrant politics are a group's political activities to improve its social status in the host
country. This includes fighting for better access to services, recognition, and rights. This
includes using home-country resources.

Turkish officials have helped Turks in Germany. Some immigrant politics may become
international over time. Some groups organise internationally by forming alliances with
supporters in other states who lobby regional or international institutions. Kurdish migrants
pressured the Council of Europe, and Eritrean rebels held an independence referendum.
Translocal politics doesn't always start with the host or home country's government. It
includes how migrants help their home country. This term encompasses the many HTAs in
the Caribbean and Latin America that fund development projects at home. When the
government supports or controls transnational actions, they become political. Most states
support these development efforts. Many things happen simultaneously in politics. This is
true for these areas of action and political membership rights and responsibilities.
Transparent borders don't affect territorial jurisdiction. Political and legal identities are
converging. Canadian sociologists found both single national citizenship and multiple
citizenships. Fox says there are three forms of transnational citizenship:
(a) parallel, in which individuals are active in more than one political community, but those
communities do not themselves come together;
(b) simultaneous, referring to collective actions that in themselves cross borders; and
(c) integrated, which involves multiple levels and arenas, which can be parallel and/or
simultaneous, or both horizontal and vertical, because activity crosses levels as well as
borders.

Sociologists call people who participate in the formal daily life, political practises, and
political debates of two or more nation-states "trans-border citizens" "Unauthorized yet
Recognized" migrants do things like raise a family, send their kids to school, and work. This
is different from "Authorized yet Unrecognized" migrant citizens, who may have full legal
status but aren't political subjects due to discrimination and cultural stereotypes. Without
being citizens, migrants or their children can act as "social citizens" and access state
services. Many Europeans, New Zealanders, and Americans vote in local elections. They're
socially influential. Their legal status limits them, but they're a social force. Recent research
suggests having multiple memberships doesn't hurt or contradict each other. People from
countries that allow dual citizenship are more likely to become Americans. Navigating
transnational space has strengthened the national. The same people are often involved in
politics at home, abroad, and globally. Transnational involvement does not make immigrant
integration harder, for example. Unintegrated migrant groups don't do more transnational
activities or feel more connected to their home countries than well-integrated groups. Social
life has changed greatly due to transnational migration. Changes in kinship and family
structure affect class, gender, and race ideas. Men and women in transnational family
networks have different power and status, according to studies. Kin networks can be
exploited because migrants need social contacts and support if they return home. The
wealthy take work from people they consider related. A transnational moral economy of kin
prioritises family through collective mobility, marrying into the right kinship network, and
building social capital in the host society. Family and kinship boundaries change over time.
Multigenerational households are common. How much people grow up in a transnational
space affects whether they make or keep transnational connections. Many generations used
transnational strategies as their needs and wants changed. People who didn't care about
their parents' country or culture may use transnational connections to find a spouse or
teach their kids values. How transnational families live, make money, and pass on
knowledge has been studied extensively. Scholars have only recently begun comparing men
and women's parenting, childrearing, and ageing experiences. Transnational motherhood is
hard because caring for far-away children and parents is hard on their emotions and goes
against Western motherhood norms. Communication and travel are getting cheaper, so
parents can be involved in their kids' lives even if they live far away. Migration changes how
migrant children in Ghana care for or don't care for their elderly parents. Researchers have
also seen an increase in the movement of children and the elderly. This is done to lower
social reproduction costs, help children learn their mother's culture and language, and, as
many parents say, to get their kids out of a bad and unruly social environment in the U.S.
Growing transnational adoptions add to this circulation because adoptive parents of
different ethnicities than their children try to teach them about their cultural and social
backgrounds. Adopted children change their school's culture. Micro-level family and kin
connections and practises affect broader social processes, especially gender relations.

There are three fundamental differences between migrants and nonmigrants. First, migrants
and nonmigrants are differently positioned in relation to transnational moralities. Second,
migrants and nonmigrants do not enjoy equal access to information in the transnational
social field. Third, there is asymmetry in the distribution of different forms of resources
between migrants and nonmigrants.

Because of this, we see a lot of differences. It can be freeing for migrant women to earn
their own money and be on a more equal footing with men. On the other hand, the other
side shows that gender differences are sometimes strengthened and remade to create
hierarchies that are more rigid and traditional than in the home country and to protect
women from what is seen as hostile and immoral culture in the receiving country. This
complicated web goes beyond the family, as women go to work (which they may not have
done at home), join community groups, or get involved in their churches. Women get
different, sometimes contradictory messages from the public and private spheres of both
their home country and the place where they move. They have to find a way to make sense
of all these messages. Also, state policies about welfare, child care, maternity benefits, or
voter registration, which have different effects on men and women and their ability to
belong to more than one group, show that migration is different for men and women. Lastly,
the number of women who migrate has grown a lot over the past 20 years. A special issue of
International Migration Review is about the "feminization of migration," which emphasises
the need for theoretical and analytical tools that go beyond the study of sex roles.

Transnational social fields are made up of more than just gender. They are also made up of
class and race. Whether or not someone wants to work across borders and whether or not
they can do so depend on their class and race. We've already talked about how the different
kinds of labour migration affect more than just economic outcomes. It also means that
migrants have different levels of access to informal but important knowledge and networks
for success in the mainstream. Middle-class and professional migrants, on the other hand,
have enough social and cultural capital to choose which parts of where they come from and
where they settle to adopt. Also, migrants often face a racial hierarchy that is completely
different from the one in their home countries. This affects their socioeconomic status and
how American, British, or Dutch they can become. Their home country and host country
mobility paths don't always match up. They may move up in both their home country and
the country where they are living, up in one country and down in the other, or down in
both. Migrants have to figure out two social and economic ladders that are often at odds
with each other and find their place on them using measurements that reflect the different
places they live. Some new research has shown how first- and second-generation migrants
use religion to fight against being left out and having trouble moving around in their host
countries. Kamat and Mathew talk about the U.S. Hindus who join fundamentalist groups
and how the current multiculturalist discourse in the U.S., which gives a voice to
underrepresented groups, actually encourages this kind of Hindu-Americanness. Raj shows
that young Hindus in Great Britain go through a similar process. In this case, they use
religion to set themselves apart from Muslims and other "Asians." The Cultural More and
more researchers are coming up with ways to think about migration, the nation, and
culture. One of the things that people argue about is how much globalisation makes
Western culture spread to even the most remote parts of the world. A similar debate is
about the age-old question of structure versus agency. At its most extreme, one view is that
a huge culture industry controls powerless consumers, while the other is that culture gives
postcolonial subjects the freedom to express themselves. Here, we talk about the different
kinds of cultural mixes that happen when people from different places meet or think they
meet. Folklorist Americo Paredes came up with the idea of studying the borderlands as a
"transnational unit" decades before postmodernists did. He did this by looking at the guitar
ballads of the Rio Grande area from the early 1900s. In 1940, a Cuban anthropologist named
Fernando Ortiz coined the term "transculturation" to describe what happens when foreign
material enters a new social context. Since then, scholars have continued to look at how
Latin American borderland identities are expressed in literature and art. When people from
different cultures meet, new groups are made and old ones fall apart, making it hard to pick
out a single culture. The "migration melange," or the mixing of cultural traits from the home
country and the new country, makes up a continuum of hybridity. At one end is an
assimilationist hybridity that tries to blend in with the new culture. adopts the canon and
imitates hegemony, but... "a destabilising hybrid that blurs the canon, goes against the flow,
and turns the centres on their heads." Garc'a Canclini (1995) talks about how these things
happen in space. Even when traditions are taken over by global culture industries or moved
back and forth by transnational migrants, they are deterritorialized from their original places
and reterritorialized, which means they are brought back to their original places, mixed with
modern and postmodern discourse and practises, and put in contrast with them. The result,
he argues, is tiempos y espacios mixtos y h'ıbridicos (literally, mixed and hybrid spaces and
times). McDonald's in Beijing isn't a place where people eat fast food. Instead, it's a place
where middle- and upper-class people go to relax in the public sphere. In the Yucatan,
Barbie dolls are not made to look like the independent career woman of the North. Instead,
they are made to look like a traditional Mayan woman with a strong network of family and
friends. Caribbean carnivals, where the social world is (literally) turned upside down and
social norms are temporarily relaxed, are now held in at least 20 countries where there are
Caribbean diasporas. Each one is a little different from the homeland or the others. When
they move to a new place, fiestas and other celebrations related to saints' days also change.
And when migrants go back to their home countries, they bring cultural items with them.
Politics of belonging and citizenship are always a part of these kinds of changes. Art and
culture have the power to help migrants express, create, remember, and re-create their
identities, whether they are national or hybrid. One of the main places this happens is in
music. Migrants use music to remember their home country and to claim their place in it
and in the country where they now live. For example, bandas are an important part of
everyday life in many indigenous Mexican communities. They are part of rites of passage
and strengthen alliances and networks of reciprocity and obligation between villages. Some
bandas now have female musicians or players from other communities, and smaller bandas
that still play traditional music but are now in the United States try out new types of music
and instruments.

Some people say that the other side of art and culture as social and political empowerment
is the risk of cultural suicide or cooperation with a dominant/colonial hegemon that gets rid
of the poor and working classes. The commercialization of rap and the making of World
Music are two great examples. The Faith-Based Religion is often lumped in with culture
because some theorists thought it would become less important in "modern" Western
countries. Even though these things were said, religion is still alive and well in both public
and private life. Even though social scientists in general and migration scholars in particular
have ignored the importance of religion in social life for a long time, a lot of new research is
trying to make up for this. Religion, like culture, supports and is changed by all parts of
migration: the journey, the process of settling down, and the growth of ethnic and
transnational ties. Not only do religious ties connect migrants to people of the same faith in
their home and host countries, but global religious movements also connect members, no
matter where they live, to other believers around the world. At the same time, it's not easy
to tell the difference between culture and religion. Religion and culture are often
intertwined and support each other. Some people find it hard to tell the difference between
being Mexican and being Catholic, Indian and being Hindu, or Pakistani and being a Muslim.
All of these hybrid or creolized identities are shaped by flows across transnational social
fields. Religion also connects people across time by making them feel like they are part of a
chain of memories that goes from the past to the present to the future. People who follow
certain saints, gods, or religious teachers, whether they are immigrants or not, also make up
imagined global communities of connection.

Also, religious leaders and teachers get together in public places, both real and virtual, to
figure out how to adapt universal faith and values to local situations. These transnational
religious communities both make and make new religious architectures. Some sociologists
looked at the connections between people's networks, local business groups, and
international religious groups. They found that connections often went between nodes.
Others found three-layered transpacific networks that linked migrants in Taiwan, Hong
Kong, and mainland China to their counterparts in the United States and Canada. These
networks were made up of contacts between individuals, single churches, and para Chinese
Christian Churches. Sociologists have found four types of architectural forms. These are
transnational religious corporations, national religious groups that work across borders,
flexible religious networks, and transnational supply chains. On the world stage, political and
religious groups may work together or against each other.

Witness Pope John Paul II saw himself as a voice for all people. He wrote encyclicals and
took stands on issues that didn't just affect Catholics. By doing this, he became "the high
priest of a new universal civil religion of humanity and the first citizen of a global civil
society." Scholars of civil society agree that religious networks, celebrations, rituals, and
organisations are important ways for people to build social capital. They are trying to figure
out how this happens in transnational settings by helping migrants fit in to the new society
and stay in touch with their home countries at the same time.

Religious institutions are a big part of how the first and second generations learn about
politics in the United States. They are also places where communities can get help from the
government and get noticed by the public. More and more, "inherited religion" is becoming
the main source of identity for the children of immigrants. Most of the time, these people
don't see their faith as a call to violence, but as a way to get along better with other people.
Religion also lets migrants stay involved in what's going on in their home countries.

Transnational migrants change the way religion is practised in their home countries. They
bring both moderate and conservative versions of their faith back with them, which often
has political and social effects. Many, for example, blame NRIs at least in part for the rise of
Hindu fundamentalism in India in recent years, even though there isn't much evidence to
back up such claims. On the other hand, some people say that transnational religion can
counter the voices of extremists. For example, there is a lot of evidence that religion makes
people more charitable, whether or not they give to religious causes. Also, migrants don't
give all their money to charity in their home country. Pakistani Americans gave about the
same amount of money to religious and issue-based causes, which were only slightly more
likely to be in Pakistan (60%) than in the United States (40%).

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

Even though transnational dynamics don't always matter to immigrants, scholars are
starting to agree that we can no longer just look at migration from the point of view of the
host country. Most people also agree that the field needs to move beyond long descriptions,
single-case studies, and numbers to focus on a smaller set of themes and questions. In the
sections above, we talked about some of the ways that scholars of transnational migration
have answered their critics. Now, we need to make a more coherent set of arguments about
the causes and effects of migration, the codification of transnational practises by different
types of individual and institutional actors, and the relationship between transnational
practises and immigrants' integration into the host society (Haller & Landolt 2005). At their
core, these questions are about simultaneity, including its different kinds, the things that
cause them, and the effects they have on economic, political, and social life. In this section,
we talk about some helpful changes in methodology and three interesting areas of research:
(a) space, place, and the nature of embeddedness; (b) the different effects of
transnationalism, which can be both good and bad; and (c) comparative studies of
international and domestic migration. All three are linked by the fact that there is still a
focus on how gender, class, and race are made in society, even across borders. What a
transnational lens means for research methods When you look at migration through a
transnational lens, you learn new things. For example, you need to include nonmigrants as
well as migrants, think about the multiple sites and levels of transnational social fields
beyond just the sending and receiving country, rethink what you thought you knew about
belonging, and track the historical continuity of these processes. Transnational migration
studies not only need to ask different questions about different social spaces, but also need
to come up with new ways to answer those questions. This is what Wimmer and Glick
Schiller meant in 2003 when they told scholars to get past "methodological nationalism," or
the idea that the nation-state is the most natural way to organise social life. They say that to
do this, we need to stop making simple comparisons between separate nation-state
containers and be willing to think of spaces as being limited by how the people who live in
them actually see them. Anzaldua called the area between the U.S. and Mexico a
"borderland" in 1987. He said that the political border split up what was really a single social
and emotional space. Sassen (1996) calls these kinds of places "analytical borderlands,"
where the local and the global overlap and interact to make a "frontier zone" that needs to
be carefully looked at in terms of its "social thickness and empirical specificity." Smith (2005)
and Mahler & Hansing (2005) talk about a "transnationalism of the middle" as a way to stop
people from just putting things in the "from below" or "from above" categories. But most
data sets, histories, and ethnographies make it hard or impossible to do these kinds of
analyses. Surveys based on nation-state units are not meant to capture flows, connections,
or identities that cross other spatial units or the phenomena and dynamics that happen
within them (Levitt & Khagram 2008). In his 2004 study of 648 Mexican migrants, Pries
found that he couldn't find common life paths or patterns because he didn't have enough
information about how people lived their lives in both the sending and receiving contexts.
"Without expanding the conceptual framework to include recognition of pluri-local social
spaces, we will probably lose touch with a growing part of the reality of migration and won't
be able to understand and explain it well," he says (Pries 2004, pp. 29, 31). Social scientists
have taken on these problems and have started to think of better ways to study
transnational migration. Many people argue for multi-sited (Burawoy 2003, Fitzgerald 2006,
Marcus 1995, Mazzucato 2007b, and Appadurai 1996) or cosmopolitan (Appadurai 1996)
ethnographies that go beyond studying immigrants in the receiving context and instead do
empirical research at all sites of the transnational social field. Even when they do look at the
home country, many studies still focus mostly on the new context and only use the second
country as a source of background information. This is not a good way to combine both
contexts into one social field. Instead, we think the goal should be a thick and rich map of
how global, macro-level processes interact with local lived experiences that are
representative of broader trends. In a similar way, Mazzucato looked at transnational
networks in which people who are connected to migrants are followed along with the
migrants themselves. He did this to show how transnational flows happen at the same time
and how they affect both those who stay put and those who move. Others suggest going
back to sites where ethnographies have already been done, usually by someone else, to get
a sense of time and history. "Extended case method" and "reflexive ethnography" use:

(a) the observer as participant,

(b) reconstruction of theory,
(c) internal processes, and
(d ) external forces.

However, the "extended case" looks at how social processes change, while the "reflexive
ethnography" looks at how constructivism and realism interact with each other. Tarrow and
his colleagues think that social movements should be looked at in terms of "scale shifts."
Through the processes of diffusion, brokerage, attribution of similarity, and emulation,
scales can move up, like from local to national to global, or down, like in Porto Allegre,
where mobilisation and political conflict started at a global level but then activists went
home and rooted themselves in the local. However, much of this work still sticks stubbornly
to nationally defined categories that hide transnational and translocal processes. It doesn't
talk about what gender, race, and class mean when they are used to make things up across
borders. These authors want to focus on incorporation, which is defined as "the processes
of building or maintaining networks of social relationships through which an individual or
organised group of individuals becomes linked to an institution recognised by one or more
nation-states." Migrants don't just fit in to new places by following a single, exclusive path.
Any one (or more) mode of integration can take more than one path. Also, national
migration and citizenship regimes, the management of racial, ethnic, and religious diversity,
and the relationship between church and state all tip the balance between integration into
the host country and long-term transnational involvements.

The Nature of Embeddedness and the Spatial Arenas in Which It Takes Place

A lot of interesting new work shows how important space is in shaping the experience of
migration. Migration researchers in Europe, in particular, have noticed a link between the
size and importance of cities and the way people move to and live in them. Some
sociologists have used and theorised about the word "scale" as a way to compare how
different cities are placed in power hierarchies. When you pay attention to the size of the
city and compare immigration policies in different countries, you can see why building
transnational social fields in global cities can be so similar. Pries thinks of spaces in a broad
way as either absolutist (exclusive geographies like the nation-state) or relativist (dense,
long-lasting, and crossing borders). This means that we need to be careful when describing
the social and geographical arrangements of these spaces and naming two analytical
dimensions that overlap: scale and domain. In other words, the context of a place matters.
"Spaces" become real places when certain material or mental flows from around the world
come together. So, the nature of embeddedness and the ways in which migrants are
accepted depend on the culture and history of the area. In the same way that geological
layers below affect the shape and form of the layers above, social patterns and dynamics
affect

How migrants are able to make a place their own, and how they do it, depends on how
different cultures have come together in that place before, and how those connections have
changed over time. So, it is important to not only figure out how different arrangements of
space affect simultaneity, but also to pay attention to how historical precedents and
overlaps in a certain place affect migrants' experiences and actions. Also, the status of a
country's diaspora often shows where that country is in the order of importance (Patterson
2006). How a country's emigrants are treated depends a lot on where it stands in the
world's geopolitical order. At the same time, doing well in the host country can help the
status of transnational communities both in the society that is hosting them and in the
global system as a whole. When all of these things are put together, they create different
kinds of transnational social fields or arenas with different clusters of transnational
activities. People, organisations, and networks that make up these fields and are made up
by them are embedded in them in different ways, which leads to different kinds of
transnational involvements. Roth (2006), for example, found that the Dominicans and
Puerto Ricans she studied had different racial and ethnic identities because the social fields
in which they were embedded were different in terms of the nature of transnational
contact, the level of institutional and cultural support for the identity messages being sent,
and how long these messages were sent.

Levitt found that different cultural practises, like being able to make up family ties or being
part of a clan or caste, led to different ways of being involved in other countries. So, one of
the most important things to study is how different types and sizes of social fields affect the
paths of migrants. A second, related task is to explain how different social fields like class,
race, nationality, and gender interact with each other. Migrants are very different, and
broad categories like ethnicity, nationality, or religion, which are taken for granted, hide the
differences within what can be very different groups. The Good, the Bad, and the World:
Transnationalism's Different Effects A second set of questions looks at what happens when
people move from one country to another. Even though the way transnational migration
studies look at things is becoming more nuanced, they still tend to be more positive than
negative. In future work, it will be important to look closely at what causes good and bad
outcomes and figure out how they are linked. Some work has already looked at these
questions from an economic point of view, pointing out the pros and cons of transnational
migration. Eckstein and Barberia (2002), for instance, say that remittances have made Cuba
more unequal. Others worry that the countries that send migrants will become dependent
on them, creating development plans based on what migrants will do in the future and
looking to them to solve problems that the country hasn't been able to solve. There isn't
always a balance between migrant organisations and civil society in the home country. This
can make gender and power hierarchies stronger or make them worse. Most of the time,
these kinds of organisations are not democratic, and they keep clientelist practises going in
families and communities. Migration policies in the receiving country can also make it hard
for migrants to send money home or invest in their home country. Lastly, some people say
that sending money back home slows down sending mobility in the host country and may
make it harder for migrants to get enough money to go back home. Even though this
research admits that there are pros and cons to migration, not enough is known about what
makes the cards fall the way they do. We don't want answers that say either "yes" or "no."
Instead, we want answers that say when and where transnational migration has positive
and/or negative effects, in what combinations, and for whom. Power structures that span
political, economic, and cultural fields must be taken seriously. Policies of the state, ideas
about integration, systems of citizenship, and the cultural context all matter.

Kurien did a comparative ethnography of three communities in Kerala, India, that sent a lot
of temporary workers to the Middle East. She found that migration patterns and social
changes caused by migration had different results. But the answer isn't as simple as just
looking at single results. Policies like dual citizenship, expatriate voting, and investment
incentives that encourage long-term, far-away membership by emigrants bring up a lot of
questions about the relationship between migration and development. On a big-picture,
macroeconomic level, Orozco (2005) says that migration affects development in 5 ways:
transfers, transport, tourism, communication, and trade. Some people think that migration
affects these areas in ways that are good for the economy. Migrants send money back to
their home country, which helps it grow financially. They also increase demand for local
goods and services, which gives people at home more buying power. But how do
remittances change the way households work and how decisions are made? Are remittances
used to make things or just to buy things? Many studies, which focus on appliance, home
improvement, and clothing purchases, point to the second option. However, newer studies
have found that remittances also pay for education that helps the next generation and that
they often act as a sort of pension. A larger share of the money has also been put toward
improving health care and farming. When the first generation invests in the health and
education of their children in the hopes of getting money back later, they need to keep a
long-term view. The role of shared resources is another set of questions. HTAs are praised
as powerful tools for development, but most groups have shown that they lack the skills to
oversee and manage such projects. This shows the need for training and technical help
before more difficult and ambitious projects are started.

Governments may be able to do good things by building skills and capacities and getting the
private sector involved. Again, the answers to these questions depend on how local,
national, regional, and global factors work together in transnational fields. Comparing
internal migration and transnational migration is one way to figure out how these factors
affect each other. What difference does it make for socioeconomic mobility, gender, or
development outcomes, to name a few, when migrants cross a national border instead of
moving from a rural to an urban area in their own country?

CONCLUSION: TRANSNATIONAL MIGRATION SCHOLARSHIP AND THE LONGUE DUREE

When globalisation speeds up or slows down, the frequency and intensity of migrant
transnational practises go up and down. History, cultural resonance, and institutional
models also have a big effect on the size and reach of their effects. Even so, having multiple
memberships and a mix of identities is becoming more common and less of a special case.
Transnational studies is a new field, and one part of it is the study of international migration.
Given how globalised the world is now, scholars agree that the idea that borders and
boundaries are sacred is a fairly new one, both in human history and in social science
theory. They also know that people make and break down boundaries all the time by
moving, trading, and talking across them. This makes fluidity and change a part of all social
formations and processes of people. Even though scholars from many different fields study
cross-border processes, they don't usually think of themselves as part of the same
conversation. Transnational studies is a group effort to look at how governance, social
movements, making money, and religious life change when they happen across borders and
how we need to rethink identity, belonging, and democracy as a result.