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Drawing insights from an ethnographic study with two young refugee-background children, this paper examines the multiple contexts that influence their identity negotiations during their first three years of resettlement to the United States. The analysis aims to expand the growing literature on funds of identity (FOI) with specific attention to structural barriers that defund their FOIs. The findings are categorised in three intersecting themes: 1) transnational and translinguistic funds of identity, which are challenged by xenophobia, monolingualism and social class barriers; 2) funds of intercultural identity, which are jeopardised by racial and religious exclusion; and 3) funds of academic identity in the home which are threatened by social class challenges. The paper concludes with the implications of the analysis for theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I argue that second-generation migrants experience multiple tensions and exclusions as a result of the interaction of transnationalism, assimilation, diaspora and racialization in their lives. Yet, I suggest that they are reflexive actors who respond by crafting their own "positioned belongings". The paper draws on ethnographic research conducted with Palestinian-American second-generation interlocutors conducted in New Jersey and the West Bank in the wake of Donald Trump's election as President. It presents data regarding this understudied yet significant second-generation group and their relationship to their diaspora community, hostland and homeland. I argue that a feeling of exclusion and "in-betweenness" is navigated by the second-generation through discursive and material practices that centre the second-generation "self". In doing so, I give new insight into how assimilation and transnationalism interact in dynamic and plural fields and what is lost and gained amongst the children of migrants in the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects upon the symposium "Trans-Pacific Japanese Diaspora Art: Encounters and Envisions of Minor-Transnationalism" by discussing works by the New York-based multimedia artist Yoko Inoue, Tea Taste Democracy and Upside-Down Objects. It explains how these works were created under the context of post-9/11 New York using the concept of minor transnationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political opportunity theory predicts that increased access to the political system benefits social movements by disadvantaged groups. To test this prediction, this paper evaluates the impact of two elected Hmong American officials on social movement campaigns in their community during their time in office. Content analysis of newspaper reports is used to (i) create a sample of nine local, national, and transnational social movement campaigns in the community; and (ii) determine in which of four possible ways the elected officials supported the campaigns: favorable media interviews, speeches at events, event organization, and legislation initiation. Only the two transnational campaigns which mobilized the entire community received all four types of support. The paper concludes that elected officials, even former activists from an ethnic minority community, carefully select the causes they will fully support. After electoral victory, social movements must still actively engage sympathetic politicians in order to turn an opening in the political system into actual access to power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The US government has simultaneously increased efforts to close its border to unauthorized migrants, and opened the border to increasing flows of tourists from Mexico. In this paper I focus on the experiences of Mexican tourists who are able to freely cross the USA–Mexico border with US visas, given that their unique status as tourists from Mexico is an important element to consider because it organizes their daily lives, their moral understandings, and their experiences across the USA–Mexico border. I show how Global South cosmopolitans from Mexico benefit from class privilege in Mexico, but become legally vulnerable in the USA due to their racialization as Mexicans and lack of citizenship rights. This paper draws on ethnographic data and in-depth interviews collected in the border town of Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico between July 2009 and August 2010. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Communication technologies are playing an increasingly prominent role in facilitating immigrants' social networks across countries and the transnational positioning of immigrant youth in their online language and literacy practices. Drawing from a comparative case study of the digital literacy practices of immigrant youth of Chinese descent, this paper examines the cross-border social relationships that are fostered between the youth and their peers in their natal country through the use of instant messaging and other online media. Using Pierre Bourdieu's capital and field theory, and the concept of social capital, this paper considers how literacy development in transnational contexts constitutes the production of social and cultural capital. It argues that the youths' online literacy practices need to be understood within the particular social fields in which they are situated and how they allow the youth to navigate and take up position within social fields that cross national boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper introduces a sociological approach to the study of art and literature and demonstrates its value as a methodological intervention in the field of comics studies. Known as the 'production of culture' perspective, this approach argues that all artistic work - including comics - is the product of collective, often routinized, human activity. Therefore, it is not sufficient merely to study the text and/or the artist to whom the work is directly attributed. Rather, to fully understand any artistic work, one must also study the larger social and organizational context of its production and dissemination. In the first part of the paper, I will provide an overview of the production of culture approach, discussing some of its foundational theorists and their respective intellectual contributions. Sociologists covered will include Howard Becker, Pierre Bourdieu, and Richard A. Peterson. In the second part of the paper, I will present an example of how this approach may be applied in scholarly practice. Using the transnational comics publishing industry in Japan and the United States as a case study, I will show how the conditions and mode of production help to determine the particular sorts of texts that are actually created. Finally, I will conclude with a discussion of the limitations of the production of culture approach and possible directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the fit of the intersectionality framework for understanding transnational lives. The data for this paper is drawn from my research on South Asian migrants to America and their children, the 1.5 and 2nd generation. I focus on these highly educated migrants and their children and their efforts to maintain meaningful family ties and live religions in a context that spans the USA and selected South Asian countries. I use this data to assess whether the intersectionality approach is able to explain lives that span 'real' and 'virtual' social worlds. I show that the intersectionality approach needs to be deepened to capture simultaneous experiences of privilege and marginalisation across national and transnational contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using personal narrative as a form of inquiry, this paper analyzes the possibilities of re/claiming epistemological grounds within racialized transnational spaces. Categories of race, nationality, and subject positions influence the legitimacies that are extended, withdrawn and or usurped within such transnational interactions. The paper examines the ways in which these interactions are performed and negotiated through my various identity positions that inevitably mark one in US higher education settings. Specifically it examines how identity, community and Blackness become imagined, redefined and performed in different spaces. Situated within US higher education settings, the paper pays particular attention to how my racialized subject position is interpreted and engaged with/in US and African research, academic and community sites. Within this paper I use my specific Third/First World transnational interactions to examine and theorize the politics, psychological intentions and outcomes of masked racialized ideologies that shape such interactions. The intention of this paper is threefold - to: (1) examine the complexities of transnational racial identity and politics; (2) trace the im/possibilities of being validated as intellectual worker and authentic Third/First World subject in the global politics of power and knowledge that shapes the transnational educational, research and community trajectory; and (3) theorize the possibilities and limits for using transnational racial identity and politics for building solidarity. This decolonizing writing project attempts to reveal and disrupt the ways in which imperialism constructs racialized Others within and beyond the west. It also shows how imperialism develops transnational citizenship that creates subjects who, for those in the west, believe that they can master and conquer the world and, for those in/from the colonies, are rendered into second-class positions. Decolonization, therefore, needs to account for the interconnectedness of the west and the colonies as well as the transnational and complex interplay of subjugation, complicity and resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we argue that transnational relations between the Mexican government and Mexican immigrants in the US are not new. However, the characteristics of these connections have varied across time, depending on the evolution and characteristics of migrant organisations, political and economic circumstances in Mexico, and foreign policy considerations involving US-Mexico relations. The historical links between the government and the Mexican population abroad have influenced the development of current organisations of Mexican immigrants in the US as well as the recent creation and development of the Mexican government's institutions to manage this relationship. For more recent years, we identify a change in Mexico's traditional approach to migration issues in the bilateral agenda, as well as a shift in the relationship between the Mexican immigrant communities and the government. The process of institutionalisation of this new relation began with the Program for Mexican Communities Abroad in 1990, and was strongly consolidated in 2003 with the creation of the Institute of Mexicans Abroad (IME). We argue that IME is the first transnational institution dealing with these issues and we explore some of the challenges it faces in order to achieve its objectives and exert a positive influence for Mexican migrants in the US. The paper is in three parts. In the first, we discuss the value of using a historical perspective for the study of transnational politics. The second part offers a historical account of the development of transnational relations between the Mexican government and the organised Mexican immigrant community from 1848 to 2005. In the third and final part we analyse the challenges faced by IME as a transnational institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The civil war in Somalia forced many Somalis to migrate to other countries where they had to adapt to new cultures and learn new languages. At the same time, they retained the identity and culture that were important to them throughout the process of migration. These first-generation Somali immigrants may feel strong allegiance to their country of origin along with a “sense of belonging” to their clan/kinship. They may also hope that one day they will be able to return “home”. But do second-generation Somalis feel the same way? This paper is based on 23 interviews with Somali immigrants in Australia, the UK and the USA. Out of the 23 participants, two were first-generation and the rest were second-generation. I seek to understand the participants' identity and their sense of belonging to their ethnicity and host country in the wake of pertinent moments of local, national and international anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The North American Free Trade Agreement's side accord – the 1994 North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation – has been portrayed as providing an ineffective, bureaucratic procedure for dealing with labor complaints about infringements of national labor legislation. This paper reviews two decades of experience. It argues that after an initial period of formal activity, which did indeed expose the accord's severe limitations, a new era of intensified international links at grassroots level commenced. Despite its limitations, the accord initiated positive learning processes and intensified exchanges between the trade union movements in the USA, Canada and Mexico. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

On the basis of a study of forty health care delivery institutions in Florida, California, and New Jersey, this paper examines the interaction between the immigration and health systems in the USA. We investigate barriers to care encountered by the foreign born, especially unauthorized immigrants, and the systemic contradictions between demand for their labour and the absence of an effective immigration policy. Lack of access and high costs have forced the uninsured poor into a series of coping strategies, which we describe in relation to commercial medicine. We highlight regional differences and the importance of local politics and history in shaping health care alternatives for the foreign born. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The migration of Nepalis to the United States of America is a recent phenomenon that has not received serious academic attention to date. This paper sheds light on this migration flow by analysing data gathered through a survey of 61 Nepalese migrants in the US. There are five major conclusions to be drawn. First, the migration of Nepalis to the US has escalated over the last decade. Second, the migrants tend to be highly skilled. Third, a lack of educational and career opportunities, along with increased migrant networks and political instability in Nepal, are the major factors driving the surge. Fourth, survey data suggest a rapid assimilation of these migrants into the American mainstream. Finally, although skilled Nepalese migrants are less likely to remit to their families, they contribute significantly towards the development of Nepal through personal initiatives and participation in transnational organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on the experiences of Indian-origin groups in the USA and UK to examine transnational forms of ethnicity. It focuses specifically on ethnic organisations that are engaged in constructing transnational ethnic identities, using religion as a means for constructing new, virtually linked communities. Based on web-based data of Hindu student groups in the USA and UK, this study examines transnational ethnic identities these groups deploy on their websites, and to what extent these are similar across the USA and UK. As Hinduism is a religion with no uniform sets of practices (chosen religious texts, practices and beliefs are culturally, regionally and family dependent), it provides a good basis for examining whether the identities constructed by these groups are transnational, that is, the same elements are emphasised by groups in the two countries to construct ethnic identities that transcend the specificities of the national and local contexts. It also examines the structure of links between websites to show whether websites that appear to be nation-specific are actually linked to each other to create a transnational network. The findings of this study suggest that the study of transnationalism needs to be extended beyond the current focus on ‘home’ and ‘host’ countries to consider what happens in multiple ‘host’ countries. It also shows that organised groups promote homogenised versions of virtual ethnicity as they build transnational networks across countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper contends that male migrants living in New York who originate from the Ecuadorian village of Jima are reconstituted as both Jimeño men and campesinos (peasants) through their consumption of cuy (guinea pig) on ritual and familial occasions. Cuy is rich in cultural capital anti symbolizes aspects of Jima's social and cultural life which are locally conceived as contributing to its distinct rural character, and its circulation and exchange plays a significant role in defining social networks. I argue that the gifting of cuy not only plays a critical role in continuing relations between male migrants and their kin, and that migrants actively participate in an intimate cycle of exchange which demonstrates their commitment to "home." but also that this cycle helps both those in New York and Jima maintain a distinct identity as Jimeño campesinos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the inclusion of a culturally relevant curricular practice of social identity papers within teacher education in the USA that incorporates the transnational lifeworlds of teachers. Using tenets of feminist interdisciplinary frameworks, we highlight how this curricular practice allows teachers and teacher candidates in urban and rural contexts to examine transnational lifeworlds and their influence on culturally relevant practices in relation to notions of oppression and privilege. We focus on linguistic border crossings and both/and perspectives of teacher's social identities. More research is needed to better understand the construction of teacher's social identities within and across transnational lifeworlds and the ways it impacts their practices and student's academic and social achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on a transformation of the nostalgic concept of diasporic homecoming in the context of a new cosmopolitanism. By bringing economic and social capital into a land with a high rate of poverty, the US Armenian Americans of the second and third generation have come to feel incorporated into 'ancestral homeland' in Armenia in a variety of different ways. They combine 'homeland imaginaries' and 'ancestral tourism' with an assertion that to reclaim Armenian soil is to contribute to the environment of the entire planet and its inhabitants. Newcomers in post-socialist Armenia are engaged in acts of rejuvenating the local landscape for a 'better future' spurred by a cosmopolitan capacity to assume responsibility for the fate of the globe. This article questions under what circumstances ethnic ties negate cosmopolitan identifications and how and when diasporic travellers reclaim their homeland as a place for expression of solidarity with the planet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the Pew Hispanic Center's 2006 National Survey of Latinos to study the everyday, routine cross-border activities of travel, remittance sending and telephone communication among Latin American immigrants in the United States. We ask how migrants vary in the intensity of their cross-border connections, distinguishing among the transmigrants, those captured by the host-country national social field, and those who maintain some ongoing home-country tie. We then examine the characteristics associated both with variations in the intensity of connectedness and with each specific type of connection. We show that most migrants maintain some degree of home-country connectedness, with a minority severing ties and a still smaller minority maintaining ties at a high degree of intensity. Connectivity is highly responsive to the location of key social ties, acculturation, and citizenship status, as well as the costs associated with the different types of cross-border activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how the voices of Japanese women living in the US were constructed in developing Japanese immigrant newspapers in the early twentieth century. It asks how these voices were linked to representing and establishing the concept of 'essential' motherhood and a racial, transnational and ethnic group identity. The voices of women on the subject of motherhood were formed in connection with ideas of 'home'. They were formed under the influence of Japanese transnational discourses of motherhood popular in Japan. At the same time, they were articulated in the interests of permanent settlement and the formation and reform of Japanese immigrant society. These voices defined 'home' as a place to reproduce the second generation, which would help to establish a 'healthy' and 'civilized' Japanese immigrant community acceptable to US society. Women were given the role of establishing a good 'home' and a desirable Japanese immigrant society by Americanizing themselves and their children. Furthermore, they had the mission of passing on and establishing a racial and transnational identity as Japanese in the US. Reflecting these components of the idea of 'home', women's discourses of birth control and desirable childcare were formed through the immigrant media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brazilian immigration to the United States is a relatively recent phenomenon that gained momentum in the 1980s in unprecedented numbers. Today an estimated 1.2 million Brazilians live in the United States. Brazilians (re)create transnational places and spaces through social, cultural, and economic practices, within the immigrant receiving communities of Marietta, Georgia, and Framingham, Massachusetts, in the United States. They also incorporate and add new elements to their livelihoods in the respective sending communities of Piracanjuba, in the state of Goias, and Governador Valadares, in the state of Minas Gerais, in Brazil. How are these Portuguese-speaking Brazilian immigrants shaping and (re)creating new places and spaces? In what ways and spheres do transnational exchanges affect two places of destination in the United States and two places of origin in Brazil after migration occurs? Using multiple methods, which include in-depth interviews and participant observation, this paper addresses these questions by evaluating the changes incurred by migration. I use a framework perspective that is largely from outside the Latino/Hispanic context. Migration processes are just as much about those who leave Brazil for the United States as it is about those who return to Brazil (i.e. returnees) and what happens to those respective receiving and sending communities in both countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research provides an empirical assessment of the relationship between places of socialization and ethnic self-identity preferences among Asian immigrants in the US from separate parts of a politically divided homeland. Does place of socialization influence the (sub)ethnic self-identity of Chinese Americans raised in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong? How do socialization context and transnational political concerns, among other factors, help structure the relationship? Benefiting from recent advancements in targeted ethnic sampling and telephone survey methodology, this paper examines results of the 2007 Chinese American Homeland Politics Survey to study the contour and sources of ethnic identity preferences among Chinese in the US from separate homeland origins. The usefulness of a theoretical framework that contrasts primordial ties with transnational political ties in understanding the structuring of identity preferences at the subethnic level is tested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies the emerging construct of transnationalism to a detailed exploration of cultural identity and social relationships in the life stories of Indian immigrants to New York City (NYC). NYC is home to one of the most rapidly growing Indian diaspora communities in the USA. The participants' social relations with family, peers and ethnic community were explored through individual interviews. Their pre-immigration expectations of life in the USA and their actual post-immigration experiences were compared and contrasted. The study found that India's hierarchal social class system was present in NYC's diaspora community, despite the widespread stereotype in the USA of its Asian Indian population as uniformly composed of affluent professionals. The participants articulated and stressed a difference between two types of identity, that is, their personal identity as Indian and as members of the Indian diaspora community in NYC. The implications for ethnic and cultural identity issues among US-born Indian Americans ("American-born desis") in the transnational contexts of their lives are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the changing relationships between identities, citizenship and the state in the context of globalisation. We first examine the ways in which scholars discuss changes in the ways in which citizenship and political identity are expressed in the context of international migration. We argue that much of the discussion of transnationalism and diasporacling to an assumption that citizenship remains an import- ant—though not defining—element of identity. Our position, by contrast, is that migration is one of a number of processes that transform the relationship between citizenship and identity. More specifically, we argue that it is possible to claim identity as a citizen of a country without claiming an identity as ‘belonging to’ or ‘being of’ that country, thus breaking the assumed congruity between citizenship, state and nation. We explore this possibility through a study of Arab immigrants in the US. Our findings, based on interviews with activists and an analysis of Arab American websites, suggest that concerns with both homeland and national integration are closely related to each other and may simultaneously inform immigrants' political activism. These findings indicate a need to identify multiple axes of political identification and territorial attachment that shape immigrants' sense of political membership. We argue for the importance of thinking about transnationalism as a process—and perhaps a strategy—as migrants negotiate the complex politics of citizenship and identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the possibilities for transnational activities among the 1.5 and second generations and focuses on the effects of both social positions, such as class and ethnicity and receiving and sending state actions and policies on the potential for the maintenance of these generations' transnational ties. Empirically it is based on the experiences of poor Guatemalan indigenous and non-indigenous children living in Los Angeles—who are often members of 'transnational families'—as seen through the institutional spaces of the church and the maintenance of language. The study demonstrates that class and ethnicity affect the perceptions that the children's generations have of their parents' efforts to keep them connected to their places of origin, and argues that the nation-state, through its policies to limit movement across borders, is still a powerful actor that leads immigrants to focus on the host countries, particularly the children's generations. In the Guatemalan case there are only few opportunities and spaces that may foster the children's ties to the communities of origin; thus, this generation is not nearly as inclined as the parents' to remain linked to the origin communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to provide an overview of socio-economic inequality experienced by Latinas and Latinos, suggesting that the increase in numbers and their dispersal throughout the country disrupts the traditional black–white paradigm used in race relations theory. Instead, I argue that the particular historical and geographical experiences of Latinas/os portend complex changes within labour markets and neighbourhoods and across families, ultimately challenging how we think about race relations in the USA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]