From Immigrant to Transmigrant: Theorizing Transnational Migration

Abstract

Contemporary immigrants cannot be characterized as the « uprooted » . Many are transmigrants, becoming firmly rooted in their new country but maintaining multiple linkages to their homeland. While in the United States and Europe, most social scientists and public policy makers have ignored these interconnections, anthropologists are currently engaged in building a transnational anthropology and rethinking their data on immigration. Migration proves to be an important transnational process that reflects and contributes to the current political configurations of the emerging global economy. In this paper, the AA. use their own studies of migration from Haiti, St. Vincent, Grenada and the Philippines to the United States to delineate some of the parameters of an ethnography of transnational migration and explore the reasons for and the implications of transnational migrations. They conclude that the transnational connections of immigrants provide a subtext for current efforts to redefine the nature of citizenship in relationship to the global economy