Introduction

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Sonja Lehmann
the means for transnational behaviour accessible to a greater number of people
and not only a small elite. Therefore, modern transnational migration is often
described as “a phenomenon of ever-greater intensity and scope” (Jackson, Crang
and Dwyer 11).
What exactly is considered transnational behaviour differs widely from one
approach to the next. While initially the focus was mainly on nation-state transcending
connections of migrants, Peggy Levitt and Nina Glick Schiller by now
differentiate between four different “traditions” of research in transnationalism
which vary widely in scope and focus (183). 19 The areas of interest in these fields
are very diverse and span questions of economic and political incentives for transnational
migration, the role of gender in it, its effects on families, the emergence
of migrant networks, migrants’ assimilation or non-assimilation to the new country,
and reactions of sending and receiving countries towards transnational migration,
to name only a few of the topics covered (Levitt and Glick Schiller 183-85).
Moreover, the general use of the concept has become even more widespread
and has often been used to characterize the behaviour of “all migrants, […] every
ethnic diaspora, […] all travellers and tourists” as Vertovec complains (“Transnationalism
and Identity” 576). It is hardly surprising that the term ‘transnationalism’
is thus often found in connection with qualifiers such as “over-used” (Vertovec,
“Transnationalism and Identity” 576), “elastic” and “stretched” (Wong and
Satzewich 2). It seems that almost any kind of action or person can be labelled
‘transnational’ and as a result the term appears to have been stripped of all meaning
at times. To specify my use of the term I will therefore limit myself to one
approach to transnationalism in the following which strikes me as particularly
useful with regard to aspects of identity formation because of its focus on the
reconfiguration of social space.
3.2. Transnational Social Space
Transnational migration clearly shows that geographic space and social space are
not necessarily congruent anymore. From the beginning, Glick Schiller, Basch and
Blanc-Szanton stated that transnational migrants “live in and create a new social
and cultural space” (“Transnationalism” 14) and argued that it was necessary to
concentrate on transnationalism in terms of “a new field of social relations” to
adequately describe the concomitant changes (“Transnationalism” 19). Many others
have subsequently taken up this social fields perspective (e.g. Beck, “Globalisierung”;
Jackson, Crang and Dwyer; Kennedy and Roudometof; Pries; Vertovec)
and recently Levitt and Glick Schiller have attempted to generalize the results of
19 For detailed information and further reading on these different groups see Levitt and Glick
Schiller 183-85. Peter Jackson, Philip Crang and Claire Dwyer also offer a compact overview of
different forms of and research approaches to transnationalism (8-11).