Introduction

Transnational Identities 303
entirely belong since they are always located at the border (Bhabha “Location 13).
The only characteristic of Bhabha’s migrant figure appears to be his displacement.
Loomba therefore understandably complains:
[D]espite the accent on hybridity and liminality, Bhabha generalises and
universalises the colonial encounter. Thus, ironically, the split, ambivalent,
hybrid colonial subject projected in his work is in fact curiously universal
and homogeneous – that is to say he could exist anywhere in the colonial
world. Hybridity seems to be a characteristic of his inner life (and I use the
male pronoun purposely) but not of his positioning. He is internally split
and antagonistic, but undifferentiated by gender, class or location. (149-
50) 23
Such a use of hybridity can of course only result in generalizations about a wide
range of possible different but interrelated phenomena. For example, if it was
applied to merely the changes in identity formation through transnational migration
there would hardly be any differentiation between the impact it has on different
aspects of identity if one only spoke of hybrid identities. I am therefore
somewhat reluctant to use the term ‘hybridity’ as it is imprecise, lacking in meaning
and also automatically equates hybridity with displacement. Furthermore, it
does not offer any differentiation in the quality of hybridity which makes the concept
appear oddly static and the emergence of hybrids inevitable so that terming
someone’s identity ‘hybrid’ carries hardly any meaning at all as, on further reflection,
everybody’s identity is hybrid. It does not seem likely, though, that all those
who are caught in cross-cultural or transnational situations would react in the
same way to it, so that regarding contemporary migration and its effects, ‚transnational’
seems to be a more adequate qualifier when speaking of identities.
In addition, the term also reflects the continuing power of nation-states, making
it less abstract than hybridity. After all, while identities are no longer solely
dependent on the nation-state, and home and belonging are no longer automatically
confined to one nation-state, it nevertheless hardly seems that “the nationstate,
as a complex modern political form, is on its last legs” as Appadurai claims
(19). While the nation-state’s influence has surely weakened through transnational
behaviour it has not altogether disappeared (Jackson, Crang and Dwyer 11; Wayland
19). The majority of researchers denies the advent of postnational ways of life
because after all “people are not deterritorialized but live their lives on earth, in
states, and in communities” (Wayland 20; see also Yeoh, Lai, Charney and Kiong
2). True global belonging would only be available to a very small elite who has the
pecuniary means to afford constant travelling all over the world (Hedetoft and
Hjort xviii). Thus, for the majority the globe is not “something people belong to”
23 While Loomba restricts Bhabha’s use of hybridity to the colonial context, it also applies to
migrants since Bhabha’s later works have become considerably wider in scope and include contemporary
problems (Huddart 124 ff.).