1) Bibliographic data
Mahler, Sarah J. (2001) “Transnational Relationships: The Struggle
to Communicate Across Borders.” Identities, V. 7-4, Jan.: 583-619.
2) Question(s) addressed by the author and working arguments
Explore the relationship between states and transnational movements of
people through the trope of diplomacy. National borders erode into
porous perimeters and national economies become fictions in the wake
of the host of forces from multinational corporations and trade agreements
to large-scale international migration. Incursions of various types
of foreign visitors, whether as migrants or tourists, may spur states
to reinforce demographic and territorial sovereignty. Perhaps transnational
flows of people serve the interests of nation-states as much or more
that they undermine them.
There is much evidence than transnational actors actually construct
and affect the relations between states. It is critical to distinguish
between
international and transnational. Whereas “international” acknowledges
linkages between states, “transnational” connotes far more.
Transnational migrants live their lives across international borders
and therefore only a subset of all people who migrate can be classified
as transnational migrants.
There are numerous ways to examine the contributions of non states transnational
actors to international relations; my approach is to divide them into
levels of agency, macro, meso and micro. At the macro level, state works
to foster the loyalties of emigrants in other to achieve larger nationalist
and neocolonial goals. At the middle level, migrants themselves play
a mayor role in claming citizens’ rights to their homeland and
therefore becoming potential actors in state to state relations. The
activities of individual migrants can be seen as promoting diplomatic
interests.
Diplomacy merits expansion along two dimensions (1) inclusion of a broader
array of actors than state leaders and their representatives of diplomats;
and (2) recognition of agencies as inclusive of unintentional as well
as intentional efforts and their effects.
For decades Mexicans have been migrating to the US and overt that time
have developed many voluntary and ethnic organizations as well as hometown
associations.
In 1990 the Program for Mexican Communities Abroad (PCME) was invented
as a strategy to extend the influence of the Mexican state across the
border into migrants’ communities in the US and to win their favor,
thus quelling their potential and actualized protests.
Transnational migrant organizations such as hometown associations and
human rights organizations create political spaces that spam borders
and take the advantage of uneven citizenship rights in constituent spaces
as they pursue a range of objectives.
Migrant transmission is also less likely to stimulate resistance. Migrants
materially, symbolically, and discursively promote change, and that the
flows are largely unidirectional: from “host” country to “sending” country
and from “developed” to “less developed” societies. “Trickle-up” refers
to the fact that as more and more people migrate across borders they
are likely to be noticed by the affected countries and to stimulate higher
level of diplomatic efforts to address migration.
3) Conceptual references to transnational – transnationalism
Transnational movements, transnational flows, transnational actors, transnational
migrants, transnational and transnational migrant organizations.
4) Conclusions or Final Remarks
Diplomatic actions enacted through migrants, tourists, students, and
on a variety of levels from the state to individuals, can foster global
power asymmetries that undermine the nation-state system. States attempt
to mobilize disperse populations, whether they are tourists, students,
or emigrants, in order to achieve diplomatic ends; some migrants reach
across borders to intervene politically in their homelands. Migrant activities,
whatever their intentions, often achieve objectives on personal, familial,
and community levels that also contribute to the inequality of nations.
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