1) Bibliographic data
Pedraza, Silvia (1999) “Assimilation or Diasporic Citizenship?” (review article) Contemporary Sociology, V. 28-4, July:377-81.

2) Question(s) addressed by the author and working arguments
The author mentions the major questions in immigration research, which can be summarized briefly as follows: What led people to make the decision to move-what “push” and “pull” factors impelled them to displace and uproot themselves? What is the nature of the crossing? What policies of two governments develop systems of economic and political migration? What can migrants attain after they resettle? How do we best describe that process: as assimilation, adaptation, integration, incorporation, or transnationalism and diasporic citizenship?
In the United States, the most commonplace statement is also the truest: Except for the Native Americans, everyone else is an immigrant to American soil. And American history can be understood broadly as consisting of four major waves of migration. As a result of the ongoing fourth wave of American immigration, sociology has refocused its research on immigrants as a social category distinct from racial and ethnic minorities and on immigration as an international process that reshuffles persons and cultures across nations. We now find ourselves amid a search for new concepts, such as transnationalism and diasporic citizenship, with which to describe the new realities.

3) Conceptual references to transnational – transnationalism
As Nancy Foner points out, transnationalism-the process by which immigrants forge and sustain multi-stranded social relations that link together their societies of origin and settlement-is not new. Foner shows that many transnational patterns actually have a long history, but that much is also distinctive about modern transnationalism. At the turn of the last century, many immigrants experienced what is now called transnationalism.
The social practice of diasporic citizenship-a set of practices that a person is engaged in, and a set of rights acquired or appropriated, that cross nation-state boundaries and that indicate membership in at least two nation-states, has outrun its legal expression and, Laguerre argues, is helping to develop a new conception of citizenship that is dual in two senses. First, when immigrants are in the home country they are its citizens, and whrn they are in the United States they are Americans. Second the diaspora can participate fully in the social and political life of both countries, exerting quite an influence on the course of the political life in the home country. It removes the future of citizenship from a necessary location in the nation-state.
Laguerre contends that the Haitian diaspora is very much interested in the success of the democratic process in Haiti, since its own fate is very much linked to it. Transnational Haitian Americans have developed loyalty to their new country as well as to their homeland. “This gives rise to a fragmented bi-polar identity that transcends national boundaries and is central to the social construction of the “transnational citizen”. He also sees such an identity as the result of transnationalism. Laguerre stresses that transnational diasporic citizenship produces a “bi-polar identity”. Finally, Laguerre notes that participation in transnational practices and diasporic citizenship has consequences for the extent to which Haitians can engage in ethnic politics in American life.

4) Conclusions or Final Remarks
Transnationalism has consequences for the extent to which Haitian immigrants can assimilate-both culturally and structurally- in the United States. Hence it is quite likely that the shift in concepts -from assimilation to diasporic citizenship- will be useful in describing only the experience of the immigrant generation. That, however, is a necessity at present, when America is not only a nation of immigrants but also an immigrant nation. Perhaps in the brave new world of the next century, most nations will also become immigrant nations.