Theorizing interactions of migrant transnationalism and integration through a multiscalar approach

Abstract

The aim of this article is to theorize interactions between migrant transnationalism and integration using a multiscalar approach. For migrant transnationalism scholars, attention to simultaneity in transnational social fields is given. However, much migration research in Europe continues to suffer from an ‘integration bias’, which under-appreciates the salience of simultaneity within transnational social fields in many migrants’ lives, and implicitly assumes a zero-sum approach to societal membership. Drawing on interviews with migrants in Oslo (Norway) a multiscalar analytical approach is adopted. The salience of where things happen and how they are understood, depending on the perspective of involved actors, across time, space and position, emerges when using this multiscalar approach. Identifying the roles of nested, taxonomical, but also emergent and perspective scales allows a fresh theoretical engagement with interactions between migrant transnationalism and integration, showing how simultaneity and (productive) friction result from additive, synergistic and even apparently antagonistic interactions.

Educational Place, Simultaneity, and Civic Participation in Asian America

“…In addition to contributing new empirical insights into the civic participation of Asian immigrants, our findings are consistent with recent theoretical scholarship that urges scholars to explore and theorize how transnational linkages and processes operate at multiple scales (Faist 2016;Chaudhary and Moss 2019;Erdal 2020). Future efforts to interrogate the links between education and civic participation should systematically compare how the substance and access to civic education varies between immigrants' origin and receiving societies.…”

“…Deployment of a transnational optic requires analysts to consider how cross-border activities, transnational processes, binational linkages, and perceptions of simultaneity affect acculturation, socioeconomic integration, civic participation, collective action, and organizational capacities of immigrant communities (Faist 2016;Vertovec 2003;Levitt and Jaworsky 2007;Chaudhary 2020;Erdal 2020) We accomplish this by examining the extent to which exposure to different national educational environment (foreign or domestic) mediates intragroup variation in civic participation among Asian immigrants in the United States.…”

“…Using a transnational optic (Levitt and Jaworsky 2007;Chaudhary 2018Chaudhary , 2020Erdal 2020), we analyze how educational place (foreign or domestic) informs disparate civic participation rates among six Asian immigrant ethnonational subgroups in the United States. We build on prior scholarship emphasizing the significance of national origins for understanding the political and civic behaviors of Asian Americans (Lien 2010;Wong et al 2011).…”

Beyond Economics: the Family, Belonging and Remittances among the Bangladeshi Migrants in Los Angeles

“…It is obvious that migrants’ belonging to the family and the origin community across border involves two dimensions – spatial and relational. Building of the earlier scholars’ ideas about simultaneity in transnationalism (Levitt & Glick Schiller, 2004; Smith, 2005), Erdal introduces a ‘multiscaler approach’, which recognizes that migrants’ transnational belonging or membership may involve ‘an additive interaction, a synergistic one, or an antagonistic one’ (Erdal, 2020, p. 13). This allows for recognizing frictions in migrants’ cross‐border practices at multiple locations, scales and spheres.…”

“…Generally, these remittances meant expectations of financial gains along with increased family status and influence (Ali, 2007; Mahmud, 2014). However, relationships among the siblings would eventually deteriorate due to a growing sense of belonging to their respective nuclear families, independent of the parental family, leading to inevitable ‘friction’ in their sense of belonging (Erdal, 2020, p.13) and complicating the distribution of financial gains. Anis (21 years in Los Angeles, with a wife and three children) demonstrated this fact from his experience.…”