This review essay on the literature on creative cities pays particular attention to the ways in which transnational mobilities contribute significantly to the making of such cities. The paper reviews critically both the literature and phenomena of creative cities and their transnational flows by framing the discussion around the mobility of ideas, the mobility of people, the mobility of technology, the mobility of finances, and the mobility of images.

This article draws upon concepts developed in recent empirical and theoretical work on high skilled and academic mobility and migration including accidental mobility, forced mobility and negotiated mobility. These concepts inform a situated, qualitative study of mobility among international postdoctoral researchers in life sciences and engineering fields who were employed at US and UK universities in 2008 and 2009. Informed by epistemological methods in the Foucauldian tradition of discourse and governmentality, the study explores how policy (...) discourse and technologies empower and limit scientists and engineers in negotiating employment arrangements across national boundaries. (shrink)

Until very recently, civil disobedience, being a deliberate infraction of the law which is politically or morally motivated, was logically interpreted by theorists as a practice rooted in the state, since the source of positive law was primarily the State. But in the context of today’s globalization, the diversification of sources of power, the emergence of international laws or rules, or simply the obsoleteness of viewing the government as a juridical model, lead one to question the relevance of resorting to (...) civil disobedience. Indeed, its strategic minimalism, which consists of non-cooperation, passive resistance or non-violence, in addition to its relative acceptance of the State and the legal framework of its discourse, seem to make civil disobedience unable to face the “global challenge” that any emancipatory movement has to confront if it wants to be efficient. This paper thus proposes a new conception of civil disobedience inspired by Nancy Fraser’s theory of “abnormal justice”, so as to take into account the transversal nature of social contestation. (shrink)

Transnational articulation programmes are one way China is attempting to advance its higher education system. We report a study of twelve Chinese students’ experiences in two China-Australia 2...

Higher education (HE) mobility programmes around the globe have been key initiatives over the past thirty years, driven by combinations of supranational and national state-led knowledge economy policies, university strategies, and decisions made by individuals regarding employability, credentials, or academic tourism. In this paper we argue that mobility too often is understood through the prism of internationalism, itself umbilically tied to and nourished by Enlightenment liberal thinking, such as Kantian cosmopolitanism, and the romantic figure of the wandering scholar. (...) This has the effect of reducing our understanding of transnational mobility to individual actors, their desires, and experiences. In this paper we ask: to what extent and in what ways can HE transnational mobility projects be understood as forms of imperialism? In this regard we examine the literature on imperialism and argue for a more capacious use of the term; as taking economic, political and cultural forms. We use these to examine the links between the expansion and securing of empires historically, the state’s spatial projects and global market making. We do this through the prism of two nations, the UK and China, comparing their state’s transnational HE strategies, selectivities and outcomes. (shrink)

This essay examines how Chinese governments, local communities, and overseas Chinese in North America responded to the perceived health risks of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and H1N1 flu through the use of public and participatory rhetoric about risk and quarantines. Focusing on modes of security and quarantine practices, I examine how globalization and the social crises surrounding SARS and H1N1 flu operated to regulate differently certain bodies and areas. I identify three types of quarantines (mandatory, voluntary, and coerced) and (...) conduct a transnational comparative analysis to investigate the relationships among quarantines, rhetoric, and public communication. I argue that health authorities must openly acknowledge the legitimacy of public input and actively seek public support regarding health crises. Only by collaborating with concerned communities and citizens and by providing careful guidance for public participation can health institutions ensure the efficacy of quarantine orders during emerging epidemics. (shrink)

Aren Z. Aizura's Mobile Subjects: Transnational Imaginaries of Gender Reassignment is one of the best nonfiction books I have read recently. I was interested in Aizura's work because of the several ways in which this book's subjects resonated with my reflections on gender nonconforming subjects, gender reassignment, and the medical-industrial complex with a focus on interrogating the West/non-West binary. It focuses on trans and gender nonconforming people, issues of mobility, and access to various technologies for bodily modification. This (...) book, divided in two parts, will be of interest to a variety of readers, especially scholars doing feminist studies, queer theory, feminist science and technology... (shrink)

This article responds to scholarly calls to engage with diaspora in the context of transnational educational mobilities in global higher education. It maintains that transnational academic mobilities produce a particular kind of academic diaspora, that is often valued by both home and host countries but in ways that vary and serve different interests and aspirations. While the contrasting perspectives on brain circulation and brain drain persist, what this article argues is that systemic inequalities are (re)produced through the processes (...) of transnational academic mobilities, which privilege the mobility of some and not others, and at the same time under-value the home-grown academics and overseas-trained academics that return home. The current diaspora politics is located within this complex, hierarchical, and dynamic cultural, political and economic space. In particular, it pinpoints how the promoted desirability of diasporic brains and talents in policy and practice has co3ntinued to reproduce and consolidate academic inequalities. The article then argues for place-based/at home transnationality, seeing it as productive counter position to help reduce inequalities. The article employs self-study research and is informed by a bricolage of data on Vietnam and its Vietnamese transnational academic diasporas gathered at different points in time and in different contexts. (shrink)

Following aluminum as part of a material culture of speed and lightness, this article examines how assemblages of energy and metals connect built environments, ways of life, and ideologies of acceleration. Aluminum can be theorized as a circulatory matrix that forms an energy culture. Through a discussion of speed and social justice, the history of aluminium-based socioecologies reveals how the materiality of energy forms assemblages of objects, infrastructures, and practices. The article then traces the aluminum industry’s involvement in the production (...) and distribution of energy itself both at the national scale of power grids and in the emergence of transnational transfers of energy, such as hydropowered smelters in Iceland. Finally, this analysis of deeply embedded energy cultures calls for a transnational approach to the accelerated socioecologies of aluminum production and consumption; and for energy transition theories to pay closer attention to the figured worlds and figuring work of the military-industrial complex. (shrink)

The processes of post-socialist transformation, especially large-scale migration from Eastern Europe to the Western hemisphere, are creating an ‘expansion of space’ from the local to the supra-local. This process involves the expansion of personal-, familial- and friendship-based networking practices which acquire significance as transnational mobile livelihoods and as significant dimensions of urban dynamics in global cities like Chicago. What are the networks, attachments and social bonds of Eastern European migrants in Chicago? Ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Chicago in 2013 among (...) recent Lithuanian immigrants brought out the importance of a cultural identity of East European-ness involving contested loyalties and limited integration. While living locally, Lithuanian immigrants are expected both to be bound to the ethnic community and to be immersed in the multicultural life-style of the mega city. However the research has shown that livelihoods and social relations among ‘one’s own people’ are involved in trans-ethnic networks and that the bonds of intimacy and the alliances among ‘one’s own people’ run through homeland roots and patrimonial linkages rather than through the citizenship loyalties of the state (the United States and/or Lithuania). The circle of ‘one’s own people’ implies extensive reciprocity and social networking among ‘friends’ and co-workers based on ‘one’s own resourcefulness’ a kind of social capital. Thus, ‘sharing important acquaintances’ ought to involve ‘doing favours’ and livelihood experiences transplanted from oversees are practised in Chicago as ‘local’ life-styles and are used for transnational networking, securing in the process the social status of those involved. (shrink)

This article investigates elite young people’s transitions from the Leysin American School in Switzerland, an elite secondary school, to international higher education. These young people often moved to the UK or the US for higher education – locations associated with global status in the education market. However, I argue, new configurations of race and racism in those spaces may challenge some students’ elite status, despite their wealth. This article demonstrates that to navigate such issues in their transition to higher education, (...) these young people leaned on their diasporic networks. By doing so, they strategically and pre-emptively ascertained whether their power and privilege would travel with them when they became mobile. Significantly, then, this article attends to the differential experiences of members of the transnational elite and highlights the racial discrimination that they may face in mobility. It thereby complicates the notion of mobility as an effective strategy for elite status maintenance. (shrink)

Many supporters of open borders argue that restrictions on immigration are unjust in part because they undermine equal opportunity. Borders prevent the globally least-advantaged from pursuing desirable opportunities abroad, cementing arbitrary facts about birth and citizenship. In this paper I advance an argument from equal opportunity to global freedom of movement. In addition to preventing people from pursuing desirable opportunities, borders also create a prone, segregated population that can be dominated and exploited. Restrictions on mobility do not just trap (...) people in bad opportunity sets—they help create bad opportunities by isolating the negative externalities of production and foreign policy. Freedom of movement can play a vital role in spreading risks and burdens, incentivizing their mitigation. Using an analysis of feudalism, segregation, and the transnational economy, I illustrate the centrality of space and mobility, showing why freedom of movement is a necessary tool for preventing political and economic oppression. (shrink)

This article offers a nuanced analysis of identity reconstitution in transnational gay relations. Drawing from critical ethnography, the author focuses on Filipino gay-identified hosts, who remain invisible in global analyses of sexuality and tourism, as they create a gay space in Malate, an ex-sex and current tourist district in the city of Manila. Challenging the perception that gay identity is Western made, the author focuses on how gay host identity is constituted through hosts’travel/mobility and in relation to urban (...) place. She discusses place-making as a strategy that allows gay hosts to see their identities transformed in Malate despite their social exclusion in the process of urban gentrification. (shrink)

The remarkable growth in the application of information and communications technologies indicates a great shift toward a globally integrated society. The urban metropolises are turning into intersections of transit and migration of goods, capital, services, cultures, knowledge and especially people. Moreover the flow of bodies, information and money is changing the rules of what defines national territory, space and identity. Social realities with specific qualities are appearing, implying a new spatial correlation between the local and the global. International airports and (...) within emerging extraterritorial zones have become an important threshold controlling the flow of people in a free market economy. The airport border mutates into an abstract space permeating the physical territory of the airport and beyond. This abstract border space, within which mobile bodies operate, is created by a bureaucratic system of inclusion and exclusion particular to transition states. Transit zones at airports emerge because of a complex set of factors: border crossing as well as increasingly stringent security and safety regulations. The innumerable thresholds within these transit zones are points of congestion governed and increasingly supported by technological systems of identification. Within the transnation state, the movement of bodies is the constant subject of streaming and proceduralization. Increasingly, the conventional system of control based on face-to-face interaction between the controlling and the controlled is being replaced by the algorithmic precision of database logic. The paradigm of pattern matching ensures precise verification of the uniqueness of the body, in turn offering new potentials for permeability and flux. These different orders of legal and economic categorization create manifold sub-territories accessible to select groups of travellers. Nowadays, the airport is a transnation state spatialized through a new order of architecture, a manifestation of technology of abstract procedures of transition, inclusion and exclusion, adopting emergent patterns of socio-spatial mobility in a globalized network. (shrink)

This essay brings together political theories of empire and racial capitalism to clarify the entanglements between socialist and imperial discourse at the turn of the twentieth century. I show that white labor activists and intellectuals in the United States and the British settler colonies borrowed from imperial scripts to mark non-white workers as a threat. This discourse was thus both imperial and popular, because it absorbed the white working class into settler projects and enlisted its support in defense of imperial (...) logics of labor control. While white workers’ demands of enfranchisement were part of a transnational imagination that was both imperial and narrowly emancipatory, this discourse reemerged as one of popular sovereignty and found channels and paths to institutionalization through national states. These institutional formations arose out of the encounter between capitalists interested in facilitating mobility of racialized laboring subjects around the globe, elite projects invested in sheltering settler spaces, and white workers concerned with protecting their own labor from competition by excluding exploitable non-white workers. White labor’s embrace of racial prejudice and the exclusion of workers of color created segregated labor spaces that fit neatly with both capitalist goals of labor control and the protection of the settler status of emerging polities. Bringing to the forefront the imperial genealogy of popular sovereignty and immigration control disrupts liberal political theory frameworks that condemn restrictions as well as those that find migration restrictions permissible. The analysis also illuminates contemporary immigration politics. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Despite the increasing interest in science exhibitions, there has been hardly any work on mobile science exhibitions and their role within science diplomacy – a gap this thematic issue is meant to fill. Atomic mobile exhibitions are seen here not only as cultural sites but as multifaceted strategic processes of transnational nuclear history. We move beyond the bipolar Cold War history that portrays propagandist science exhibitions as instances of a one-way communication employed to promote the virtues of the (...) two major and conflicting political powers. Instead, Science Diplomacy on Display follows mobile atomic exhibitions as they move across national borders and around the world, functioning as spaces for diplomatic encounters. Exhibitions play a vital role not only in the production of knowledge and the formation of political worldviews but also as assets in diplomatic negotiations and as promoters of a new worldview in which nuclear stands at the centre. They are powerful iconic diplomatic devices, that is systems of representations that capture the diplomatic processes in action and make the nitty-gritty details of international relations visible. This issue seeks to trace the multiple and often contradictory meanings that mobile exhibitions took on for various actors. (shrink)

Recent research argues that the use of information and communication technology has created a new channel through which transnational mothers can fulfill their maternal duties from afar. However, the literature pays little attention to the diversity of mothering practices via telecommunication. To fill this gap, our qualitative research on Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong elaborates on the complexity and diversity of transnational mothering via mobile communication by demonstrating three patterns for the performance of maternal duties: intensive, collaborative, (...) and passive mothering. We argue that transnational mothering via telecommunication is shaped by the intersection of mothers’ agency, children’s responses, and substitute caregivers’ role in child care. (shrink)

Within the context of increased global migration and mobility, education occupies a central role which is being transformed by new human movements and cultural diversity, flows, and networks. Studies under the umbrella terms of migration, mobility, and mobilities reveal the complexity of these concepts. The field of study ranges from global child mobility as a response to poverty, to the reconceptualising of notions of inclusion in relation to pastoralist lifestyles, to the ways in which new offshore institutions (...) and transnational diasporas shape the educational experiences of students, families, and teachers. At the heart of this new research is a need to explore how identity, integration, and social stratification play a role in the story of global migration between and within the Global North and South. This volume focuses on three major themes: poverty, migration, social mobility and social reproduction; networks of migration within and across national education systems; and higher education and international student mobility, and the concerns and opportunities that go along with this mobility. The international group of researchers who have contributed to this book demonstrate how educational institutions are part of a common global project characterised by fluidity, how the social fabric of educational institutions responds to demographic diversity, and how new social differentiations occur as a result of human movement. By bringing together these contributions, a number of important theoretical and empirical methodological dimensions are identified that need more attention within the growing field of migration and education studies. This volume shows how mobilities and transnational interconnectedness create multiple interactions that tie our different educational projects together. This book was originally published as a special issue of _Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education. _. (shrink)

The settler-colonial and republican principles of early U.S. politics tend to be studied as paradoxical ambitions of American nation-building. This article argues that early republican thought in the United States developed through what I call ‘ideological code-switching’, a vernacular practice that allowed popular actors to strategically vacillate between anti-colonial and neo-colonial discourses as complementary principles of revolutionary change. I illustrate these claims by tracing a genealogy of anti- and neo-colonial thought from the founding of the United States to its (...) class='Hi'>transnational emergence in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. I demonstrate that ideological code-switching first appeared as a rhetorical strategy among the Federalist debates, where Publius argued for the feasibility of expansionist republics via a hemispheric account of American exceptionalism. These appeals to hemispheric unity remained salient into the nineteenth century among groups like the ‘Republicans of ‘Nacogdoches’, a militia comprised of Indigenous, Mestizo, and White actors that mobilized an attack on Spain and founded the Republic of Texas in April of 1813. Drawing on archival research, I turn to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands as an example of the way marginalized groups instrumentalized links between anti- and neo-colonial politics to envision their position in the rapidly evolving landscapes of transnational revolution. (shrink)

One of the most visible symbols of the debate over human rights and national security in the context of the U.S. "War on Terrorism" has been the detainment of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, following the U.S. war in Afghanistan. The controversy concerning the fate of the nearly 600 prisoners demonstrates the emergence of new modes of democratic deliberation over how to strike the balance between rights and security. These new modes (...) of deliberation involve nongovernmental organizations and individuals who function as norm entrepreneurs, by mobilizing public opinion through transnational networks of opinion-makers and policymakers. Transnational networks of norm entrepreneurs have emerged where traditional avenues for foreign policymaking in the U.S. have failed to create a space for meaningful consideration of human rights in the rights/security balance. These traditional avenues are envisioned in the Constitution, which gives the President authority regarding foreign affairs, bounded by checks provided to Congress and the courts. While the goal of the constitutional process is to bring these institutional players into a dialogue, Congress and the judiciary have failed to engage the President in a conversation regarding the balance between human rights and national security. In the absence of initiatives by the government, nongovernmental actors have used communication structures within transnational networks to promote what this Article calls a dialogic approach to enforcement of human rights law. (shrink)

This article opens new perspectives for the study of gender, transnationalism and cultural capital by exploring the role of gender in the formation of cultural capital in transnational contexts, focusing on how migrant mothers’ strategically deploy cultural resources from one national setting in another. Drawing on a study of middle-class European mothers in London, it shows how they mobilize transnational cultural resources to compensate for shortcomings of economic, national and local cultural capital, as well as accruing added value (...) to their children’s education. Indeed, some mothers engage in transnational cultural currency speculation of cultural resources by converting the educational investment in their children into educational credentials in the national setting where they expect the highest returns. Bourdieu’s notions of cultural capital and field help explore the relationship between national and transnational cultural capital in the European middle-class migrants’ emergent mobility practices. (shrink)

bildwechsel is one of the most prolific and longstanding video collectives established in Europe within the framework of the women’s movement. Founded in 1979 by students of the Hamburg College of Fine Arts, in 1986 the group became an umbrella organization with activities and agents spread all over Europe and the world sharing a common infrastructure. The purpose of bildwechsel is to strengthen women’s presence in the audiovisual media and to advance feminist and queer art. The group has been pursuing (...) its mandate initially through local workshops and exhibitions, then through archival practices and programming activities promoted on the organization’s website. This article examines bildwechsel as an example of women’s ability to maintain a niche presence within the European and the world art scene since the late 1970s via grassroots globalized practices, from within a theoretical framework drawing on transnational feminism and new media theory. (shrink)

This article argues that two distinctive varieties of antifascism took shape in the 1930s and endured through the late 1970s. These two varieties—Popular Front antifascism and anti-imperial antifascism—were in dialogue but in opposition to one another, and both were transnational mobilizing ideologies. Investigating these two antifascist movements allows us to place Europe in the wider world and demonstrate how anti-imperial activists of color simultaneously “provincialized” Europe and situated it within a global framework. The effort also highlights the need to (...) rethink the history of the European Left through the framework of antifascism. (shrink)

This paper investigates Slovak migrants’ use of new media to build social capital. It draws on data from a pilot study with 36 Slovaks living in the UK, and on content analysis of the main Facebook page for Czechs and Slovaks in the UK. The data suggest that Facebook is used for sharing emotions rather than to build a community and share practical information. While Facebook and Skype are used to maintain preexisting strong ties in the country of origin, face-to-face (...) contact and mobile phones are used to maintain ties within the UK. However, social media do not seem to facilitate the formation of weak ties prior to migration, with face-to-face contact being dominant upon arrival. Transnational migration experience forms a separate dimension within the participants’ identity, independent from social capital. The data are discussed in relation to findings from previous studies about Slovak migrants in the Republic of Ireland. (shrink)

This book explores how different corporate governance strategies affect community mobilization and the scope for influence when an area’s population is faced with the arrival of the extraction industry. Drawing on ethnographic research into Peruvian mining localities, the author analyses a series of relationships which are characterized by confrontations, clientelism, demobilization and strategic collaboration. By presenting a detailed account of micro practices and showing how these processes are interpreted by different groups, Gustafsson offers a refined understanding of the multiple layers (...) and informal workings of power between transnational corporations and local communities. (shrink)

ABSTRACTMany academic authors, policy makers, NGOs, and corporations have focused on top-down human rights global norm-making, such as the United Nations Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights. What is often missing are contextual and substantive analyses that interrogate rights mobilization and linkages between voluntary transnational rules and domestic governance. Deploying a socio-legal approach and using a combination of longitudinal field and archival data, this article investigates how a local, indigenous community in Northern Chile mobilized their rights over a (...) period of almost two decades. We found that rights mobilization was largely shaped by tensions between the different logics of legality and the business organization. In our case, the UNGP implementation process has been ineffective in giving rightsholders access to genuine remedy. On the contrary, it has led to weakened rights mobilization, dividing the local community. We conclude that greater attention to rights mobilization and domestic governance dynamics should be given in the business and human rights debate. (shrink)

Most critical discussions of European immigration policies are centered around the concept of Fortress Europe and understand the concept of the border as a way of sealing off unwanted immigration movements. However, ethnographic studies such as our own multi-sited field research in South-east Europe clearly show that borders are daily being crossed by migrants. These findings point to the shortcomings of the Fortress metaphor. By bringing to the fore the agency of migrants in the conceptualization of borders, we propose to (...) understand how borders are being shaped by taking as a starting point the struggles of mobility. Against the background of our two-year transdisciplinary research project TRANSIT MIGRATION European migration and border policies cannot be longer conceptualized as being simply oriented towards the prevention of migration. Since migrants cross the borders daily, what happens if the borders’ permeability is part of the way they work? If so, we have to investigate the mechanisms of border policies and practices anew. One is the concept of the border or migration regime. The other is the concept of the autonomy of migration. Our concept of ethnographic regime analyses is based on a transdisciplinary approach, comprising political studies, anthropology and sociology. (shrink)

Widespread and systematic rape pervaded both the genocides in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992 and in Rwanda in 1994. In response to these conflicts, the Yugoslav Tribunal (ICTY) and the Rwandan Tribunal (ICTR) were created and charged with meting justice for crimes committed, including rape. Nevertheless, the two tribunals differ in their relative success in administering justice for crimes of rape. Addressing rape has been a consistent element of the ICTY prosecution strategy, which resulted in gender-sensitive investigative procedures, higher frequencies of rape (...) indictments, and more successful prosecutions. In contrast, rape has not been a central focus of the ICTR prosecution strategy, which resulted in a sporadic approach to gender-sensitive investigative procedures, inconsistent rape indictments, and few successful prosecutions. What accounts for this disparity in rape prosecutions between the Rwandan and Yugoslav tribunals? Building off the existing literature that discusses factors such as legal instruments and resource capacity of the tribunal, this article argues that transnational advocacy helped generate the necessary political will to adopt and implement legal norms regarding crimes of sexual violence at the ICTY and the ICTR. Following the importance of transnational advocacy as agents of norm change, this paper also explores the antecedent conditions of advocacy mobilization that conditioned different levels of mobilization vis-à-vis the ICTY and the ICTR, including media attention and framing, connections and interest match with local groups, and geopolitical context. (shrink)

In this age of migration and transnationalism, it is imperative to take account of migratory experiences and lives of transmigrant teachers, who exhibit multiple ways of belonging and knowing. Informed by the theoretical framework of transnationalism and flexible citizenship, this study investigates two Asian transmigrant teachers who work in urban bilingual schools in the U.S. and examines how and why they are involved in their particular transnational mobility, professional choices, and educational activities. The findings show that transmigrant teachers’ (...) border crossings were motivated by economic as well as personal and educational necessities. After relocation to the U.S., they adopted specific residential and professional strategies to create transnational and multilingual networks with their homelands. They also demonstrated flexible attitudes towards citizenship, aspiring to continue their mobile lives. This study makes a contribution to the growing literature on contemporary migrants by shedding light on transmigrant teachers’ personal, professional, and teaching lives, which are marked by spatial fluidity and ongoing transnational practices. (shrink)

With the breakdown of traditional racial boundaries in many areas of the world, the widespread and growing consumption of skin-lightening products testifies to the increasing significance of colorism—social hierarchy based on gradations of skin tone within and between racial/ethnic groups. Light skin operates as a form of symbolic capital, one that is especially critical for women because of the connection between skin tone and attractiveness and desirability. Far from being an outmoded practice or legacy of past colonialism, the use of (...) skin lighteners is growing fastest among young, urban, educated women in the global South. Although global in scope, the skin-lightening market is highly segmented by nation, culture, race, and class. This article examines the “yearning for lightness” and skin-lightening practices in various societies and communities and the role of transnational pharmaceutical and cosmetic corporations in fueling the desire for lighter skin through print, Internet, and television ads that link light skin with modernity, social mobility, and youth. (shrink)

This article offers an analysis of lived experiences of transnational mobility for gay-identified expatriates who reside in Manila, the Philippines. Drawing from in-depth interviewing and discourse analysis of eight cases, the author argues that homonormative mobility organizes gay men's travel, even as gay expatriates work to reimagine themselves through their travel and face destabilizing experiences in transnational spaces. The author offers a theorization of homonormative mobility to explain discourses of normative gender, race-nation, and desire in (...) gay travel. Specifically, she argues that expatriates describe their mobility as an escape from the heteronormative controls they face at home, masculine access to freeing places in “foreign” playgrounds, an act of homo-orientalist desire of Filipino men and spaces, a desirable experience that builds their own self-confidence, and troubling for their self-perceptions. (shrink)

The past decade has seen major movements and mobilizations against the new crop of bilateral free trade and investment agreements being pursued by governments in the wake of the failure of global (World Trade Organization) and regional (e.g. Free Trade Area of the Americas) negotiations, and the defeat of an attempted Multilateral Agreement on Investment in the 1990s. However, in spite of much scholarly, non-governmental organization (NGO) and activist focus on transnational global justice activism, many of these movements, such (...) as the major multi-sectoral popular struggle over the recently-concluded US-Korea Free Trade Agreement, are hardly acknowledged in North America and Europe. With a shift in emphasis pushing liberalization and deregulation of trade and investment increasingly favouring lower-profile bilateral agreements, this article maps the resistance movements to these latest shifts in global free market capitalist relations and discusses the disconnect between these (mainly Southern) struggles and dominant scholarly and NGO conceptions of global justice and the global justice movement as well as questions of knowledge production arising from these movements. (shrink)

In combining the micropolitics approach in international management, the industrial relations literature and business ethics, this article conceptualizes global framework agreements as an alliance between central CSR managers of transnational corporations and central actors within trade unions to monitor subsidiaries in the implementation of CSR policies. The empirical investigation, based on the qualitative analysis of ten French multinational companies, confirms the relevance of such a conceptualization. It particularly shows that central CSR managers hope mobilizing the union network to increase (...) their capacity to supervise subsidiaries. Over there, it helps understanding concrete mechanisms adopted to implement global framework agreements since, in some of the studied cases, the managerial and union channels are coordinated precisely to strengthen this capacity. It, then, highlights the procedural nature of policies regarding global framework agreements. Overall, this paper examines the conditions necessary for mobilization of the union network and suggests avenues for future research. (shrink)

The Norwegian Association for Heredity Research played a key role in the rise of genetics as a research field in Norway. The immediate background of its establishment in 1919 was the need for an organization that could clarify scientific issues regarding eugenics and coordinate Norwegian representation in the organized international eugenics movement. The Association never assumed this role. Instead, Norway was represented in the international eugenics movement by the so-called Norwegian Consultative Eugenics Commission, whose leader, Jon Alfred Mjøen, was dismissed (...) as a pseudo-scientist by Norwegian geneticists. The paper explores the Association’s role in defining and delimiting scientific expert knowledge in the field of genetics and eugenics in Norway. It demonstrates how struggles about academic authority on the national arena were intertwined with struggles about representation and impact in the international eugenics movement and how transnational scientific networks where mobilized to legitimize and delegitimize notions about Nordic race supremacy, racial mixing and the politics of eugenic sterilizations. (shrink)

The end of the bi-polar world and the collapse of communist regimes triggered an unprecedented mobility of people and heralded a new phase in European migrations. Eastern Europeans were now not only ‘free to leave’ to the West but more exactly ‘free to leave and to come back’. In this text I will focus on gendered transnational, cross-border practices and capabilities of Central and Eastern Europeans on the move, who use their spatial mobility to adapt to the (...) new context of post-communist transition. We are dealing here with practices that are very different from those which the literature on ‘immigrant transnationalism’ is mostly about. Rather than relying on transnational networking for improving their condition in the country of their settlement, they tend to ‘settle within mobility,’ staying mobile ‘as long as they can’ in order to improve or maintain the quality of life at home. Their experience of migration thus becomes their lifestyle, their leaving home and going away, paradoxically, a strategy of staying at home, and, thus, an alternative to what migration is usually considered to be — emigration/immigration. Access to and management of mobility is gendered and dependent on institutional context. Mobility as a strategy can be empowering, a resource, a tool for social innovation and agency and an important dimension of social capital — if under the migrants’ own control. However, mobility may reflect increased dependencies, proliferation of precarious jobs and, as in the case of trafficking in women, lack of mobility and freedom. (shrink)

Drawing on data from a comparative ethnographic study on media usage in transnational families, this paper contributes to a reappraisal of polymedia theory. Two main theoretical assumptions are reconsidered. First, it is demonstrated why the equal availability assumption has to be revised in light of the complex interactions between the corporeal, communicative and social mobilities which together constitute transnational migration. Second, it is argued that the techno-socially accomplished co-presence in transnational families depends more on the creative appropriation (...) and combination of different media channels and communication forms than on the choice between them. In order to empirically investigate the specific needs for, and forms of co-presence in families, the concept of ‘registers of presence’ is proposed. It allows us to understand in detail in what ways and in which constellations transnational families create togetherness with the help of communication technologies. (shrink)

Abstract -/- Migrants invariably and unavoidably experience domination under the nation-state centered concepts, categories, and institutions that structure our political thinking. In response, we need to build new forms of citizenship, including local, regional, transnational, and supranational forms of belonging, accompanied by meaningful, democratic, political power. In this paper, I examine historical and present-day alternative models of political organization as possible viable alternatives to state-centric liberal democracy. It begins the task of assessing these models using radical republican theory that (...) grounds non-domination in the active and equal participation of people subject to power. I have three broad aims. First, we need to break down the native-migrant dichotomy to highlight commonalities and search for solidarities among migrants and other marginalized and oppressed groups, including indigenous groups. Second, I seek to awaken the political imagination. Many people do not believe there are viable alternatives to liberal democracy centered around the nation-state. In response, we should draw attention to the ways in which the nation-state’s hegemony is fragile and fragmented and the ways in which sovereignty is complex and contested. Most importantly, we need to consider alternative models for inspiration. Third, we need tools for assessing the desirability of alternatives and for building new forms of citizenship. In what follows, first I explain why the dominant, nation-state centered model of political organization is unable to deliver justice in today’s world, or, indeed, address the collective dangers that humanity faces. I next provide a sketch of a radical republican vision that provides normative guidance our thinking about alternative institutions. I end by using this radical republic vision to reflect on possibilities to guide efforts to remake the world. (shrink)

Between the second half of the 2000s and the first half of the 2010s, the prospect of shale gas extraction in Europe at first prompted fervent political support, then met with local and national opposition, and was finally rendered moot by a global collapse in the oil price. In the Europe-wide protests against shale gas and the main technique employed to extract it, hydraulic fracturing, counter-expertise played a crucial role. This kind of expertise is one of the main elements of (...) “energy citizenship,” a concept recently developed in the field of energy humanities which describes the empowerment of citizens in decision-making processes related to energy issues. This paper provides a socio-historical analysis of the co-production of counter-expertise and energy citizenship in the two European countries endowed with the largest shale gas reserves: Poland and France. In my analysis, concerns over the disruption of the food-water-energy nexus due to possible pollution emerge as particularly important. I argue that the exchange of information between activist groups and NGOs, as well as between activist groups from distant European locations, allowed for the creation of a genuinely transnational and science-based anti-fracking movement.ZuammenfassungZwischen der zweiten Hälfte der 2000er und der ersten Hälfte der 2010er Jahre, löste die Aussicht auf die Förderung von Schiefergas in Europa zuerst weitreichende politische Begeisterung aus, dann Gegeninitiativen auf der lokalen und nationalen Ebene, und schließlich Resignation, als ein weltweiter Einbruch des Ölpreises die Gewinnannahmen des Unternehmens in Frage stellte. Im Erfolg der europäischen Proteste gegen Schiefergas und „hydraulic fracturing“ war die Rolle der Gegenexpertise entscheidend. Diese Art von Expertise ist eines der Hauptelemente von „energy citizenship“, ein Konzept das kürzlich im Bereich der „Energy Humanities“ entwickelt wurde und für die Befähigung des Bürgers zur Entscheidungsfindung in energiebezogenen Fragen steht. Die vorliegende Studie analysiert die kooperative Produktion von Gegenexpertise und die Schaffung von „energy citizenship“ in den beiden europäischen Ländern, die mutmaßlich über die größten Schiefergasvorkommen verfügen: Polen und Frankreich. Aus dieser Analyse geht hervor, dass Besorgnis über die Störung des Nahrungsmittel-Wasser-Energie-Nexus aufgrund einer möglichen Verschmutzung durch industrielle Aktivitäten im Vordergrund stand. Der Informationsaustausch zwischen Aktivistengruppen und spezialisierten NGOs sowie zwischen Aktivistengruppen in verschiedenen europäischen Orten ermöglichte die Entstehung einer transnationalen, wissenschaftsbasierten Anti-Fracking-Bewegung. (shrink)

Between the second half of the 2000s and the first half of the 2010s, the prospect of shale gas extraction in Europe at first prompted fervent political support, then met with local and national opposition, and was finally rendered moot by a global collapse in the oil price. In the Europe-wide protests against shale gas and the main technique employed to extract it, hydraulic fracturing, counter-expertise played a crucial role. This kind of expertise is one of the main elements of (...) “energy citizenship,” a concept recently developed in the field of energy humanities which describes the empowerment of citizens in decision-making processes related to energy issues. This paper provides a socio-historical analysis of the co-production of counter-expertise and energy citizenship in the two European countries endowed with the largest shale gas reserves: Poland and France. In my analysis, concerns over the disruption of the food-water-energy nexus due to possible pollution emerge as particularly important. I argue that the exchange of information between activist groups and NGOs, as well as between activist groups from distant European locations, allowed for the creation of a genuinely transnational and science-based anti-fracking movement. (shrink)

Migrants invariably and unavoidably experience domination under the nation-state centered concepts, categories, and institutions that structure our political thinking. In response, we need to build new forms of citizenship, including local, regional, transnational, and supranational forms of belonging, accompanied by meaningful, democratic, political power. In this paper, I examine historical and present-day alternative models of political organization as possible viable alternatives to state-centric liberal democracy. It begins the task of assessing these models using radical republican theory that grounds non-domination (...) in the active and equal participation of people subject to power.I have three broad aims. First, we need to break down the native-migrant dichotomy to highlight commonalities and search for solidarities among migrants and other marginalized and oppressed groups, including indigenous groups. Second, I seek to awaken the political imagination. Many people do not believe there are viable alternatives to liberal democracy centered around the nation-state. In response, we should draw attention to the ways in which the nation-state’s hegemony is fragile and fragmented and the ways in which sovereignty is complex and contested. Most importantly, we need to consider alternative models for inspiration. Third, we need tools for assessing the desirability of alternatives and for building new forms of citizenship.In what follows, first I explain why the dominant, nation-state centered model of political organization is unable to deliver justice in today’s world, or, indeed, address the collective dangers that humanity faces. I next provide a sketch of a radical republican vision that provides normative guidance our thinking about alternative institutions. I end by using this radical republic vision to reflect on possibilities to guide efforts to remake the world. (shrink)

In recent years, some scholars and prominent political figures have advocated the deepening of North American integration on roughly the European Union model, including the creation of new political institutions and the free movement of workers across borders. The construction of such a North American Union, if it included even a very thin trans-state citizenship regime, could represent the most significant expansion of individual entitlements in the region since citizenship was extended to former slaves in the United States. With such (...) a possibility as its starting point, this article explores some striking parallels between the mass, legally prohibited movement across boundaries by fugitive slaves in the pre-Civil War period, and that by current unauthorized migrants to the United States. Both were, or are, met on their journeys by historically parallel groups of would-be helpers and hinderers. Their unauthorized movements in both periods serve as important signals of incomplete entitlements or institutional protections. Most crucially, moral arguments for extending fuller entitlements to both groups are shown here to be less distinct than may be prima facie evident, reinforcing the case for expanding and deepening the regional membership regime. (shrink)

A collection of essays originally published in a special issue of Modern Asia Studies in March 2012, this volume comprises the interactions of various cultures including Singapore, Ladakh, Penang, and Istanbul. It also traces interactions over the sea and between various religious spaces. Businesses or inter-Asian joint-ventures are also included. Edited by professors of history, this book is a welcome addition to the scarce literature on transnational interactions within Asia.

New forms of transnational mobility and diasporic belonging have become emblematic of a supposed global condition of uprootedness. Yet much recent theorizing of our so-called postmodern life emphasizes movement and fluidity without interrogating who and what is on the move. This book examines the interdependence of mobility and belonging by considering how homes are formed in relationship to movement. It suggests that movement does not only happen when one leaves home, and that homes are not always fixed (...) in a single location. Home and belonging may involve attachment and movement, fixation and loss, and the transgression and enforcement of boundaries. (shrink)

Temporary migration raises two different challenges. The first is whether territorial democracies can integrate temporary migrants as equal citizens; the second is whether transnationally mobile societies can be organized democratically as communities of equal citizens. Considering both questions within a single analytical framework will reveal a dilemma: on the one hand, liberals have good reasons to promote the expansion of categories of free-moving citizens as the most effective and normatively attractive response to the problem of partial citizenship for temporary migrants; (...) yet, on the other hand, if free movement rights were actually used by too many, this might fatally undermine the sustainability of intergenerational and territorial democratic polities. (shrink)

Stefan Collini's Absent Minds is a rich, critical history of a cliché: that English culture is peculiarly hostile to intellectuals. Despite striking differences in the organization of intellectual life in the U.S. and Britain, precisely the same cliché pervades American writing. The explanation may lie less in structure than in the transnational mobility of the language of the intellectual.

The objective of this Article is to integrate legal and social conceptions of citizenship as they materialize at the geographic, political, and social border crossings that accompany transnational mobility. Rather than pose the question "who is the citizen?," I ask "who is the citizen’s Other?," partly as a means of surfacing what we mean by citizenship by thinking about who we designate as its alterity. Against the current of most contemporary scholarship, I commend resurrecting the concept of statelessness (...) as an antipodal reference point for citizenship. My intuition is that a version of statelessness still dwells in the substratum of much citizenship discourse, and that rendering a plausible account of it under contemporary conditions may prove helpful in linking conversations about legal and social citizenship. I supplement the conventional understanding of the stateless person as one who lacks any citizenship in a state by also designating as stateless one who possesses citizenship but lacks a state. My analysis draws on Hannah Arendt’s famous exegesis on the relationship between the apatride, the refugee, and the condition of rightlessness, as well as contemporary refugee jurisprudence. I demonstrate how subject positions commonly identified as the citizen’s Other, including the refugee, the alien and the second-class citizen, are better understood as nested within a larger matrix where the apatride represents the ultimate negation of citizenship. I then introduce the notion of the "heft" of citizenship as a method of assessing how legal citizenship and social citizenship interact to position an array of subjects between these stylized poles of citizenship and statelessness. (shrink)