Mixtec Transnational Migration - Transnational Migration

Transnational Migration

It is important, however, to define what transnational means and to distinguish among transnational migrants and immigrants. Nina Glick Schiller defines transnational as “those persons who having migrated from one nation-state to another live their lives across borders, participating simultaneously in social relations that embed them in more than one nation-state.” Activities and identity claims in the political domain are a particular form of transnational migration that is best understood as long-distance nationalism.

Stephen states that while the term transnational migration suggests a more or less permanent state of being between two or more locations, some people may spend a good part of their time engaging in this state of being, others may live for longer periods of time in one place or another, and still others may leave their home communities only one time or never. All the people living within a transnational social field are exposed, in different levels, but nonetheless in some shared way to “ a set of social expectations, cultural values, and patterns of human interaction shaped by more than one social, economic and political system”