Transnational Citizenship - History and Causes of Transnational Citizenship

History and Causes of Transnational Citizenship

While some relate transnational citizenship to any historic shift or fusion of identities within nation-states, modern conceptions of the term have only surfaced in the past twenty years. Many attribute the evolvement of the term to the rising situation of globalization. Globalization is defined by a heightened international access to the world capital market system and increased abilities to more rapid forms of communication. Due to the convenience and ease of modern international exchanges, globalization has become the process by which international economies as well as individuals interact with one another . Since post-Cold War 1989, the evolved "global political economy" has resulted in massive "reconfigurations of the world's arenas." Globalization transformed a confined geo-political system into one that relies heavily on multiple levels of local, national and global interactions. For example, China's industrialization from an agricultural society to a manufacturing society chronicled by excessive imports and exports contribute to a need to interconnect societies from all corners of the globe. The wealth that private institutions experienced from globalization resulted in "further extensions of corporations in search of faraway resources and markets ."

Beyond resulting in substantial political and economical shifts, globalization has also affected social and cultural practices between people. According to citizenship scholars like Andrew Vandenberg, such acts of globalization eventually "ended the constraints of space and time that conditioned all earlier human transactions, practices, and therefore identities . With the growth and distribution of technology, more people all over the world have come to establish personal relationships with one another. Former state-regulated formal encounters are now replaced by modern informal and all the more frequent interactions. Rapid world economic growth has consequently led to international migrations. In recent years, in conjunction with globalization, increased instances of uncontrolled and predominantly illegal international migrations contribute to opportunities for escalating transnational identities. Because obvious ties surface between immigrants, their home countries, and the receiving countries, the civic ramifications are widespread. Thus international immigration contributes to loosening individual state ties . Once in their host countries, immigrants form social networks while maintaining ties to their homeland. Some organizations function in both countries, which serves to further enhance the notion that international migrants act as transnational citizens in multiple lands .