Transnationalism - Schiller and Levitt

Conceptualizing Simultaneity: A Transnational Social Field Perspective on Society
Author(s): Peggy Levitt and Nina Glick Schiller

Source: The International Migration Review, Vol. 38, No. 3, Conceptual and Methodological
Developments in the Study of International Migration (Fall, 2004), pp. 1002-1039
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. on behalf of the Center for Migration Studies of New
York, Inc.
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Conceptualizing Simultaneity:
A Transnational Social Field
Perspective on Society
Peggy Levitt
Wellesley College and Harvard University
Nina Glick Schiller

University of New Hampshire and Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology
This article explores the social theory and consequent methodology that
underpins studies of transnational migration. First, we propose a social
field approach to the study of migration and distinguish between ways
of being and ways of belonging in that field. Second, we argue that
assimilation and enduring transnational ties are neither incompatible
nor binary opposites. Third, we highlight social processes and institu
tions that are routinely obscured by traditional migration scholarship
but that become clear when we use a transnational lens. Finally, we
locate our approach to migration research within a larger intellectual
project, taken up by scholars of transnational processes in many fields,
to rethink and reformulate the concept of society such that it is no
longer automatically equated with the boundaries of a single nation
state.
Social scientists have long been interested in how immigrants are incorpo
rated into new countries. In Germany and France, scholars' expectations that
foreigners will assimilate is a central piece of public policy. In the United
States, immigration scholars initially argued that to move up the socioeco
nomic ladder, immigrants would have to abandon their unique customs,
language, values, and homeland ties and identities. Even when remaining
ethnic became more acceptable, most researchers assumed that the impor
tance of homeland ties would eventually fade. To be Italian American or
Irish American would ultimately reflect ethnic pride within a multicultural
United States rather than enduring relations to an ancestral land.
Now scholars increasingly recognize that some migrants and their de
scendants remain strongly influenced by their continuing ties to their home
country or by social networks that stretch across national borders. They see
This is a co-authored article, jointly conceived and written by both contributors.
? 2004 by the Center for Migration Studies of New York. All rights reserved.
0197-9183/04/3803.0147
1002 IMP Volume 38 Number 3 (Fall 2004): 1002-1039
Conceptualizing Simultaneity 1003
migrants' crossborder ties as a variable and argue that to understand con

temporary migration, the strength, influence, and impact of these ties must
be empirically assessed. They call for a transnational perspective on migra
tion (Basch, Glick Schiller and Szanton Blanc, 1994). The resulting analyses,
in combination with other scholarship on transnational dynamics, are build
ing toward a new paradigm that rejects the long-held notion that society and
the nation-state are one and the same.
This article is not intended as a comprehensive review of the transna
tional migration scholarship. In fact, a special volume of this journal, pub
lished in Fall 2003, does just that. Instead, we explore the social theory and
the consequent methodology that underpins studies of transnational migra
tion. We argue that central to the project of transnational migration studies,
and to scholarship on other transnational phenomena, is a reformulation of
the concept of society. The lives of increasing numbers of individuals can no
longer be understood by looking only at what goes on within national
boundaries. Our analytical lens must necessarily broaden and deepen because
migrants are often embedded in multi-layered, multi-sited transnational
social fields, encompassing those who move and those who stay behind. As
a result, basic assumptions about social institutions such as the family,
citizenship, and nation-states need to be revisited.
Once we rethink the boundaries of social life, it becomes clear that the
incorporation of individuals into nation-states and the maintenance of trans
national connections are not contradictory social processes. Simultaneity, or
living lives that incorporate daily activities, routines, and institutions located
both in a destination country and transnationally, is a possibility that needs
to be theorized and explored. Migrant incorporation into a new land and
transnational connections to a homeland or to dispersed networks of family,
compatriots, or persons who share a religious or ethnic identity can occur at
the same time and reinforce one another.
Our goals in this study are fourfold. First, we propose a social field
approach to the study of migration and distinguish between ways of being
and ways of belonging in that field. Second, we argue that assimilation and
enduring transnational ties are neither incompatible nor binary opposites.
Instead, we suggest thinking of the transnational migration experience as a
kind of gauge which, while anchored, pivots between host land and trans
national connections. Third, we highlight social processes and institutions
that are routinely obscured by traditional migration scholarship but that
become clear when we use a transnational lens. Finally, we locate our ap
proach to migration research within a larger intellectual project, undertaken
1004 International Migration Review
by scholars of transnational processes in a variety of fields, to reformulate the

concept of society such that it is no longer automatically equated with or
confined by the boundaries of a single nation-state.
FOUNDATIONAL APPROACHES TO THIS FIELD
There have already been several waves of transnational migration scholarship

that have fine-tuned concepts and analyzed transnational relations in a much
more nuanced manner than earlier formulations. Researchers have explored
transnational identity formation and the economic, political, religious, and
sociocultural practices that propel migrant incorporation and transnational
connection at the same time {see, e.g., Basch, Glick Schiller and Szanton
Blanc, 1994; Smith and Guarnizo, 1998; Grasmuck and Pessar, 1991; La
guerre, 1998; Itzigsohn et ai, 1999; Smith, 2003; Levitt, 2001a, b; Glick
Schiller and Fouron, 2001a, b; Ebaugh and Chafetz, 2002; Kyle, 2001;
Ostergaard-Nielsen, 2003; Fitzgerald, 2003; Landolt, 2001; Goldring, 2002;
Vertovec, 2003; Gold, 2002; Koopmans and Statham, 2001; Riccio, 2001;
Van der Veer, 2001; Abelman, 2002; Morgan, 1999; Faist, 2000a, b; Schif
fauer, 1999; Sklair, 1998; Itzigsohn, 2000; Portes, Guarnizo and Landolt,
1999; Kivisto, 2001; Mahler, 1998; Duany, 2000; Morawska, 2003b, Eck
stein and Barberia, 2002). They have proposed typologies to capture varia
tions in the dimensions of transnational migration. The extent to which
transnational migration is a new phenomenon or whether it shares similari
ties with its earlier incarnations has been the subject of much debate {see
Foner, 2000; Glick Schiller, 1999; Smith, 2002; Morawska, 2003b; Weber,
1999). Several studies examine the scope of transnational practices among
particular immigrant populations {see Portes, Haller and Guarnizo, 2002;
Guarnizo, Portes and Haller, 2003; Itzigsohn and Saucedo, 2002). Finally,
an emerging body of research tries to explain variations in transnational
practices across groups (Levitt, 2002b; Itzigsohn and Saucedo, 2002; Portes,
Haller and Guarnizo, 2002; Guarnizo, Portes and Haller, 2003).
To develop our theory and methodology further and to address the
implications of simultaneous incorporation, we begin with a brief synthesis
of the scholarship on transnational migration to date upon which a new
theoretical synthesis can be built. We see four distinct traditions developing
among scholars of transnational migration: the research done by sociologists
and anthropologists in the United States; studies done by the Transnational
Community Programme based at Oxford University; a literature on trans
national families; and an effort to reformulate notions of space and social

structure. Underlying these developments is a fundamental problem of social
theory - how to rethink society if we do not take national boundaries for
granted.
Transnational migration scholarship in the United States has been
shaped by its critique of the unilinear assimilationist paradigm of classical
migration research (Glick Schiller, 1999; Basch, Glick Schiller and Szanton
Blanc, 1994; Glick Schiller, Basch and Szanton Blanc, 1995). Some studies
have focused on the kinds of networks that stretch between a sending com
munity and its migrants (Grasmuck and Pessar, 1991; Levitt, 2001a; Rouse,
1992; Smith, 1998; Kyle 2001). Others have sought to determine the con
ditions under which migrants maintained homeland ties and identities and
how commonplace transnational practices were among the migrant popu
lation as a whole (Morawska, 2003b; Levitt, 2003b; Basch, Glick Schiller
and Szanton Blanc, 1994). These studies revealed that a small but nonethe
less significant number of migrants engage in regular economic and political
transnational practices (Portes, Haller and Guarnizo, 2002; Guarnizo, Portes
and Haller, 2003) and that many more individuals engage in occasional
transnational activities. Some studies explore the relationship between mi
gration and development, categorizing transnational migration as a product
of late capitalism which renders small, nonindustrialized countries incapable
of economic autonomy and makes them dependent on migrant-generated
remittances (Itzigsohn, 2000; Portes, 2003; M.P. Smith and Guarnizo,
1998). The ways in which sending and receiving states continue to play a
critical role in migrants' lives has also received a good deal of attention
(Smith, 1998; Goldring, 2002; Levitt and de la Dehesa, 2003). More recent
research on the second generation is in many ways a continuation of the
debate on assimilation, with proponents of the classic approach arguing that
transnational migration is an ephemeral first-generation phenomenon.
Meanwhile, some transnationalists speak of new forms of transnational con
nection or replace the term second generation with transnational generation
to encompass youth in the homeland and the new land (Levitt and Waters,
2002; Glick Schiller and Fouron, 2002).
While many U.S. researchers have focused on homeland/newland con
nections, the Oxford Transnational Communities Programme used a much
broader definition of transnational ties {see, e.g., Koopmans and Statham,
2001; Riccio, 2001; Van der Veer, 2001; Abelman, 2002; Morgan, 1999;
Faist, 2000a; Schiffauer, 1999; Sklair, 1998; Castles, 1998). In this project,
transnational connections forged by businesses, the media, politics, or reli

gion were all examined under the rubric of community. This work demon
strated that migrants are embedded in networks stretching across multiple
states and that migrants' identities and cultural production reflect their
multiple locations. Among the important findings of the Transnational
Communities project was the need to distinguish between patterns of con
nection on the ground and the conditions that produce ideologies of con
nection and community (Gomez and Benton, 2002; Ostergaard-Neilsen,
2003).
Some of the U.S. and Oxford studies (Ballard, 2000) urge a recon
ceptualization of transnational kinship, although research in this area has
developed a trajectory of its own (Chamberlin, 2002; Bryceson and Vuorela,
2002). Studies of transnational kinship document the ways in which family
networks constituted across borders are marked by gendered differences in
power and status. Kin networks can be used exploitatively, a process of
transnational class differentiation in which the more prosperous extract labor
from persons defined as kin. Kin networks maintained between people who
send remittances and those who live on them can be fraught with tension.
A fourth group of scholars use a transnational approach to migration
to challenge social theory. Morawska (2001a, 2003a) proposes a conceptu
alization of migration as structuration to posit the continuing dynamic
between structure and agency that extends into a transnational domain. Faist
(2000a, b), reasoning along similar lines, strives to conceptualize a domain
of crossborder social relations he refers to as transnational social spaces. He
privileges social relations and institutions, defining these spaces as charac
terized by a high density of interstitial ties on informal or formal, that is to
say institutional, levels (Faist, 2000b:89). Guarnizo (1997) and Landolt
(2001) refer to a transnational social formation.
Much of this work, however, views the social formations engendered
by transnational migration as unique. Instead, we propose that they are one
indication, among many, that the nation-state container view of society does
not capture, adequately or automatically, the complex interconnectedness of
contemporary reality. To do so requires adopting a transnational social field
approach to the study of social life that distinguishes between the existence
of transnational social networks and the consciousness of being embedded in
them. Such a distinction is also critical to understanding the experience of
living simultaneously within and beyond the boundaries of a nation-state
and to developing methodologies for empirically studying such experiences.
BUILDING TOA TRANSNATIONAL SOCIAL FLELD THEORY

OF SOCIETY
To further develop transnational migration studies, we revisit the concept of

society as it has been generally deployed and put aside the methodological
nationalism that has distorted many basic social science concepts (Martins,
1974; Smith, 1983). Methodological nationalism is the tendency to accept
the nation-state and its boundaries as a given in social analysis. Wimmer and
Glick Schiller (2003) identified three variants of methodological national
ism: 1) Ignoring or disregarding the fundamental importance of nationalism
for modern societies. This tendency often goes hand and hand with 2)
naturalization, or taking for granted that the boundaries of the nation-state
delimit and define the unit of analysis. Finally, 3) territorial limitation
confines the study of social processes to the political and geographic bound
aries of a particular nation-state. According to Wimmer and Glick Schiller
(2003:578), the three variants may intersect and mutually reinforce each
other, forming a coherent epistemic structure, a self-reinforcing way of
looking at and describing the social world.
Because much of social science theory equates society with the bound
aries of a particular nation-state, researchers often take rootedness and in
corporation in the nation-state as the norm and social identities and practices
enacted across state boundaries as out of the ordinary. But if we remove the
blinders of methodological nationalism, we see that while nation-states are
still extremely important, social life is not confined by nation-state bound
aries. Social and religious movements, criminal and professional networks,
and governance regimes as well as flows of capital also operate across borders.
Recent developments in social theory have also challenged the nation
state container theory of society and provide insights into the nature of
transnational flows that we build upon. Sassen, for example, reconfigured
our understanding of the geography of cities by highlighting that some
locations become global cities (Sassen, 1992). Discussing flexible capital
accumulation, Harvey (1989) explored the time-space compressions that so
revolutionize the objective qualities of space and time that we are forced to
alter, sometimes in quite radical ways, how we represent the world to our
selves (p. 240). Other scholars have highlighted the interconnectedness of
societies through flows of media, capital, and people (Held et al, 1999).
However, much of this work, according to Ulrich Beck (2000), continues to
envision states as the primary unit and treats globalization as a process of
interconnection between states. Such theories, Beck argues, continue "the
container theory of society" on which most of the sociology of the first age
of modernity is based. He calls for a new paradigm that changes not only the
relations between and beyond national states and societies, but also the inner
quality of the social and political itself which is indicated by reflexive cos
mopolitization (p. 1).
Along with Beck, Faist (2000a), Urry (2000) and a growing number of
social theorists, we seek ways to move beyond the container theory of society.
Many of these scholars, however, tend to underplay the concept of the social
as they reconfigure the concept of society. Beck's formulation of reflexive
cosmopolitization and much of the related literature on cosmopolitanism,
for example, largely abandons an exploration of social relations and social
context. In Beck's (2000) cosmopolitanism, as in Luhmann's world society,
communication technologies become key. Global media flows and consum
erism lead to a new form of consciousness. Social relations and social posi
tioning fall out of the analysis; the individual and the global intersect.
Without a concept of the social, the relations of power and privilege exer
cised by social actors based within structures and organizations cannot be
studied or analyzed. In addition, by trying to move beyond methodological
nationalism, much of this theory-building neglects the continuing power of
the nation-state. Transnational migration studies, with their concrete tracing
of the movement and connection of people, provide a useful corrective to
these oversights by highlighting the concept of social field.
We propose a view of society and social membership based on a
concept of social field that distinguishes between ways of being and ways of
belonging. The notion of social field exists in social science literature in
several different forms. We draw here on those proposed by Bourdieu and by
the Manchester school of anthropology. Bourdieu used the concept of social
field to call attention to the ways in which social relationships are structured
by power. The boundaries of a field are fluid and the field itself is created by
the participants who are joined in struggle for social position. Society for
Bourdieu is the intersection of various fields within a structure of politics
(Jenkins, 1992:86). According to Bourdieu, either individuals or institutions
may occupy the networks that make up the field and link social positions.
While his approach does not preclude the notion of transnational social
fields, he does not directly discuss the implications of social fields that are
not coterminous with state boundaries.
The Manchester School also informs our framework because these
scholars recognized that the migrants they studied belonged to tribal-rural
localities and colonial-industrial cities at the same time. Migrant networks
stretching between these two sites were viewed as constituting a single social
field created by a network of networks. By understanding society in this way,
these researchers focused on a level of social analysis beyond the study of the
individual.
Despite its importance, the term social field within transnational mi
gration research has not been well defined. Building on Basch, Glick Schiller
and Szanton Blanc (1994), we define social field as a set of multiple inter
locking networks of social relationships through which ideas, practices, and
resources are unequally exchanged, organized, and transformed {see also
Glick Schiller and Fouron, 1999; Glick Schiller, 1999, 2003). Social fields
are multidimensional, encompassing structured interactions of differing
forms, depth, and breadth that are differentiated in social theory by the
terms organization, institution, and social movement. National boundaries
are not necessarily contiguous with the boundaries of social fields. National
social fields are those that stay within national boundaries while transna
tional social fields connect actors through direct and indirect relations across
borders. Neither domain is privileged in our analysis. Ascertaining the rela
tive importance of nationally restricted and transnational social fields should
be a question of empirical analysis.
The concept of social fields is a powerful tool for conceptualizing the
potential array of social relations linking those who move and those who stay
behind. It takes us beyond the direct experience of migration into domains
of interaction where individuals who do not move themselves maintain
social relations across borders through various forms of communication.
Individuals who have such direct connections with migrants may connect
with others who do not. We should not assume that those with stronger
social ties will be more transnationally active than those with weaker con
nections nor that the actions and identities of those with more indirect ties
are less influenced by the dynamics within the field than those with direct
transnational ties. In any given study, the researcher must operationalize the
parameters of the field they are studying and the scope of the networks
embedded within it, then empirically analyze the strength and impact of
direct and indirect transnational relations.
For example, there may be one central individual who maintains high
levels of homeland contact and is the node through which information,
resources, and identities flow. While other individuals may not identify with
or take action based on those ties, the fact that they are part of the same
transnational social field keeps them informed and connected so that they
can act if events motivate them to do so. Recognizing that this individual is
embedded in a transnational social field may be a better predictor of future

transnational behavior than if we simply locate him or her solely within a
nationally delimited set of relationships.
The concept of social field also calls into question neat divisions of
connection into local, national, transnational, and global. In one sense, all
are local in that near and distant connections penetrate the daily lives of
individuals lived within a locale. But within this locale, a person may par
ticipate in personal networks or receive ideas and information that connect
them to others in a nation-state, across the borders of a nation-state, or
globally, without ever having migrated. By conceptualizing transnational
social fields as transcending the boundaries of nation-states, we also note that
individuals within these fields are, through their everyday activities and
relationships, influenced by multiple sets of laws and institutions. Their daily
rhythms and activities respond not only to more than one state simulta
neously but also to social institutions, such as religious groups, that exist
within many states and across their borders.
A social field perspective also reveals that there is a difference between
ways of being in social fields as opposed to ways of belonging (Glick Schiller,
2003; 2004).2 Ways of being refers to the actual social relations and practices
that individuals engage in rather than to the identities associated with their
actions. Social fields contain institutions, organizations, and experiences,
within their various levels, that generate categories of identity that are as
cribed to or chosen by individuals or groups. Individuals can be embedded
in a social field but not identify with any label or cultural politics associated
with that field. They have the potential to act or identify at a particular time
because they live within the social field, but not all choose to do so.
In contrast, ways of belonging refers to practices that signal or enact an
identity which demonstrates a conscious connection to a particular group.
These actions are not symbolic but concrete, visible actions that mark be
longing such as wearing a Christian cross or Jewish star, flying a flag, or
choosing a particular cuisine. Ways of belonging combine action and an
awareness of the kind of identity that action signifies.
Individuals within transnational social fields combine ways of being
and ways of belonging differently in specific contexts. One person might
have many social contacts with people in their country of origin but not
2Some analysts, such as Thomas Faist (2000a), contrast social ties with "symbolic ties." By
emphasizing ways of being, rather than social ties, we develop a concept that decouples social
relationships from a notion of common interest or norms.
identify at all as belonging to their homeland. They are engaged in transna

tional ways of being but not belonging. Similarly, a person may eat certain
foods or worship certain saints or deities because that is what their family has
always done. By doing so, they are not signaling any conscious identification
with a particular ethnicity or with their ancestral homes. Here again, they are
not expressing a transnational way of belonging.
On the other hand, there are people with few or no actual social
relations with people in the sending country or transnationally but who
behave in such a way as to assert their identification with a particular group.
Because these individuals have some sort of connection to a way of belong
ing, through memory, nostalgia or imagination, they can enter the social
field when and if they choose to do so. In fact, we would hypothesize that
someone who had access to a transnational way of belonging would be likely
to act on it at some point in his or her life.
If individuals engage in social relations and practices that cross borders
as a regular feature of everyday life, then they exhibit a transnational way of
being. When people explicitly recognize this and highlight the transnational
elements of who they are, then they are also expressing a transnational way
of belonging. Clearly, these two experiences do not always go hand in hand.
Finally, locating migrants within transnational social fields makes clear
that incorporation in a new state and enduring transnational attachments are
not binary opposites (Morawska, 2003b; Levitt, 2003b). Instead, it is more
useful to think of the migrant experience as a kind of gauge which, while
anchored, pivots between a new land and a transnational incorporation.
Movement and attachment is not linear or sequential but capable of rotating
back and forth and changing direction over time. The median point on this
gauge is not full incorporation but rather simultaneity of connection. Per
sons change and swing one way or the other depending on the context, thus
moving our expectation away from either full assimilation or transnational
connection but some combination of both. The challenge, then, is to explain
the variation in the way that migrants manage that pivot and how host
country incorporation and homeland or other transnational ties mutually
influence each other. For example, Portes and his colleagues found that
transnational entrepreneurs were more likely to be U.S. citizens, suggesting
that by becoming full members of their new land, it became easier for them
to run successful businesses involving their homeland. Similarly, some La
tino communities use the same organizations to promote political integra
tion in the United States that they use to mobilize around sending-country
issues.
In this vein, Glick Schiller, Calgar and Karagiannis (2003) have pro
posed a useful distinction between mere connection and the kinds of con
nections that engage individuals institutionally in more than one nation
state. One can have friends, colleagues, or co-religionists with whom one
communicates and exchanges information or objects across borders without
ever coming into contact with the state or other institutions. But if one
belongs to a church, receives a pension, or has investments in another land,
one must necessarily negotiate his or her way through a set of public and
private institutions that grounds those connections more firmly. His or her
"pivot" is rooted in two or more legal and regulatory systems, encouraging
a greater sense of embeddedness in the transnational social field and making
the connections within it more likely to endure.
METHODOLOGY
Methodology and theory have an intimate relationship. To develop a trans
national framework for the study of migration, we need a methodology that
allows us to move beyond the binaries, such as homeland/new land, citizen/
noncitizen, migrant/nonmigrant, and acculturation/cultural persistence, that
have typified migration research in the past. On the other hand, a framework
that privileges transborder processes rather than incorporation-oriented ac
tivity may not capture the interrelationship between transnational connec
tion and social relationships within a single nation-state.
Using a transnational framework implies several methodological shifts.
First, we need to focus on the intersection between the networks of those
who have migrated and those who have stayed in place, whether in the new
land, homeland, or some other diasporic location. This focus allows for
comparisons between the experiences of migrants and those who are only
indirectly influenced by ideas, objects, and information flowing across bor
ders. Although multi-sited research is ideal for studying these two different
experiences, the impact of transnational relations can be observed by asking
individuals about the transnational aspects of their lives, and those they are
connected to, in a single setting.
Second, we need tools that capture migrants' simultaneous engagement
in and orientation toward their home and host countries. And these dynam
ics cannot just be studied at one point in time. Transnational migration is
a process rather than an event. Transnational practices ebb and flow in
response to particular incidents or crises. A one-time snapshot misses the
many ways in which migrants periodically engage with their home countries
during election cycles, family or ritual events, or climatic catastrophes ? their

attention and energies shifting in response to a particular goal or challenge.
Studying migrant practices longitudinally reveals that in moments of crisis or
opportunity, even those who have never identified or participated transna
tionally, but who are embedded in transnational social fields, may become
mobilized into action. Such a research strategy would help explain the tran
sition from a way of belonging such as a diasporic identity - Armenian,
Jewish, or Croatian - to direct engagement in transnational practices.
Each of the research methodologies used to study transnational migra
tion has particular strengths. We believe that ethnography is particularly
suited for studying the creation and durability of transnational social fields.
Participant observation and ethnographic interviewing allow researchers to
document how persons simultaneously maintain and shed cultural reper
toires and identities, interact within a location and across its boundaries, and
act in ways that are in concert with or contradict their values over time. The
effects of strong and weak indirect ties within a transnational social field can
be observed, and those connections, whether they take the form of institu
tional or individual actors, can be studied. Like surveys, ethnographic re
search can also begin with a random sample of persons who migrate and who
have no intention of returning home.
POWER
When people belong to multiple settings, they come into contact with the
regulatory powers and the hegemonic culture of more than one state. These
states regulate economic interactions, political processes and performances,
and also have discrete nation-state building projects. Individuals are, there
fore, embedded in multiple legal and political institutions that determine
access and action and organize and legitimate gender, race, and class status.
Foucault (1980) wrote that the experience of power goes beyond mere
contact with the law or the police. Rather, power pervades and permeates all
social relations because what is legitimate, appropriate, and possible is
strongly influenced by the state. People living in transnational social fields
experience multiple loci and layers of power and are shaped by them, but
they can also act back upon them.
Most migrants move from a place where the state has relatively little
power within the global interstate system to a more powerful state. At the
same time, many migrants gain more social power, in terms of leverage over
people, property, and locality, with respect to their homeland than they did
before migrating. It is this complex intersection between personal losses and

gains that any analysis of power within transnational social fields must
grapple with. Furthermore, migration often opens up the possibility for
transnational migrants to contribute, both positively and negatively, to
changes in the global economic and political system. For example, long
distance nationalist movements have long influenced nation building and
national transformation. Lithuania would not have become Lithuania with
out immigrants in the United States first imaging its emergence and then
mobilizing to make it a reality (Glazer, 1954). Former Iraqi exiles are now
playing a critical role in rebuilding the Iraqi state. Transnational migrants
can also strengthen, alter, or thwart global religious movements like Islamic
fundamentalism, Christian fundamentalism, or Hindu nationalism.
Not only can migrants potentially shift the position of states within the
world economic order, they can also influence the internal functions of states
as well. They may be forces for privatization because they want telephone
systems that work and private schools and hospitals where their family
members will be well attended. They may pressure states to institute con
servative legislation that preserves traditional values. Acting within their
transnational social fields, migrants may also fuel movements for rights,
social justice, and anti-imperialist struggles.
Transnational migrants also shift power by redefining the functions of
the host state. There are many instances, such as in the Cuban, Israeli, and
Irish communities, in which migrants have successfully mobilized host coun
try legislatures to support their homeland projects. The Mexican state and
Mexican transnational migrants living in the United States have altered the
ways in which some U.S. institutions categorize and process individuals. The
Mexican state's issuing of the matricula consular, a consular ID card, to legal
and unauthorized Mexican migrants in the United States has enabled mi
grants to pressure banks, motor vehicle bureaus, and car insurance compa
nies to be more responsive to them.
Using a transnational social field perspective allows for a more system
atic study of the social processes and institutions that have been routinely
obscured by traditional migration scholarship and even by some studies of
transnational migration. New perspectives emerge on a number of issues,
including the effect of migration on gender hierarchies and racialized iden
tities; family dynamics; the significance of nation-states, membership and
citizenship; and the role of religion. In the following section, we discuss each
in turn.
HOW CLASS, RACE, AND GENDER ARE MUTUALLY

CONSTITUTED WITHIN TRANSNATIONAL SOCIAL FIELDS
Scholars have tended to study class, race, and gender as discrete realms of
experience. Here we build on feminist theory by recognizing that since these
social locations are mutually constituted, we must discuss them together. We
approach all three as hierarchical positions that entail differential social
power. Data on these varying statuses illustrate the analytical limits of meth
odological nationalism. Social scientists often use national income statistics
to assess the socioeconomic status of migrants without considering the other
statuses that they occupy. But when society differs from polity and is made
up of sets of social relationships in intersecting and overlapping national and
transnational social fields, individuals occupy different gender, racial, and
class positions within different states at the same time. Recognizing that
migrant behavior is the product of these simultaneous multiple statuses of
race, class, and gender makes certain social processes more understandable.
For example, a transnational perspective can help explain contradictory
data on the political attitudes and actions of immigrants. In some cases,
immigrant women, who find themselves racialized in their new homes,
appear to be quite conservative with respect to struggles for rights and
recognition. Poor migrants of color in the United States, for example, often
strive to differentiate themselves from African Americans rather than join
efforts to advance minority group civil rights (Waters, 1999). They may
re-enforce or even reinvent gender distinctions and hierarchies that are more
rigid and traditional than those in their ancestral homes (Espiritu, 1997;
Lessinger, 1995; Caglar, 1995). They accept low-status jobs in their new
home, tolerate employment discrimination, and resist political projects or
labor protests that would redress these wrongs. Ironically, this heightened
gender stratification often occurs in households where immigrant women
have entered the workforce and men have begun to share the responsibility
for childrearing and housekeeping, thereby redefining other aspects of gen
der dynamics in more egalitarian terms.
Consideration of migrants' multiple positions within transnational so
cial fields helps explain this seemingly conservative and contradictory be
havior (Pessar and Mahler, 2003). When individuals elaborate markers of
gender after they migrate, they may be preserving or creating status in other
locations within the transnational social field. Conservative positions of
women and men in relationship to struggles for rights or "family values" may
be linked to the class position of migrants in the homeland. Migrants who
are laborers, home health aides, or domestic workers in countries of immi

gration may also be educated and middle-class homeowners or business
people in their homelands. Men who may have higher status than women at
home are generally more interested in maintaining political homeland con
nections and identities (Grasmuck and Pessar, 1991). In contrast, women
migrants may use income they earn abroad to improve their social standing
at home. Transnational religious systems, such as Islam or Charismatic
Christianity, also provide venues for asserting one's enhanced status and for
acquiring social capital and resources (Peterson and V?squez, 2001).
TRANSNATIONAL FAMILIES
Much work on globalization and transnational phenomena focuses on pro

duction. But reproduction also takes place across borders and is an impor
tant, if understudied, aspect of the migration experience. Just as transna
tional migration studies prompt us to rethink the terrain in which social
processes take place, they also challenge our understanding of social repro
duction.
Numerous studies illustrate the ways in which the boundaries of family
life change over the life cycle. Members of the second and third generations
in Europe and the United States continue to return to the Middle East and
South Asia to find marriage partners (Hooghiemstra, 2001; Lesthaeghe,
2002; Levitt, 2002b). Increasing numbers of women have joined the ranks
of men who head transnational families (Parrenas, 2001; Hondagneu-Sotelo
and Avila, 2003). Transnational family life entails renegotiating communi
cation between spouses, the distribution of work tasks, and who will migrate
and who will stay behind via long distance (Pessar and Mahler, 2001).
Nonmigrants also imagine the gendered lives of their migrant peers and
change their ideas about successful marriages and suitable marital partners.
Levitt (2001a) found that the young women in the Dominican village she
studied only wanted to marry men who had migrated because they were
considered the ideal breadwinner and life partner.
While adults make family decisions, children are the central axis of
family migration and often a critical reason why families move back and
forth and sustain transnational ties (Orellana et al, 2001; Zhou, 1998).
Adult-centered studies obscure the ways in which child raising actively
shapes families' journeys, the spaces they move in, and their experiences
within those social fields. This is particularly true as children mature into
young adults. Kandel and Massey (2002), for example, found a culture of
migration so deeply embedded in the Mexican communities they studied

that transnational migration became the norm. Young men, in particular,
came to see migration as an expected rite of passage and as the way to achieve
economically what they could not attain in Mexico.
The studies we describe attest to the fact that in migrant households
that are constituted transnationally and across generations, living transna
tionally often becomes the norm (Nyberg Sorenson and Fog Olwig, 2002).
How must we rethink conventional wisdom about the family in response?
First, using a transnational lens reveals the changing nature of the family as
a socioeconomic strategic unit and how family ties are worked and reworked
over time and space. Deborah Bryceson and Ulla Vuorela (2002) use the
term relativizing to refer to the ways in which individuals establish, maintain,
or curtail ties to specific family members. Within transnational social fields,
individuals actively pursue or neglect blood ties and fictitious kinship. Based
on their particular needs, individuals strategically choose which connections
to emphasize and which to let slide. Second, in many cases, socialization and
social reproduction occur transnationally in response to at least two social
and cultural contexts. Even children who never return to their parent's
ancestral homes are brought up in households where people, values, goods
and claims from somewhere else are present on a daily basis. Similarly, the
children of nonmigrants are raised in social networks and settings entirely
permeated by people, resources, and what Levitt (1999) has called social remit
tances from the host country. For these individuals, the generational experience
is not territorially bounded. It is based on actual and imagined experiences that
are shared across borders regardless of where someone was born or now lives.
Locating migrants and their families squarely within transnational so
cial fields requires rethinking the notion of generation and the term second
generation (Glick Schiller and Fouron, 2002). Conceptualizing generation as
a lineal process, involving clear boundaries between one experience and the
other, does not accurately capture the experience of living in a transnational
field because it implies a separation in migrants' and nonmigrants' social
ization and social networks that may not exist. It also fails to take into
account that generational experiences are shaped by common experiences
during youth that create a shared worldview or frame of reference which
influences subsequent social and political activism (Mannheim, 1952; Eck
stein, 2002).
While many researchers now acknowledge the salience of transnational
ties for the immigrant generation, many predict these ties will weaken among
their children. In the United States, these researchers find that the transna
tional activities of the second generation are confined primarily to certain

groups who are, by and large, physically and emotionally rooted in the
United States and lack the language, cultural skills, or desire to live in their
ancestral homes. Since these individuals are only occasional transnational
activists, and their activities are confined to very specific arenas of social life,
they are likely to have minimal long-term consequences (Rumbaut, 2002;
Kasinitz et al, 2002).
But whether or not individuals forge or maintain some kind of trans
national connection may depend on the extent to which they are reared in
a transnational space. Clearly, transnational activities will not be central to
the lives of most of the second generation, and those who engage in them
will not do so with the same frequency and intensity as their parents. But
surveys concluding that transnational practices will be inconsequential may
be short sighted. They may overlook the effect of the many periodic, selec
tive transnational activities that some individuals engage in at different stages
of their lives (Levitt, 2002b; Glick Schiller and Fouron, 2002; Smith, 2002).
They may also fail to differentiate between ways of being and possible ways
of belonging ? that the desire and ability to engage in transnational practices
will ebb and flow at different phases of the lifecycle and in different contexts.
At the point of marriage or child rearing, the same individuals who showed
little regard for a parental homeland and culture may activate their connec
tions within a transnational field in search of spouses or values to teach to
their children (Espiritu and Tham, 2002). The children of Gujaratis who go
back to India to find marriage partners, the second generation Pakistanis
who begin to study Islam and Pakistani values when they have children, or
the Chinese American business school students who specialize in Asian
banking are doing just that.
THE NA TION-STA TE: THE POLITICAL LIMITS AND

EXTENSIONS OF TRANSNATIONAL SOCIAL FIELDS
The use of a transnational social field perspective and the concept of simul
taneity also draws attention to the changing nature of political activism and
the nation-state and how these are shaped and shape the transnational social
fields in which they are embedded. Both migrants and refugees continue to
engage in a variety of cross-border political practices directed at their home
and host countries. Some of the early work on transnational migration
predicted that these activities would weaken or, in some cases, bring about
the decline of the nation-state. Instead, what we see is a reformulation of the
state as it assumes new functions, abdicates responsibilities for others, and

redefines who its members are. Future research needs to explore why some
states change in response to their increasingly transnational constituencies
and others do not. We also need to ask which functions states abandon,
under what conditions, and what new roles they assume. Finally, we need to
identify the new kinds of organizations and collectivities that step in to fill
the gap left by the changing state.
It is within sending states that we find the greatest changes in laws,
state policy, and migrant practices on both the national and local levels. The
vulnerable geopolitical position of many peripheral sending states, increasing
poverty in the wake of structural adjustment policies, and the racial barriers
migrants encounter explain recent trends toward extending the boundaries
of citizenship (Basch, Glick Schiller and Szanton Blanc, 1994; Guarnizo,
2003; Itzigsohn, 2000). The governments of many states, even within West
ern Europe, see the utility of having access to populations settled elsewhere.
Ireland, Greece, Italy and Portugal have recently developed both policies and
rhetoric that embrace their communities abroad.
States have developed a range of policies that reflect who they are
redefining as their membership. Some states pursue homelands policies that
encourage state contact with temporary migrants to facilitate their return.
Other states develop global nations' policies that encourage enduring links to
permanent settlers abroad to ensure their continued national membership
and loyalty rather than their return (Goldring, 2002; Smith, 1998). But not
all sending states are the same. They vary with respect to how willing and
able they are to encourage transnational activism and how willing they are to
give emigrants and their descendants political rights, including the right to
vote while living abroad. We suggest the following categorization to capture
the variation in possible arenas and types of state responses toward emi
grants. States vary with respect to law or the degree to which they extend
political rights. They vary with respect to rhetoric or the kind of ideology of
nationhood that is promulgated. And they vary with respect to public policy
or the kinds of programs and policies that they pursue.
The Extension of Political Rights

The extension of rights is mandated by law. Some states distinguish between
two categories of membership ? citizenship and nationality. Citizenship
delineates the character of a member's rights and duties within the national
polity. Nationality legally delineates a category of belonging without grant
ing full citizenship rights.
Sending states have promulgated a range of legal distinctions to delin

eate categories of citizenship and nationality: 1 ) the denial of dual citizenship
or any form of dual access to rights - countries such as Haiti and Germany
allow no dual sets of rights;3 2) dual nationality with the granting of some
legal privileges to emigrants and their descendants but not full dual citizen
ship ? Mexico and India have taken this position, legally recognizing na
tionals in some way; 3) dual citizenship in which emigrants and their de
scendants are accorded full rights, when they return to the homeland, even
if they also hold the passport of another country - states as disparate as
France, Ireland, Greece, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Italy, and Portugal
follow this policy; and dual citizenship with rights while abroad - people
living abroad, from countries such as Colombia, have the right to elect
representatives to the home-country legislature.
The expansion of dual nationality or citizenship, in their different
forms, means that even persons who are not active participants in transna
tional politics or even situated in transnational social fields, have access to
those memberships if they want to claim them. As an identity strategy, an
investment strategy, or even an exit strategy, multiple memberships endow
the individual with several potential positions with respect to the state.
Ideology of Nationhood
States like China, Ireland, Portugal, and Haiti propose a national self
concept based on blood ties linking residents around the world to their
respective homelands (Glick Schiller, forthcoming). They have redefined
their territories to include those living outside them. They may do this, as in
the Haitian case, without granting dual citizenship or nationality. For this
reason, it is useful to distinguish legal connections from ideologies of long
distance nationalism. Building on Anderson's original concept, Glick
Schiller and Fouron (2001a) define long-distance nationalism as a set of
ideas about belonging that link together people living in various geographic
locations and motivate or justify their taking action in relation to an anees
3However, Germany allows dual citizenship for Ausiedler, Jews, and persons whose countries
do not allow the repudiation of citizenship; and Haiti, without altering citizenship laws,
considers its diaspora as a part of the Haitian nation.
4The number of countries permitting some form of dual belonging is increasing rapidly. In
Latin America alone, ten countries allowed some form of dual nationality or citizenship in
2000 while only four countries had such provisions prior to 1991 (Jones-Correa, 2002).
Other countries recognize dual membership selectively, with specific signatories.
tral territory and its government. As in other versions of nationalism, the

concept of a territorial homeland governed by a state that represents the
nation remains salient, but national borders are not thought to delimit
membership in the nation. Citizens residing within the territorial homeland
view emigrants and their descendants as part of the nation, whatever legal
citizenship the ?migr?s may have.
These ideologies of nationhood shift over time, at different periods of
nation building (Glick Schiller, forthcoming). Globally, before World War
I, science endorsed the concept of nation as based on race. In the middle of
the twentieth century, when the rhetoric of blood and race was discredited
and the populations of nation-states became viewed as only those who lived
within national territories, states tended not to make claims on their emi
grant populations. Dictators such as Salazar of Portugal or Duvalier of Haiti
denounced expatriates, who often organized in opposition to their regimes.
Since the 1970s, during the current period of globalization, a language of
blood has once again emerged and is deployed by a variety of states. Malaysia
uses descent to differentiate populations considered native Malaysians with
full citizenship rights from other populations such as persons of Chinese and
Indian ancestry (Ong, 1999; Bunnell, 2003). Portugal has reclaimed its
emigrant populations, allowing dual citizenship and organizing councils of
Portuguese abroad. In promoting its case for entrance into the European
Union, Portugal argued it would bring special access to countries like Brazil
as well as a special relation to Lusophonic populations in Africa (Feldman
Bianco, 2002).
Changing Functions of the State
States adopt some tasks and abandon others in response to transnational

migration. In Levitt and de la Dehesa's (2003) review of transnational mi
gration and redefinitions of the state, they found that Latin American gov
ernments instituted several different programs and policies toward emi
grants. They reformed ministerial and consular services to be more respon
sive to emigrant needs. They put into place investment policies designed to
attract and channel economic remittances. They granted dual citizenship or
nationality, the right to vote from abroad, or the right to run for public
office. They extended state protections or services to nationals living abroad
that went beyond traditional consular services. Finally, they implemented
symbolic policies designed to reinforce emigrants' sense of enduring mem
bership.
Sending states institute these policies for a variety of reasons. For one
thing, remittances far exceed the funds received for official development
assistance or foreign portfolio investment in many less-developed countries
(Nairn, 2002). According to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB),
"in 2002, remittances to Latin America alone rose by 18 percent to $32
billion from 2001 levels, or 32 percent of the $103 billion worldwide esti
mated to be remitted to developing countries" (University of California,
Davis, 2003). But sending nations' economic motivations to sustain strong
ties to migrants go beyond remittances. Immigrants trade with their home
countries and bring in large quantities of tourist dollars. Successful entre
preneurs from countries as diverse as India, Israel, China, Brazil, Taiwan,
Mexico and Pakistan not only contribute money but entrepreneurial and
technological energy and skills. Brain drain can become brain circulation or
brain gain (Saxenian, 2002). Finally, states court emigrant loyalties because
they see them as a potential political force in the host country that can
advance their economic and foreign policy interests (Mahler, 2000; Levitt,
2001a). Some states even promote host-country political integration so that
emigrants are better situated to act on their behalf.
States are not the only political actors that define their constituencies
transnationally or that carry out activities across borders. Political parties
may operate abroad, especially if emigrants have settled in sizeable numbers
and with sufficient ties to influence elections in the homeland. Mexican,
Dominican, and Haitian politicians campaign in the United States on a
regular basis. Each of the three principal Dominican political parties has a
U.S.-based organization trying to capture support among Dominicans along
the eastern seaboard. In the Turkish case, parties with dominant religious
and nationalist agendas, like the nationalist Milli Hareket Partisi or the
religious Saadet Partisi, frequently send leaders to northern Europe to rally
support (Ostergaard-Nielsen, 2003).
Regions of large countries, such as Brazil or India, may also begin to act
as transnational agents, regardless of the national government's stance. This
is especially true in situations where the majority of emigrants leave from a
few regions or provinces. Substate policies are different from the transna
tional activities of national governments in that regional governments do not
control immigration and formal citizenship and their transnational activities
are driven by efforts to promote extraterritorial regional or local loyalties
rather than nation-building (Baubock, 2003). In the Brazilian case, the
municipal government of Governador Valadares and the state government of
Minas Gerais created investment funds and business promotion schemes
designed to build on migrants' localized loyalties. The money raised was used
to support projects directed at municipal development. Likewise in India,
the Gujarat State government has instituted a number of initiatives to en
courage long-distance economic projects, including offering tax breaks and
bureaucratic support to potential investors, that are separate from any efforts
by the national government or political parties to stimulate Non-Resident
Indian (NRI) involvement (Levitt, 2002b).
Even units as small as towns may define themselves transnational^ and
engage in development-oriented activities. In such cases, the actors are usu
ally emigrants living abroad who organize hometown associations. For ex
ample, Mexican, Salvadoran, and Dominican hometown associations now
fund and implement numerous community development projects that were
previously the purview of the state (Goldring, 2002; Landolt, 2001). They
assume this role in an age of neoliberalism in which states increasingly
eschew roles they were rarely able to fulfill in countries beyond the capitalist
core.
Based on their stances towards emigrants with regard to law, rhetoric,

and public policy, we identify several broad categories of migrant-sendin
states.
Some states have become Transnational Nation-States in that they

treat their emigrants as long-term, long-distance members. Consular officials
and other government representatives are still seen as partially responsible for
emigrants' protection and representation. These states also grant emigran
dual citizenship or nationality. Often these are states, or specific regions withi
them, that have become so dependent on remittances that transnational m
grants' contributions and participation have become an integral part of nationa
policy (Guarnizo, Portes and Haller, 2003). States such as El Salvador, Mexico
Portugal, the Dominican Republic, and Brazil fall into this category.
More common are Strategically Selective States that encourage some
forms of long-distance economic and political nationalism but want to se
lectively and strategically manage what immigrants can and cannot do. Lik
transnational nation-states, these states also recognize the enormous politic
and economic influence migrants wield, on which they have come to de
pend. On the one hand, they want to ensure the continued home countr
involvement of emigrants, whom they recognize are unlikely to return. O
the other hand, they want to maintain some level of control over emigrants'
home ties, lest migrant interests conflict with those of the state. Such states
offer partial and changing packages of tax privileges and services to em
grants, encourage long-distance membership, but never grant the legal rights
of citizenship or nationality or the franchise. They walk a fine line between

providing enough incentives to reinforce long distance membership while
not over-serving migrants and making nonmigrants resentful. India, Barba
dos, Ireland, the Philippines, Haiti, and Turkey have all tried, at various
times, to obtain support from populations abroad without granting full
participation in their internal political activities.
These arrangements are by no means static. Diasporic agitation for
dual citizenship led the Filipino government to pass legislation in 2003 that
allows dual citizenship and restores Filipino citizenship to those people who
previously lost their citizenship by becoming citizens of other countries. The
Senate President remarked when the Citizenship Retention Bill was signed,
"It is our affirmation to the age-old adage that 'once a Filipino, always a
Filipino'" (Javellana-Santos, 2003). The same year, India granted persons
four generations removed from migration and citizens of specific countries
such as the United States and Great Britain dual citizenship (Khanna, 2004).
A third type of state is the Disinterested and Denouncing State. States
adopting this stance treat migrants as if they no longer belong to their
homeland. Any overtures migrants make vis a vis their ancestral home are
viewed as suspect because migrants are seen as having abandoned the home
land or even as traitors to its cause. This stance was more common prior to
the current period of globalization. Even today, however, when governments
face vocal and powerful political opposition abroad, they may try to discredit
emigrants' influence. Cuba's relationship to Cubans in the United States
provides one such example that is particularly interesting since remittances
factor so importantly in Cuba's economic life (Cervantes-Rodriguez, 2003;
Eckstein and Barberia, 2002). Slovakia kept populations abroad at arm's
length following the Cold War, allowing them no representation within the
new political system (Skrbi, 1999).
MEMBERSHIP AND CITIZENSHIP

Understanding migration from a transnational social field perspective also
entails revisiting the meaning of nation-state membership (Yuval-Davis,
1997; Delgado and Stefanicic, 2003). While states grant membership
through laws that accord legal citizenship and nationality, people also make
demands of states regardless of their legal status. Therefore, persons without
full citizenship may act as substantive or social citizens, claiming rights or
assuming privileges that are, in principle, accorded to citizens (Flores and
Benmayor, 2000). This is the case when immigrants without citizenship
fight and die as members of a host country's military, protest in the streets
about public policies, and access various social programs and services without
being citizens. Individuals connected through social networks to a transna
tional social field make claims, take actions, and may even see themselves as
members of a country in which they have not lived.
Substantive citizenship as exercised within transnational social fields
differs from findings of proponents of post-national citizenship (Soysal,
1994). These scholars put aside the domain of nation-states and look to
global rights regimes to protect and represent individuals living outside their
homelands. Persons in transnational social fields who are refugees or reli
gious or racial minorities may draw on plural legal systems in their quest for
rights. But the international rights regime, as has often been noted, is still
very much dependent on individual states for enforcement (Foblets, 2002;
Woodman, 2002)
Persons living within transnational social fields may not make claims
on states as legal or substantive citizens until a particular event or crisis
occurs. They may engage in lobbying, demonstrating, organizing or cam
paigns of public information to influence either the government of the state
in which they now reside, their homeland, or some other state to which they
are connected. Simply focusing on legal rights and formal membership
overlooks this broader set of people who, to varying degrees, act like mem
bers of a society while not formally belonging to it. By so doing, they
influence and are influenced by the state. Glick Schiller and Fouron (2001a)
propose the term "transborder citizens" to reflect those who may or may not
be citizens of both their sending and receiving polities but who express some
level of social citizenship in one or both.
Partial membership in two polities challenges core aspects of gover
nance in at least two ways. First, dual belonging calls into question the very
notion of governance because it is not readily obvious which state is ulti
mately responsible for which aspects of transnational migrants' lives. Where
should those who live across borders get health care, pay taxes, or serve in the
army? Which state assumes the primary responsibility for migrants' protec
tion and representation? What happens when migrants are sentenced to the
death penalty in their host country while the death sentence is prohibited in
their country of origin?
Furthermore, transborder citizens' multiple experiences of governmen
tality and political socialization do not occur in isolation from one another.
Persons in transnational social fields are exposed to different ideas of citizen
rights and responsibilities and different histories of political practice. As a

result, they enter the political domain with a broader repertoire of rights and
responsibilities than citizens who live only within one state. The fact that
migrants may also have direct experience with international rights regimes
provides them with grist to reconceptualize their relationship to the state
(Pessar, 2001; Levitt and Wagner, 2003). Migrants bring ideas about gov
ernance with them that transform host-country politics, they reformulate
their ideas and practices in response to their experiences with host states, and
they communicate these social remittances back to those in their homelands
or members of their networks settled in other states. The kind of political
culture that emerges and the kinds of claims made of states vary as a result.
Haitian migrants, for example, infused the U.S. political system with calls for
a Haitian government that was more responsible to its people (Glick Schiller
and Fouron, 2001a). Shared experiences of democratic incorporation in the
receiving state may feed back into transnational activities that lead to more
transparent politics at home (Shain, 1999).
RELIGION: FIELDS OF BEING AND BELONGING WITHIN

AND BEYOND THE STATE
While most scholars acknowledge the salience of migrants' transnational
economic, political, and sociocultural practices, they have only recently be
gun to pay attention to the relationship between transnational migration and
religion. In contrast to the other sections of this article, where we focus on
the implications of research findings to date, our goal in this section is to
summarize the emergent literature on religion and suggest directions for
further work.
Religion as an ideology or as a set of practices is not coincident with
the borders of nation-states. Its very lack of fit might partially explain why
social scientists have largely ignored religion. Grand sociological theory in its
various unilinear forms posited an evolution of society from religion to
reason. Immigration theorists expected immigrants to develop religious in
stitutions in the new land as part of the process of incorporation, but these
institutions were expected to lose their force over several generations.
Religious cross-border connections are not all linked to migration;
however, migrating populations may identify as religious diasporas rather
than cling to a nation-state identity or use religious arenas to express mem
bership in two polities. Conceptualizing society as intersecting transnational
social fields that exist within and across the borders of states provides us with
powerful tools for mapping and researching religious domains. Perhaps the
most productive distinction to be made is between religious ties that connect

people to a homeland state and religious ties that form transnational net
works of connections that are not state based, such as charismatic Chris
tianity. A fairly large body of work charts the course of Christian, Hindu,
and Muslim beliefs and institutions that cross national borders and link
various populations (Beyer, 2001; Robertson, 1991; Vertovec and Peach,
1997). Global religious institutions shape migrants' transnational experi
ences, while migrants chip away at and recreate global religions by making
them local. Migrant institutions are also sites where globally diffused models
of social organization and individuals' local responses converge and produce
new mixes of religious beliefs and practices. The study of transnational
migration and religion, therefore, provides an empirical window into ways of
being and belonging that cannot be encompassed by a nation-state (Levitt,
2003a). At the same time, these practices and ideas can be mobilized for
specific state projects by transnational migrant populations, as in the case of
support for Hindu nationalist politics on the part of Indian migrants who are
fully incorporated into the United States.
Research on transnational migrants' religious practices has addressed a
set of common themes and questions. Some of these studies are concerned
with the kinds of religious institutional connections produced by transna
tional migration (Ebaugh and Chafetz, 2002; Yang, 2002; Levitt, 2004).
Other studies ask how religion encourages or impedes transnational mem
bership (Wellmeier, 1998; Menjivar, 1999; Peterson and V?squez, 2001;
Kastoryano, 2000). A third set of questions focuses on the relationship
between religion and politics and how it changes when actors are engaged
transnationally. Such questions touch on ways of belonging, whether to two
or more states or to a transborder religious community, asking whether
access to the power of God or Gods is a way of gaining protection from the
power of states (Peterson and V?squez, 2001; Menjivar, 2002). Migrants
denied citizenship and excluded from mainstream economic institutions
often look to their religious communities as sites for establishing alternative
identities (Guest, 2002) .Transnational migrants often use religion to create
alternative geographies that may fall within national boundaries, transcend
but coexist with them, or create new spaces that, for some individuals, are
more meaningful and inspire stronger loyalties than politically-defined ter
rains (Levitt, 2003a). By doing so, they extend the boundaries of their
spiritual practices and superinscribe them onto the actual physical landscape
where they settle (McAlister, 2002). By building and conducting rituals at a
shrine to their national patron saint, Cuban exiles in Miami created what
Tweed (1999) calls transtemporal and translocative space. The rituals en

acted within it enable migrants to recover a past when they lived in Cuba and
to imagine a future when they will return.
EXPANDING THE CONVERSATION
Clearly, migration is only one of a range of social processes that transcends

national boundaries. Numerous social movements, businesses, media, epi
stemic communities, and various forms of governance are also organized
across boundaries. Persons living in transnational social fields can engage in
multiple transnational processes at the same time. The transnational iden
tities and institutions that emerge in response to these other processes are not
well understood. Although they are the subject of an increasing body of
scholarship, more often than not this research treats transnational economic,
political, and social processes as if they were not connected to each other. We
must explore how transnational practices and processes in different domains
relate to and inform one another to understand how these developments are
defining the boundaries of social life.
Migration scholars can begin this conversation by systematically ex
amining the forms and consequences of different kinds of transnational
activities and collectivities, analyzing how they relate to one another, and
exploring how they define and redefine our world (Khagram and Levitt,
2004). How do migrant cross-border activities compare to those engaged in
by indigenous rights proponents and religious group members? How do
organizing strategies, diffusion of ideas, and cultural negotiations compare in
transnational social movements to those undertaken in transnational profes
sional groups or production networks? In what ways do these different kinds
of transnational memberships complement or subvert one another? What are
the rights and responsibilities that actors and institutions associate with
transnational belonging?
New methodological and conceptual tools are needed to understand
these processes. Because the social sciences originated in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries as part of the project of creating modern nation-states,
terms like government, organization, and citizenship carry with them em
bedded nationalist assumptions that impair our capacity to see and under
stand transnational processes. Our conceptual categories implicitly take as
given that the nation-state is the natural default category of social organi
zation. The best that social science generally does is compare corporations,
migrants, or institutions across national contexts rather than focus on firms
and markets as parts of transnational fields of investment, production, dis

tribution, and exchange. Persons can engage simultaneously in more than
one nation-state and a nation-state does not delimit the boundaries of mean
ingful social relations. We need new analytical lenses that can bring to light
the myriad social processes that cross boundaries. We need new conceptual
categories that no longer blind us to these emergent social forms or prevent
us from reconceptualizing the boundaries of social life.
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Conceptualizing Simultaneity: A Transnational Social Field Perspective on Society

Author(s): Peggy Levitt and Nina Glick Schiller

Nina Glick Schiller

This is a co-authored article, jointly conceived and written by both contributors.

1002 IMP Volume 38 Number 3 (Fall 2004): 1002-1039

migrants' crossborder ties as a variable and argue that to understand con

by scholars of transnational processes in a variety of fields, to reformulate the

FOUNDATIONAL APPROACHES TO THIS FIELD

There have already been several waves of transnational migration scholarship

national families; and an effort to reformulate notions of space and social

transnational connections forged by businesses, the media, politics, or reli

BUILDING TOA TRANSNATIONAL SOCIAL FLELD THEORY

To further develop transnational migration studies, we revisit the concept of

embedded in a transnational social field may be a better predictor of future

identify at all as belonging to their homeland. They are engaged in transna

during election cycles, family or ritual events, or climatic catastrophes ? their

before migrating. It is this complex intersection between personal losses and

HOW CLASS, RACE, AND GENDER ARE MUTUALLY

are laborers, home health aides, or domestic workers in countries of immi

Much work on globalization and transnational phenomena focuses on pro

migration so deeply embedded in the Mexican communities they studied

tional activities of the second generation are confined primarily to certain

THE NA TION-STA TE: THE POLITICAL LIMITS AND

state as it assumes new functions, abdicates responsibilities for others, and

The Extension of Political Rights

Sending states have promulgated a range of legal distinctions to delin

tral territory and its government. As in other versions of nationalism, the

Changing Functions of the State

States adopt some tasks and abandon others in response to transnational

Based on their stances towards emigrants with regard to law, rhetoric,

Some states have become Transnational Nation-States in that they

of citizenship or nationality or the franchise. They walk a fine line between

MEMBERSHIP AND CITIZENSHIP

rights and responsibilities and different histories of political practice. As a

RELIGION: FIELDS OF BEING AND BELONGING WITHIN

most productive distinction to be made is between religious ties that connect

Tweed (1999) calls transtemporal and translocative space. The rituals en

EXPANDING THE CONVERSATION

Clearly, migration is only one of a range of social processes that transcends

and markets as parts of transnational fields of investment, production, dis

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Glick Schiller, N. and G. Fouron

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Van der Veer, P.

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