Modernity and Globalisation

MODERNITY AND GLOBALIZATION
Anton Popov
THE TRANSNATIONAL FAMILY
Week 17
GLOBALIZATION AND TRANSNATIONALISM
Globalisation often refers to ‘the intensification of
global interconnectedness’ and suggests that the
world we now live in is ‘full of movement and
mixture, contact and linkages, and persistent
cultural interaction and exchange’ (Inda and
Rosaldo 2002: 2)
 One of the most visible manifestations of
globalisation is transnationalism which is
characterised by ‘the high intensity of exchanges,
the new modes of transacting, and the
multiplication of activities that require crossborder travel and contacts on a sustained basis’
(Portes et al. 1999: 219).

GLOBALISATION, MODERNITY AND CULTURE
The transnational flow of people, ideas, goods,
images and capital challenges the notion of culture
as a production and exchange of meanings between
members of a localised and territorially bounded
community.
 Thus globalisation is often referred to as a driving
force of modernity which is sometimes defined as a
form of ‘expansive civilisation’ advancing upon
localised, and increasingly marginalised,
‘traditional’ cultures (Hannerz 1996).
 The opponents of this scenario argue that, the
transnational flow of goods, ideas and people goes
in both directions and brings the cultural diversity
of the ‘periphery’ to the ‘centres’ of Western culture
as well. (Clifford 1988: 17).

TRANSNATIONAL MIGRANT CIRCUITS
A ‘transnational migrant circuit’ as a multi-sited
but single community which is constituted by ‘the
continuous circulation of people, money, goods,
and information’ (Rouse 2002: 162).
 The transnational migration from less affluent
countries to Western cities is an example of what
Rouse calls ‘the social space of postmodernism’
where, alongside the capitalist penetration of the
periphery goes ‘peripheralization at the core’.
 In order to understand the process of
transnationalism different agencies involved in
transnational circuits including such networks of
social relations as families and friends have to be
brought into the light (Portes et al. 1999).

CRITIQUES OF THE HOUSEHOLD APPROACH TO MIGRATION




Phizacklea (2004) criticizes the household theories of
migration developed during the 1980s (see for example
Stark 1984 and 1999), by arguing that these theories
simply shifted the family into a position of effective
decision-making unite ignoring the individual.
Such accounts of the transnational family do not recognize
the household’s implication in gendered ideologies and
practices.
They are also usually not applied to Western societies but
cast that members of Third World households as
‘traditional’ meaning that they are ‘not burdened by the
individualism of the West’ and ‘resolve to cooperate
willingly and completely … to collectively lift the burden of
their poverty’ (Gross and Linquist 1995: 328, cf, Phizacklea
2004: 125).
Empirical data provide evidence of complex decisionmaking process within households: migration, for example,
can be seen by women as an escape from repressive forces
of patriarchal society.
TRANSNATIONAL FAMILIES: SOCIAL AGENCY IN FOCUS




Family constitutes a support network for transnational
migrants; for example, it often operates as a channel for
migrants’ cross-border movement.
Family networking connects home communities with
their ‘diasporas’, making them effectively ‘a single
community spread across a variety of sites’ (Rouse 2002:
162).
Theories of transnational migration and emerged to
significant extent as a critique of what Roberts et al.
(1999: 253) call ‘overtly structural approach’, which
suggests that migrants are mainly passive subjects
‘coerced by states and marginalized by markets’ (cf.
Phizacklea 2004: 129).
Thus focus on transnational social networks, and
families in particular, stress decision-making
capabilities of individual migrants. This, according to
Phizacklea, ‘restores an analytically coherent view of the
relationships between structure and agency’ (2004: 129).
STEAMSHIP ROUTES, 1900
http://qed.princeton.edu/main/MG/Maps
TRANSNATIONAL LIFE: PAST AND PRESENT


Robert C. Smith: ‘Transnational life and reciprocal
effects of assimilation and migration are not new…
but they require a new theoretical lens to them as
such’ (2006: 8-9)
The main aspects in which the present
transnationalism is different from its earlier forms:
•
•
•
•
Communication and travel technologies
Different regimes of assimilations (e.g. in the USA Americanisation in the past but encouragement of ethnic identification and links with
the home country now)
National identities rather then local/village identities of migrants
International system exerts contradictory pressures on migration:
the ‘remote control’ of the migration through passports and other
state controls, and promotion of economic and cultural globalisation
RELATIVISATION: IMAGINING THE TRANSNATIONAL FAMILY



Bryceson and Vuorela define ‘transnational families’
as ‘families that live some or most of the time
separated from each other, yet hold together and
create something that can be seen as a feeling of
collective welfare and unity, namely ‘familyhood’,
even across national borders’ (2002: 3).
Individuals establish, maintain or curtail relational
ties with other members of transnational families
through the relativisation process.
Transnational family relations ‘are created by active
pursuit or passive negligence of family blood ties and
the possible inclusion of non-blood ties as family
members... Relativisation refers to modes of
materializing the family as an imagined community
with shared feelings and mutual obligations’
(Bryceson and Vourela 2002: 14).
THE TRANSNATIONAL FAMILY AS AN IMAGINED COMMUNITY
There are several similarities between ways how
belonging to family, nation and ethnic group is
perceived by people. In all three cases belonging
is imagined rather than ‘natural’.
 A metaphor of family is often used towards the
nation with ‘naturalising’ connotation.
 ‘One may be born into a family and a nation, but
the sense of membership can be a matter of
choice and negotiation’ (Bryceson and Vuorela
2002: 10).
 The nation-state has an effect on how migrants’
families are defined. Thus citizenship, visa and
immigration regulation intertwine with family
relations in the process of relativisation.

THE TRANSNATIONAL FAMILY AND THE NATION-STATE




Perhaps it is too early to speak about the world of
globalisation and transnationalism as a ‘post-national’
world (Appadurai 1996: 21).
Rather, as Sørensen (1998: 262) argues, transnational
migration has not eroded the nation-state but the
transnational space becomes a contested space which
contains several national and bi-national identities.
Transnational migrants do not lose the sense of belonging
to territorialised nations, because they, perhaps more than
anyone else, are aware of the nation-state’s desire to
control its territory as well as the movement of people
across its borders.
It is possible to say that, to a certain degree, the space of
the nation-state has expanded as transnational practices
and identities continue to be shaped by the state policies
and identity politics of both ‘home’ and ‘host’ nations.
THE CASE STUDY: PONTIC GREEK TRANSNATIONAL FAMILIES
The construction of the Greek national
and ethnic identity of the migrants is
coupled with the (re)creation of their
family network in time and space. This
gives new meaning to the migrants’
Greek-ness as belonging to the family
rather than to some ‘imagined’ Greek
nation. It also assumes that the family
itself is rethought, for it now includes
relatives who are remote historically
and geographically. The goal of
migration to Greece could be economic,
but the way to it lies through
rethinking Greek identity and creating
new meaning for the family and the
homeland. They leave for Greece under
the pressure of economic difficulties,
but arrive there to meet their families,
both imagined and actual.
CONCLUSIONS
Transnational families are in a way an
embodiment of the globalizing processes; they
make visible the way in which the world system’s
discourses penetrate the local reality, making it a
part of the world system itself.
 Although transnational communities exist in,
and as, a transnational circuit, they rarely
identify themselves as transnationals and
continue to speak about their attachment to
particular nations, ethnicities, places and
countries.
 As imagined communities transnational families
are both the sites of reproduction of, and shifts
in, gender, ethnic, national and class identities of
their members.

QUESTIONS
Why is ‘relativisation’ important for
(re)production and functioning transnational
families? Give examples of relativisation
practices from ethnographic studies you have
read (from the further reading list).
 Does the emergence of the transnational family
challenge ideas of the ‘traditional’? Discuss using
examples of gender relations, citizenship and
national/ethnic identity.
 Why can the transnational family be seen as an
imagined community?
