Femininity,mobility and family fears: Indian international student migration and transnational parental control

In this paper, I explore the migration of Indian-trained nurses enrolled in a post-graduate critical/geriatric care programme at a Canadian public college. Calling upon recent literature on gender, modernity and mobility in India, I examine the extent to which skilled transnational migration is shaped by gender relations established in India. While feminized international migration suggests increased autonomy of female migrants, this research highlights two important dimensions of such migration. The first is that family migration strategies are major determinants of the occupational choice and migration processes that daughters engage in, and the second is that the moral subjectivity of daughters is maintained through transnational methods of care and control.     

International student mobility: the role of social networks

Building upon recent work on higher education mobility, this paper contends that social networks of friendship and kinship are critical determinants for students deciding to study overseas, not just, as has hitherto been suggested, a complementary factor. It uses original data collected through interviews and focus groups with thirty-eight higher education international students studying at three UK universities and argues that students who choose to study overseas do not operate within a vacuum but rather draw upon extended networks of individuals who have chosen to do so themselves or advocate studying abroad. While this encouragement may be of an explicit and unequivocal nature – telling students that they ought to study overseas – for the majority it is rather more implicit. The students interviewed invariably related that higher education overseas or mobility more generally was an accepted practice among their peers, thereby leading to a normalisation of the mobility process. The paper concludes that international students come to accept mobility as a taken for granted stage within the life course, and, whether intentionally or not, this is often the driving force behind their decision to study overseas.     

Intersectionality and transnational mobility between Brazil and Spain in travesti prostitution networks

The aim of this article is to highlight the ways in which Brazilian travestis negotiate and strategise transnational mobility in order to work as prostitutes in Spain. Brazilian travestis working illegally in Spain are subject to gendered, sexualised and racial marginalisation. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted between April and September 2008 with 10 Brazilians acting as providers of sexual services in Spain. The interviews were systematised by means of content analysis, which allowed the preparation of a map of meanings around the spatial and lived experiences of travestis. We argue that travestis identities are constructed at the intersection of gender, sexuality, class and race. This fluid intersectionality allows the group to simultaneously manage their positions of both privilege and oppression.     

From rural life to transnational wife: agrarian transition,gender mobility,and intimate globalization in transnational marriages in northeast Thailand

Popular and academic discourses of globalization are often gender biased, focusing on formal and impersonal realms of the market, politics, and technologies. This article explores an intimate dimension of globalization by analyzing the transnational marriage trend among women in northeast Thailand (Isan's) villages. The phua farang (foreign husband) phenomenon in Isan epitomizes the intimate link between the global political economy and individuals' desires, aspirations, and imagination in the private realm of personal and marital relationships. The phua farang phenomenon is embedded in a context of spatial and economic inequalities at the local, national, and global levels, and manifests classed and gendered strategies by which marginalized subjects attempt to transcend the limited opportunities for upward social mobility available to these women.     

Exploring student mobility and graduate migration: undergraduate mobility propensities in two economic crisis contexts

This article explores the issue of mobility propensity among undergraduates, focusing on plans for long-term and short-term movement, including migration after the completion of present course of study. We also assess the strength of the relationship between a decision to move abroad and the personal impact of the ongoing economic crisis, using evidence from two recent surveys conducted with students in the capital cities of Portugal and the Republic of Ireland. Results provide an indication of the popularity of moving abroad and identify justifications for seeking an exit, potential destinations and anticipated lengths of stays. Regression analysis further confirms that the crisis is having a significant bearing on mobility decisions among respondents in Portugal but not the Republic of Ireland, with the concluding discussion integrating the main findings into existing debates on international student mobility.     

Chokepoint: Regulating US student mobility through biometrics

Many US public schools, struggling with perceived issues of safety and security, have installed a host of different biometric devices – vein scanners, automated fingerprint identification systems, iris scanners, GPS-enabled identification badges, and facial recognition software. Schools turn to these devices in hopes of securing school space by sorting and tracking students, visitors, and school staff based on their pre-determined risk profiles. As such, this article proposes that tracing these new forms of school security provides insight into how the politics and practices of biometric technologies are fundamentally geographical in nature. That is, biometric devices not only verify identity according to risk assessments, they also work to manage mobility by regulating where school bodies can go, when, and for what purposes. Moreover, this article analyzes how these risk profiling tactics, widely adopted by schools across the United States, necessarily borrow from the strategies used in sites of colonial occupation. Looking at schools in this way can help us plot how biometric bordering and resultant security decisions unfold at other sites of mobility beyond state (smart) borders, highways, toll booths, and ports of entry in order to formulate new “spaces of enclosure” (Amoore, Marmura, & Salter, 2008) and “dividing practices” (Nevins, 2002), thus bringing students into “closer proximity” to military relations of force through these “war-like architectures” (Amoore, 2009).     

Geography of belonging: nostalgic attachment,transnational home and global mobility among Romanian immigrants in Spain

This article explores how human global mobility is linked to a sense of home and belonging and outlines ways in which European Union (EU) enlargement could contribute to broader debates about migration, both empirically and theoretically. To accomplish this aim, I use the context of Romanian migration to Spain. Since EU enlargement in 2007, Spain has emerged as a major destination for Romanian migrants. The main argument of the paper is that transformations in the EU over the past 20 years through its open border policy have changed migrant workers into EU movers, and this change affects people's perceptions about sense of home. This analysis is prompted by a qualitative and narrative turn in migration studies, and an emphasis on new mobility pathways in accounting for the embodied dimensions of migration. Key to the paper is an analysis of how people can maintain a sense of home while being on the move. It attempts to demonstrate that migrants' experiences of belonging in their host country may vary greatly depending on the time of movement, the politics of EU borders, the nature of mobility and personal and individual circumstances.     

At home in the city: everyday practices and distinction in international student mobility

International students have been overlooked in geographies of ‘home’, yet this paper demonstrates how international student mobility offers unique insights that can advance our understanding of ‘home’ and belonging in the city. Drawing on photo-elicitation and mid-point and return interviews with Canadian students, this paper explores the everyday home-making practices of exchange students in urban centres in the Global South. It focuses on the ways in which international students create a sense of ‘home’ and belonging in their host city and how insider knowledge gained through local everyday practices is converted into cultural capital. It contributes to the literature by considering how home-making practices are implicated in spatial and scalar boundary-making processes for distinction. By illustrating through participants’ photographs how students articulate ‘home’ using spatial and scalar markers, I examine how students tighten the spatial boundaries of ‘home’ to focalise and localise symbolic capital within the city. The findings further add to debates on im/mobility by demonstrating that students’ distinguish their relative immobility during the sojourn from the mobility of travellers and tourists to legitimise claims of belonging as ‘insiders’ and of place-specific capital. The paper then concludes by considering how students are ‘collecting homes’ for distinction.     

Introduction: gendered mobilities and transnational identities

In this short introduction to a themed section on gendered mobilities and transnational identities the articles are introduced and the three key conceptual themes which emerge from the collection are discussed. It is argued first, that gendered migration patterns reconfigure all the social relations within transnational family formations. Second, that chains of care need to be conceptualised in more complex ways recognising multiple forms and circulations of care. Finally, it is suggested that attention needs to be paid to the ways in which institutions intersect with migration and transnational family formations.     

Making the emotional connection: transnational eldercare circulation within Sri Lankan-Australian transnational families

The scholarship on care for older parents within transnational families focuses mainly on the experience of unskilled migrants and is presented largely from the perspective of caregivers. Few studies consider the case of affluent, skilled migrants, and their wealthy older parents who also cross borders to visit and provide care for their migrant adult–children. Through Baldassar and Merla’s concept of ‘care circulation’ and the lens of emotional transnationalism, the article illustrates that despite affluent transnational family members’ mobility and access to resources that should facilitate successful circulation of care, care is not easily exchanged at an intimate level. Drawing upon 30 transnational family case studies of skilled migrants residing in Australia and their urban, high to middle-income older parents from Sri Lanka, I argue that older parents construct both caring across distance and in proximity as an attentiveness to their emotional care needs, and the time and effort taken to engage in emotion work; a task that is more challenging for migrant sons than daughters. The article reveals the manner in which gendered care practices both enable and inhibit care circulation between transnational migrants and their older parents.     

Thai wives in Singapore and transnational patriarchy

International marriage migration is a fraught terrain of gender and power relations. Based on research among Thai women married to Singaporean men, we argue that patriarchal outcomes – a distinctive system of transnational patriarchy – result from a complex interaction of women, men and nation-states. We draw on Deniz Kandiyoti's insights into patriarchal bargains as a productive framework through which to identify key elements in the making of transnational patriarchal relations. This article provides a detailed account of conditions in Thailand, Singapore and the contact zones in which Thai women and Singaporean men negotiate marriage migration. Relating this case to previous research, particularly among Filipina migrant women, demonstrates points of commonality while also highlighting the importance of attending to difference and diversity among transnational contexts.     

Towards transnational feminist queer methodologies

This article introduces the possibilities of transnational feminist queer research as seeking to conceptualise the transnational as a methodology composed of a series of flows that can augment feminist and queer research. Transnational feminist queer methodologies can contest long-standing configurations of power between researcher and researched, subject and object, academics and activists across places, typically those which are embedded in the hierarchies of the Global North/Global South. Beginning with charting our roots in, and routes through, the diverse arenas of transnational, feminist, participatory and queer methodologies, the article uses a transcribed and edited conversation between members of the Liveable Lives research team in Kolkata and Brighton, to start an exploration of transnational feminist queer methodologies. Understanding the difficult, yet constructive moments of collaborative work and dialogue, we argue for engagements with the multiplicities of ‘many-many’ lives that recognise local specificities, and the complexities of lives within transnational research, avoiding creating a currency of comparison between places. We seek to work toward methodologies that take seriously the politics of place, namely by creating research that answers the same question in different places, using methods that are created in context and may not be ‘comparable’. Using a dialogue across the boundaries of activism/academia, as well as across geographical locations, the article contends that there are potentials, as well as challenges, in thinking ourselves through transnational research praxis. This seeks complexities and spatial nuances within as well as between places.     

Protestantism as a transnational ideology

The Spanish Federal Council of the European Movement (SFCEM), founded as a Spanish organization to favour the integration of Spain in Europe, was composed of representatives of various political organizations of the Republican government in exile. Correspondence between the President, Salvador de Madariaga, and the members of the Basque and Catalonian delegations discloses one of the most critical issues of the time: how to organize the Spanish regions after the fall of Franco’s regime. This article explores how the ideas of a Spanish federation – defended by Madariaga – and the interest of the nationalist groups collided during the decades of 1950s and 1960s. The result was a harsh debate on separatism between the Basques and Catalans, who saw Franco’s Spain as the representation of centralism and repression of their identities, and other Spanish exiles.     

International mobility of women in science and technology careers: shaping plans for personal and professional purposes

International mobility has become a key requirement in science and technology (S&T) professional career progression. On the one hand, the increasing mobility of women suggests that this may be a way for them to avoid or get away from women-unfriendly working environments. On the other hand, international mobility can present problems for women as they, particularly, have to plan their lives around their professional goals and personal lives. This article addresses the international mobility strategies of women regarding their personal and professional choices. We analyse their motivations to move, the way they manage their lives abroad and the effects of mobility on their lives. The analysis is based on 24 in-depth interviews of highly skilled women working in Spanish S&T sectors. Our main findings show that mobility is a new challenge which may improve women's family lives and professional careers. However, they have to plan carefully their lives on a long-term as well as a daily basis. In this sense, they need strong personal determination and the ability to balance their professional and personal goals. Moreover, their personal decisions depend not only on them as individuals, but also on their partners and families, on wider social values, on the institutional support they enjoy, and on the general public policies which they are affected by.     

Epistemic justice and everyday nationalism: An auto‐ethnography of transnational student encounters in a post‐war memory and reconciliation project in Kosovo

This contribution introduces an exercise in epistemic justice to the study of everyday nationalism in post‐conflict, transnational (local and international) encounters. It explores how everyday nationalism, in often unexpected and hidden ways, underpinned a cocreational, educational project involving several local (Albanian) and international (British based) university students and staff collaborating on the theme of post‐war memory and reconciliation in Kosovo. The set‐up resembled a microcosm of transnational social encounters in project collaborations in which the problem of nationalism, typically, is associated with one side only: here, the Kosovars. Guided by Goffman's (1982) social interactionist framework, the study employs selected participants' paraethnographic and auto‐ethnographic reflections of their project experiences and practices after the event in order to trace the everyday workings of mutual assumptions and constructions of a national self and other for all sides involved. In this, it explores how the project participants' asymmetric positioning within a wider, global context of unequal power relations shaped their vernacular epistemologies of belonging and identity. It thereby excavated what otherwise taken‐for‐granted criteria can become relevant in such local/international social encounters as reflected upon and how the enduring power imbalances underpinning these might best be redressed.     

Spatializing transnational history: European spaces and territories

This article introduces the dossier ‘Spatializing Transnational History: European spaces and territories’. It examines the intersections between transnational history and the so-called ‘spatial turn’ in social sciences, and points at future directions in historical research. It reviews two main different methodological approaches to the problem of space in transnational, comparative and global history and examines recent contributions on the history of territory. Finally, it introduces the contributions to this dossier, which approach the history of modern Europe from a number of transnational and spatial perspectives. The dossier argues that incorporating a combination of spatial approaches, ranging from the examination of transnational spaces, to the interplay between different scales of analysis, and to the historicization of territoriality, into the practice of transnational, comparative and global history may contribute to a deeper, wider and more complex understanding of ‘Europe’.     

The Anti-Risorgimento as a transnational experience

The struggle led after 1860 by the Anti-Risorgimento (understood as the conservative opposition to Italian unification) went beyond the frontiers of new Italy. The transnationality of this campaign manifested itself in numerous ways, from international networks of financial support and militancy that were closely associated with counter-revolution and supported by the international structures of the Roman Catholic Church, to forms of transnational mobilisation such as armed volunteerism. This internationalisation of anti-Unity fighting was a conscious strategy of the movement's leaders. They relied on a tradition of solidarity and exchange within the ultraconservative camp – a sort of ‘white international’ – to further the transnational construction of a European identity of counter-revolution. In Italy, the victory of the nationalist movement endowed various anti-liberal forces with a common adversary and common goals; yet the strategy adopted by the Papacy (still a temporal power until 1870), in relation to the cause of the dispossessed sovereigns, was not devoid of ambiguity.     

Queering the transnational turn: regionalism and queer Asias

In recent years, queer studies has increasingly interrogated the racial and colonial unconscious embedded in the earlier studies of non-normative genders and sexualities through the critical frameworks of queer of color critique and queer diaspora studies. This article aims to ‘queer the transnational turn’ by considering what critical edge ‘regionalism’ might bring to the investigation of queer modernities in Asia from both contemporary and historical vantage points. The introductory section of the article provides a broad overview of the ‘transnational turn’ in queer studies, what we diagnose as the ‘area unconscious’ of queer studies in its exclusive critique of Western colonial modernity, and the related binary of cultural particularism versus Eurocentric universalism. Alternatively, we argue that the concept of regionalism can be productively mobilized in order to study the various scales of queer sexualities that traffic within and circulate across Southeast Asia, Australia, imperial China, and contemporary Sinophone cultures (Sinitic-language communities on the margins of or outside mainland China). Through a paired reading of Johann S. Lee’s Singaporean queer novel, Peculiar Chris (1992), and Su Chao-Bin and John Woo’s Sinophone martial art film, the Reign of Assassins (2010), our inquiry accounts for how the spatial–temporal telos of global queering get materially translated across multiple regional hubs of sexual differences. Queer regionalism in Singapore, China, and the Sinophone worlds encompasses relational dynamics, power differentials, and subnational and supranational linkages. Finally, queering regionalism can open up new analytical frameworks for the study of sexualities and corporealities across transcolonial relations and wider temporal and spatial connections.     

Heritage,transnational memory and the re-diasporisation of Scotland

For a long time in Scotland, diasporic – and popular – heritage with its imaginary emphasising kinship, stylised images and ritualised practices was either overlooked or discredited. The term ‘diaspora’ itself to define Scotland’s vast overseas population has been scrutinised for its usefulness. However, since devolution, it has gained currency in public discourse and policies and has led to the ‘re-diasporisation’ of Scotland. Yet, the ‘diaspora’ had long been identified as an important niche market in relation to heritage perceived as an economic resource. This article explores the changing perception and place of diasporic heritage in Scotland since the 1970s through two case studies. Focusing on processes of remembrance of nineteenth-century Highland emigration materialised through monuments and museums, it highlights the conflicting and shifting relationships that different communities – home and diasporic – have with their past, place and the meanings ascribed to them. The transnational memories increasingly promoted in Scotland act as a means of re-energising nationhood and initiating revisions and re-reading of popular and diasporic culture.     

Revisiting transnational actors from a spatial perspective

Actor-centred approaches feature prominently in transnational history. Studying transnational actors has helped to better grasp the extent, dynamics and mechanisms of particular cross-border connections, and has highlighted the entanglement and mutual constitution of cultures and societies in a more general sense. While empirical research continues to reveal more forms of their interaction, the general notion of ‘transnational actors’ has been gradually flattened out: the transnational sphere is now often studied in isolation and conceived of as a rather homogeneous space, while transnational actors are largely viewed solely in their border-crossing capacities and activities. The authors argue that while such a focus successfully captures their mobility, it overlooks another important dimension, namely their embeddedness in local, national, imperial or regional contexts. To reconnect these aspects, the authors situate transnational actors in their diverse socio-spatial relations. Investigating them in this way brings out their important role not only as connectors, but also as producers of various kinds of spaces. The contributions to this dossier highlight that transnational fields of activity are heterogeneous and deeply entangled with other spaces of action and belonging.