Barrio resurgence in Buenos Aires: Local autonomy claims amid state-sponsored transnationalism

This paper argues that observing neighborhood movements through the lens of territorial state restructuring holds theoretical promise. Contemporary struggles over municipal decentralization need to be located within broader state re-scaling processes. Seeking to contribute a Latin American perspective to the largely Anglo-American field of urban neoliberalization research, this study engages with the emergence of local autonomy claims in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Middle-class activists and organizations advanced such claims against the background of thorough transnationalism, in what may be interpreted as a localist political reaction to the socio-spatial consequences of urban and state restructuring. Field evidence is used to assess the ultimate political efficacy and democratic implications of their political agency, particularly in what concerns municipal decentralization. It is argued that curtailing the empowerment of barrio districts were the following conditions: mayoral opposition to communal reforms; ongoing cross-scalar tensions between the city and national government; and the barrio-centric issue framings of activists, which hampered social recruitment in an increasingly heterogeneous and transnationalized urban space.     

Geopolitics of decolonisation: The subaltern diplomacies of Lusophone Africa (1961–1974)

This paper addresses the global engagement of certain African intellectuals who strove for the independence of Lusophone Africa. It does so using geopolitical lenses based on new and multilingual archives. Extending current scholarship on subaltern geopolitics, cultures of decolonisation, and critical development studies, I show the performance of the subaltern diplomacies deployed by political leaders such as Amílcar Cabral, Mário Pinto de Andrade, Agostinho Neto, Eduardo Mondlane, and Marcelino dos Santos in capturing international sympathy for their cause from other scholars, activists, and politicians at different levels (from grassroots movements to state leaders and international organisations) across the divides between Cold War blocs and the fields of the ‘First’, ‘Second’, and ‘Third World’. I argue that these endeavours disrupted mainstream narratives of development and Euro-centred ideas of assimilation, partly due to their emphasis on education and the production of subaltern histories and geographies that were instrumental to the national construction of new decolonised countries from so-called ‘Portuguese Africa’. In the 1960s and early 1970s, these intellectuals used the weapons of culture, public communication, and transnational networking as devices that were as important as the accomplishments of their fellow guerrilla fighters in the battlefield. Additionally, these stories confirm the importance of the archive for tracing cosmopolite, multilingual, and diasporic networks and their spatiality, as well as for doing critical geopolitics from perspectives other than Anglo- or Western-centred ones, thus decolonising geography.     

Making and remaking Tibetan diasporic identities

The fifty-year long Chinese occupation of Tibet has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands and has produced a refugee flow that continues today. Although the plight of Tibetans commands international attention, this diaspora remains understudied and undertheorized. To speak to this silence, we follow Patterson and Kelley (2000) and argue that the Tibetan diaspora can be analysed as both a condition and a process. Diaspora as condition emphasizes the structural features of an exile population, such as race, gender, class and religion. Diaspora as process draws attention to lived refugee experiences--the making and remaking of diasporic identities. In the Tibetan diaspora, His Holiness the Dalai Lama holds a central position. Through his global profile, and a transnational nationalist political structure, he creates images of Tibet, builds community and works toward Tibetan self-determination. Within this nationalist frame, Tibetan identities assume a singular, unified and homogeneous form. Further analysis that focuses on individual voices, however, shows how Tibetan diasporic identities are contested, complex and embedded in not one but multiple narratives of struggle.     

Latinos in the USA: Changing socio-economic patterns

This paper aims to provide an overview of socio-economic inequality experienced by Latinas and Latinos, suggesting that the increase in numbers and their dispersal throughout the country disrupts the traditional black–white paradigm used in race relations theory. Instead, I argue that the particular historical and geographical experiences of Latinas/os portend complex changes within labour markets and neighbourhoods and across families, ultimately challenging how we think about race relations in the USA.     

Transnational turnout. Determinants of emigrant voting in home country elections

A wide majority of countries acknowledge non-resident citizens' right to vote in elections in their country of origin. However, classical turnout theories do not take into account how electoral mobilisation has expanded into a transnational political field that reaches beyond national state borders. This paper analyses the determinants of emigrant turnout based on an original dataset of 25 countries of origin and each of the counties of residence where these voters reside. We find that emigrant communities from developing democracies experience a steep political learning curve that prompts their participation in home country politics, especially if they reside in countries with solid democratic institutions and linkages with their host societies. Our research also shows that remittances not only indicate commitment to family members’ welfare in home countries, but positively influence participation in home country politics.     

Teaching transnationalism in the Caribbean: toward an understanding of representation and neo‐colonialism in human geography

Undergraduate geography courses provide a significant entry way into representing and challenging dominant images of places and identities. Teaching geography in the Caribbean raises significant issues in terms of providing materials that explore representations of places and topics that are grounded in the region, while also moving beyond representations of islands as simply ‘Third World’, separate and distant. The author draws on the case study of teaching human geography courses at the University of the West Indies‐Mona, to explore the usefulness of transnationalism as a pedagogical framework—in conjunction with the use of films and fieldtrips—while examining processes of representation and neo‐colonialism.     

"Adapt,adjust, accommodate": The production of yoga in a transnational World

The Divine Life Society (DLS) is a spiritual organization founded by Swami Sivananda of Rishikesh, India. Sivananda's DLS, including associated centers across India and abroad, has figured prominently in expanding the role of yoga as a tool for the development of modern India. In this paper, Sivananda's own poetry and the many pamphlets and books produced by this noted swami, his contemporaries, and his successors through the 20th century in India serve to highlight ways that the promotion and practice of yoga has contributed to the ongoing Indian nationalist project. In addition, yoga is viewed from the perspective of the transnational and global forces that have become dominant in the latter half of the 20th century.     

Transnational artifacts: Grappling with fluid material origins and identities in archaeological interpretations of culture change

There has been a gradual shift in historical archaeology towards interpretive approaches to material culture, including recognition of the potential for multiple functions and meanings in local contexts. It is argued here that artifacts can also maintain multiple, fluid origins and identities that affect our understanding of the nature of cultural persistence and change among migrant, indigenous and other ethnic groups. However, predefined classification schemes are often rigid and do not allow for this kind of fluidity, including the potential for artifacts from one culture to be indigenized into another. Data drawn from recent research on Japanese migrants in British Columbia, in conjunction with an approach rooted in transnationalism and diaspora, are used to highlight the nature of these ambiguities and to suggest methodological and theoretical means of overcoming them. These solutions include the need to develop contextual classification schemes that incorporate multiple artifact identities and to conduct detailed material culture histories that trace shifting origins and identities both before and during periods of migration or displacement.     

Indonesian domestic workers and the (un)making of transnational livelihoods and provisional futures

Doreen Massey (2005. For Space. London: Sage.) argued that space and time should not be reduced to a bounded locality of the ‘here and now’ and instead proposed re-imagining ‘space as simultaneity of stories-so-far’. We build on her argument to suggest that an appreciation of migrant aspirations and future trajectories require us to go beyond simultaneous ‘stories-so-far’ but also consider ‘stories-to-come’ which may build upon, divert from, or even unmake the ‘stories-so-far’. We apply these ideas to our study (based on a questionnaire survey and in-depth interviews) of the transnational journeys traced by Indonesian domestic workers employed in Singaporean middle-class homes. We argue that socially and culturally specific notions of risk can work to propel and sustain migration into retrogressive occupations like domestic work, as well as disrupt dominant narratives around migrants as strategic actors, necessarily in control of their trajectories and driven by their migration plans. The calculus of risk-taking and aspiration on which transnational livelihoods are predicated is one that takes into account both situatedness in and connectedness across different places (in short simultaneous ‘stories-so-far’). At the same time, future ‘stories-to-come’ may entail both subtle shifts and constant (re)negotiations that propel individual life stories unto different pathways.