THE STATE OF THE ART 1

Transnationalisation, Migration and Transformation: Multi Level Analysis of Migrant Transnationalism (TRANS NET) 7 th Framework Programme Socio Economic Sciences and the Humanities THE STATE OF THE ART 1 1 This report has been carried out by the research teams of the project: Finland: Pirkko Pitkänen, Pauliina Järvinen Alenius, Laura Huttunen, Mika Raunio, Anna Virkama, Virve Kallioniemi Chambers; Estonia: Rein Ruutsoo, Leif Kalev, Kristina Ling; France: Aïssa Kadri, Fatima Ben Lmadani; Germany: Thomas Faist, Jürgen Gerdes, Eveline Reisenauer; India: S. Irudaya Rajan, V. J. Varghese; Morocco: Noureddine Harrami, Hayat Naciri; Turkey: Ahmet Icduygu, Deniz Sert; United Kingdom: Filippo Osella, Ralph Grillo, Kaveri Harriss

This paper presents the general aims of the framework project Transnationalisation, Migration and Transformation: Multi Level Analysis of Migrant Transnationalism (TRANS NET) 2 and the current state of research on transnationalism. The first section introduces the TRANS NET project, while the second one presents a review of the research literature in the field. The third section shows the point of departure within TRANS NET, and the fourth one introduces the state of research in the participating countries. Finally the concluding chapter shows how the project will go beyond the current state of the art. 1. INTRODUCTION The aim of TRANS NET is to clarify and compare the multi level processes of transnationalism 3. Though increasingly important the question of transnationalism is still poorly understood. This three year research project will investigate structural factors related to the complex phenomena surrounding transnational 4 migration and their implications for the people s everyday life. The main research question is: How do migrants activities across national borders emerge, function, and change, and how are they related to the processes of governance in increasingly complex and interconnected world? The following transnational spaces will be taken as the main units to analyse the border crossing relationships: Estonia/Finland, India/U.K., Morocco/France, and Turkey/Germany. Transnational linkages and migration across boundaries entail manifold political, economic, social, cultural and educational implications. Subsequently, this research will be organised around the political, socio cultural, economic and educational aspects on transnationalism. In addition to the broader and highly aggregated structural level (macro), we are interested in the individual decision making level (micro), and people within the transnational networks on the intermediate level (meso). 2. THE CURRENT STATE OF RESEARCH ON TRANSNATIONALISM One of the major challenges for policy makers in the contemporary world is the increase in the transnational mobility of people. Although back and forth migration over national borders has always existed it has not pervaded such critical mass and attained everyday complexity as it has today. The ready availability of air transport, longdistance telephone, facsimile communication, Internet, and electronic mail has made this possible: travel and communications across national borders have become rapid and easy. The political integration of the European Union and the collapse of the Soviet Union are the two major forces influencing transnational mobility above and beyond technological changes and the globalisation pressures in the realm of economics. Whereas past migrants settled in the countries of reception, in this new age of migration (Castles & Miller, 1998), they often retain significant continuing and intense political, economic, social and cultural ties and linkages to their countries of origin. Today, most nation states contain transnational migrants, some long term residents, others recent arrivals, who have a multiple orientation: to the country of residence and to another place with which they maintain political, economic, familial, religious and/or linguistic ties, and which may be conceived of as home. That orientation may be dual, or even triple in that populations from home may be spread across several countries or continents. 5 (Portes, Guarnizo & Landolt, 1999: 217, 223; Grillo, 2001: 10; Rogers, 2002: 8.) Since the 1990s, scholars have used the term transnationalism for this type of migration 6, to emphasise the emergence of transnational spaces 7 in which migrants establish social fields that cross geographic, cultural, and political borders. The notion of transnationalim goes beyond the conventional dichotomies of migratory settings such as sending versus receiving countries, but at the same time it also involves this conventional dichotomy. Therefore, it is a concept which is able to carry the old discourse of migration studies into the new global realities. Moreover, the concept of transnationalisation has been used to describe a wider process of change, covering 2 The TRANS NET project, coordinated by the University of Tampere, Finland, is funded by the European Commission s DG Research (7 FP). 3 The concept of transnationalism is used here as a perspective on cross border migrations and on the ties migrants and others forge in the processes connected, as a description of actual processes happening, and as a result (such as desirable state of affairs, transnational social spaces, etc.) of cross border migrations. 4 Transnational here refers to a perspective on cross border migration with an emphasis on ties among migrants and others evolving in the process of (international) migration. 5 It should be noted that not all migrants crossing international borders are transmigrants ; some cut their ties to the countries and regions of origin, like for instance some ethnic Turks who migrated to Turkey after World War One from the Balkans. 6 On the other hand, the term transnational was employed as early as 1916 (by R. Bourne), and has actively been used by researchers since the 1970s (Mahler, 2002: 66). 7 The concept of transnational space is used here to incorporate the macro, meso and micro level contexts that span two or more nation states, including both geographic spaces and imagined communities. 2

multi local configurations that reach beyond national boundaries. Some researchers have looked for connections between transnationalisation and Europeanisation. Sabine Mannitz (2002: 3), for instance, argues that the process of Europeanisation can be seen as one specific case of transnationalisation which embraces the economic, the political and the social sphere. Finally, both the phenomena of transnationalism and transnationalisation draw on from and contribute to processes of globalisation. Although some researchers tend to blur the distinction between transnationalisation and globalisation, this project rests upon the conception that there is a marked difference between the concepts. The term 'transnationalisation' may partially overlap with 'globalisation', but typically it has a more limited purview. Whereas global processes are largely decentred from specific nation state territories and take place in a world context above and below states, transnational processes are anchored in and span two or more nation states, involving actors from the spheres of both state and civil society (see Faist, 2000: 5). During the recent decade, a number of studies have been published on transnationalism, transnationalisation, transnational migration, transnational networks, transnational communities, transnational social spaces, and so on. The research has been very manifold, fragmented and rather confusing. The confusion is closely tied to the conceptualization of the phenomenon of transnationalism: the concept is often used loosely and without specificity. A further problem is that so far research has avoided directly addressing the transformative processes linked to transnational migration. (Glick Schiller et al., 1992: ix; Portes et al., 1999: 218; Smith & Guarnizo, 2002: 3 6; Vertovec, 2004: 970 973.) In comparison with the current state of the art, this project represents an advance as it will provide comprehensive theoretical analyses and practical insights on the multi level transformation processes surrounding transnationalism and transnationalisation. The term transformation is used here to describe deep and far reaching processes which within a relatively limited time span, change societies and modify people s living conditions. These transformation processes often develop out of both individual and collective short term actions which are unexpected ways to constitute fundamental and long term changes. In this project, we hypothesize that the large scale institutional and actor centred patterns of transformation come about through a constellation of parallel processes. This kind of approach describes the joint impacts of macro level processes, cross border ties and networks, and the motivations and meanings of people as their own agents in processes of change. (cf. Castles, 2001; Wiltshire: 2001: 8; Vertovec, 2004: 971 974.) Much of the earlier research has dealt with the question of why people migrate. These models have mainly emphasized the push pull factors behind international migration, and sought to discover the forces at work when people form emigration intentions. An interesting study is the Eurostat research project on Push and Pull Factors of International Migration coordinated by Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute. An international group of researchers investigated structural characteristics that trigger push potential migrants from Morocco, Turkey, Egypt, Ghana and Senegal, and the variables that pull potential migrants towards the countries of destination. The most notable finding was that individual specific expectations about the net benefits of emigration out of Africa were the prime driving force behind emigration intentions. The research also revealed that the lack of economic growth prospects triggered emigration and, consequently, affected the age and sex structure of the population and the educational and skill composition of the labour force. (Schoorl, et al., 2000.) In today s world, new patterns of international migration, and consequently, new types of transnational migrants are emerging. The migrants may be long term and temporary, seasonal, posted or irregular, moving back and forth between states, sometimes circumventing state controls over borders and taxes. Sometimes, transnational spaces may themselves become communities of orientation. For example, many Indian high tech professionals are citizens of the world, market driven migrants, whose main objective is to seek career opportunities that will enable them to maximize their earnings and savings in the shortest possible time. Not just labour migrants but also many asylum seekers are constantly or periodically in motion back and forth across continuous or non continuous territorial boundaries. These phenomena challenge the assumptions about clear cut distinctions between emigrant and immigrant in the case of recurrent migrants. It is also becoming increasingly difficult to make a distinction between countries of emigration and immigration: the country of origin may turn into an immigrant country again, especially in light of usually high rates of return in international migration. They also raise new kinds of questions about the formation of multiple transnational spaces in migration systems. (Faist, 2000: 9 13, 30, 51; Rao, 2001; Vertovec, 2004: 985, 987; Koehn, 2006: 22.) A current concern among policy makers is the question of the relationship between intra EU transnationalism and extra EU transnationalism. This is in part a consequence of the EU s moves towards internal freedom of circulation (Schengen and non Schengen). Historical backgrounds and geopolitical structures denote an array of factors both in the emigration and destination countries and in the international political and economic system of nation states. Especially the direction from South to North, which represents one of the great waves of transnational migration, often turns into relations of unequal interdependence, characterized by colonial ties and by gross and continued imbalances 3

of political power, economic development, and cultural penetration. A crude contrast can also be made between East and West; there is a corresponding history of geopolitical types of transnationalism both at global and European levels. For instance, in Eastern Europe, political and economic dislocations since 1989 have resulted in a thoroughgoing transition from regulated immobility to increasingly disorderly movement (Rogers, 2000: 8). In the past decade, in post communist countries, borders have been moving across people and their communities. Thus, both people and borders move. According to Rogers (2002), the Western European variant of transnationalism takes two forms. One is much like the economically driven transnational migration which also extends to social and political connections of all kinds. The other is more peculiar to the European Union, transnationalism as emerging within and making use of EU political and economic space. There has been a considerable amount of research focusing on large structural conditions and macro structural linkages between emigration and immigration countries. For instance, migration system theory has assumed that migration systems 8 create the context in which movement occurs and that these systems influence people s actions on whether to stay or to move. Basically, a migration system includes two or more places most often nationstates connected to each other by flows and counterflows of people. Lately, migration system theory has stressed the existence of linkages between countries other than people, such as trade and security alliances, colonial ties, and flows of goods, services, information, and ideas. These linkages have usually existed before migration flows occurred. For example, in the case of France and the United Kingdom, most movers come from former colonies. (Portes & Walton, 1981; Boyd, 1989: 641; Faist, 2000: 50 51, 305 306.) According to Thomas Faist (2000), the migration system approaches have been fairly successful in explaining the direction and the processes of transnational migration, since they highlight that transnational movement is not a one time event but rather a dynamic process consisting of a sequence of events across time. However, in order to explain the transformative dynamics of transnational migration, the system approach should be enriched with migration network theory. 9 The network theorists 10 have mainly been interested in the dynamics of migration, such as chain migration and the form and pattern of ties in migrant networks. However, Faist argues that most of the theories have avoided addressing the questions about how migrant networks come into existence; or that the networks entail the circuitous movement of goods, ideas, information, and symbols. Accordingly, he suggests to improve the network theory by connecting the structure of ties in transnational networks, and the content of ties social capital (Faist, 2000: 30). In his book The Volume and Dynamics of International Migration and Transnational Social Spaces (2000), Faist presents a multi level model in which he utilizes the metaphor of transnational social space to illustrate how the transnational reciprocities and solidarities forged through migrant networks and groups form a critical mass evolving into new social entities that cross nation state boundaries for a considerable amount of time for at least one immigrant cohort. The transnational social spaces are relatively permanent flows of people, goods, ideas, symbols, and services across international borders that tie stayers and movers and corresponding networks and non state organisations; regulated by emigration and immigration state policies.thus, the concept of social space transcends the understanding of space as a sort of container to a socially, politically, and economically relevant construct. (Faist, 2000: 13, 54, 309 310.) Likewise, Alejandro Portes, Luis E. Guarnizo and Particia Landolt (1999) use the typology of economic, political and socio cultural transnationalism to define a well organized theoretical framework on transnational migration. They suggest that in order to establish the phenomenon, at least three conditions are necessary: (1) The process involves a significant proportion of individuals in the relevant universe (immigrants and their home country counterparts); (2) The activities of interest are not fleeting or exceptional, but possess a certain stability and resilience over time; and (3) The content of these activities is not captured by some pre existing concept, making the invention of a new term redundant. (Portes et al., 1999: 217 230.) Stephen Vertovec (2004) remarks that, although migrant transnational practices are involved in deep seated patterns of change or structural transformation, transnationalism should not be studied solely from an organisational point of view, but also as it occurs within, and has impact upon, the daily lives of individuals (see Voigt Graf, 2002). He points out that migrant transnationalism alone does not itself cause transformation, rather migrant practices draw upon and contribute significantly to ongoing processes of transformation, largely associated with facets of globalisation, already underway. Thus, the modes of transformation, and the practices of migrant 8 Migration systems consist of the totality of migration and migrant networks spanning countries of emigration and immigration, and manifold organisations regulating the flow of people. 9 In fact, system theorists have vigorously applied social network theory; there is extensive body of research literature giving explanations of migration dynamics with the help of the network concept (Kritz & Zlotnik, 1992; Faist, 2000: 30). 10 A network is defined here as a set of individual or collective actors ranging from individuals, families, firms, and nationstates and the relations that couple them (Faist, 2000: 51). 4

transnationalism surrounding them, both draw on and contribute to wider processes of globalisation. According to Vertovec (2004: 970 1001), the current transnational practices among migrants involve modes of transformation discernible (at least) in the following domains: (1) perceptual transformation affecting what can be described as migrants orientational bifocality in the socio cultural domain; (2) conceptual transformation of meanings within a notional triad of identities borders orders in the political domain; and (3) institutional transformation affecting forms of financial transfer, public private relationships and local development in the economic domain. Each set of transformations involves multiple causes, linked processes and observable outcomes. Thus, the domains of transformation fostered by migrant transnationalism include basic structures of individual orientation, fundamental political frameworks, and integral processes of economic development. 3. POINT OF DEPARTURE In this project, the three faceted conceptualisation of political, socio cultural and economic domains forms the basis for future research work, but with the addition of educational domain of transnationalism. Whilst considerable attention has been paid by researchers and policy makers to economic and social issues, like remittances and their impact on poverty and growth, or to the brain drain, analysis of the links between transnational migration and education have been largely ignored. Our initial premise is that whilst transnational migration is generally associated with far reaching political, social, cultural and economic transformations, the direction of change in educational practices is unpredictable, being contingent not only on social, religious cultural and political circumstances of migrant communities, but also on the specific life trajectories of migrant households.thus, this proposed project and its conceptual framework rest upon the understanding of transnational space as a politically, socio culturally, economically, and educationally transformative construct. While large scale patterns carry the danger of overemphasizing structural conditions and social organisations, actor centred approaches are in danger of overlooking them. To balance the picture, a multi level approach will form the basis for both theoretical and empirical studies in this project. The term transnational space is used here to incorporate multiple levels on analysis: the political socio cultural, economic educational structures and everyday experiences of transformation processes will be investigated on macro, meso, and micro levels 11. 3.1. Analytical levels 3.1.1 Macro level Wider structures on the level of the nation states, multinational constructions, and the world system as a whole constitute the macro level. In today s increasingly borderless world, an unprecedented number of individuals and households are on the move. Roughly a billion people traverse nation state borders annually. An estimated 200 M men, women and children including skilled professionals, contract workers, students, officially recognized and de facto refugees, victims of human trafficking and undocumented residents currently live outside their country of origin. With the dismantling of formal barriers to labour mobility within the European Union, millions of Europeans currently work and reside in a Member State other than their own. Migration systems evolving in wider political, economic, cultural, and historical linkages create the context in which this transnational movement of people occurs. It is evident that an array of worldwide transformations is under way due to a convergence of contemporary political, social, economic and technological processes. Migrant transnational practices are stimulated and fostered by these processes; and transnational migrant practices accumulate to augment and perhaps even amplify many macro level transformative processes. (Vertovec, 2004: 992; Koehn, 2006: 22.) Macro structural analysis implies relationships between governments and authorities in the emigration and immigration countries and international organisations 12. Nation states differ regarding political factors such as external power in the international system, internal administrative capacity, efficiency, and political stability. This has implications for the emergence of transnational migration. The admission and integration policies of countries vary from open to restrictive. Nation states tend to favour the admission of certain immigrant categories and 11 It should be kept in mind that, in practice, these levels are interconnected in multiple ways. Thus, at all analytical levels (macro meso micro) we will explore links with different levels and study their interconnections and interrelations. 12 International organisations and programmes have an important role: consider the international covenants on human rights and the Geneva Convention on refugees and asylum seekers; the programmes of the International Labour Organisation and the International Organization for Migration as well as Unesco s programme on Management of Social Transformation (MOST), for example. Moreover, in recent years, several multinational initiatives have emerged around the relationship between migration and development, such as the Global Commission on International Migration (2005), the High Level Dialogue on International Migration and Development (2006), and most recently the Global Forum on International Migration and Development (2007). The effects and implications of these organisations are highly important, but still poorly understood. 5

newcomers from certain countries, while making it harder for people from other groups and territorial origins. (Faist, 2000: 32 33, 306.) At a European level, the integration project of the EU can be seen as one specific case of transnationalisation which embraces the political, economic and social spheres. Until now the success story of the European unification has been designed and carried out mostly in top down procedures of administration and legal adaptation. On that level, transnational Europe is already a substantial reality: at least on the level of normative rhetoric, the shape of united Europe has become as model type transnational space. At an individual level, a pan European social space is more questionable. 13 It is also evident that the new Member States and candidate countries present a particular challenge for this process. (Mannitz, 2002.) The great waves of current transnational migration from South to North and from East to West can be explained by economic inequality and the imbalance of political power between countries of origin and destination. Such differentials are important prerequisites factors in analysing the development consequences of the mobility of highly skilled persons. Whereas in the 1960s, a majority of analyses entertained the idea of a brain gain for developing countries, and mobility was seen as a resource for modernizing developing countries, in the 1970s and 1980s, the reverse was more critical view of the brain drain, with the underlying assumption that emigration was harmful to developing countries. In the course of the 1990s, the dominant academic and political mood shifted again. Currently experts and politicians from industrial countries in need of highly skilled technological specialists assert that there is a brain circulation, an apparently neutral term. There are claims about mutual benefits for all actors involved, for the highly skilled as well as for the emigration and immigration countries themselves, such as the creation of jobs in the software industry and increasing capital investment from abroad. In highly industrialized countries, public policies directed toward recruiting highly skilled migrants now routinely also include efforts to attract international students. Subsequently some countries (Germany and Finland, for example) have recently changed their legislation to allow international degree students to remain or to re enter once they have completed their studies. At the same time, countries of emigration have begun to take initiatives to reverse the brain drain. Examples include the Indian government s efforts to sponsor investments by expatriates in IT sector. (Faist, 2007: 12 15.) 3.1.2 Meso level On the meso level, a transnational space consists of migrant networks 14 cutting across discrete organisations such as nation states. Transnational ties and networks are increasingly important factors in today s world, but still poorly understood. Our goal is to gather empirical evidence to understand the fundamental internal dynamics of migrant networks, and their political and economic prerequisites in the countries of emigration and destination. Not only individuals participate in migrant networks; collectives such as households, kinship groups, or organisations are also part of them. Thus, the set of transnational ties and networks among movers and groups, and the resources inherent in these relations constitute the main focus on the meso level. This refers to the ties among migrants with units and networks in the areas of origin and destination, and relations between relevant collective actors (such as kin groups, households, religious groups, ethnic communities). The meaning of networks can also be extended to include transnational organisations and collective actors such as multinational organisations and non state institutions. They shape and influence access to overseas employment and safe havens through the operation of institutional rules and resources. It is usually a complex institutional web in which knowledgeable individuals and the agents of organisations, ranging from immigrant associations to multinational corporations, and state authorities operate. (Faist, 2000: 11 16, 305.) Nevertheless, in this project the emphasis is on the ties people entertain with others. These ties may be bi or multinational: they may reach to the immigration and emigration countries, or to several countries at the same time. This creates changing models for their political, social, cultural and economic participation, and alternative paths to their career development and status achievements. Whereas, previously, the economic success and social status of newcomers depended exclusively on rapid acculturation and entrance into the mainstream circles of the host society, at present they depend (at least for some) on cultivating strong social and economic networks across national borders. Technological advances in long distance transport and communications have facilitated the emergence of transnational entrepreneurs to bridge the distinct but complementary needs of migrant and home country populations. The demand for news and information, foods and cultural products from their home country is high in expatriate communities, while desire appliances, advanced electronic products, and investments financed by immigrant capital is widespread among the population left behind. (Goldring, 1996; Guarnizo, 1997; Portes et al., 1999: 228 229; Vertovec, 2004: 983.) 13 Portes et al. (1999: 221) use the terms transnationalism from above and from below to describe transnational activities initiated and conducted by individual migrants and larger structural organisations. 14 Network is understood here as a configuration of social, symbolic, and material ties. 6

As Vertovec (2004) notes, while not by themselves bringing about substantial societal transformations, patters of cross border exchange and relationship among migrants may contribute significantly to broadening, enhancing or intensifying conjoined processes of transformation that are already ongoing. It can even be asked, what is not transformative in migrant transnationalism? An answer given by Vertovec (2004: 972) is the following: The widening of networks, more activities across distances, and speedier communications reflect important forms of transnationalism in themselves. However, they do not necessarily lead to long lasting, structural changes in global or local societies. Migrants have historically maintained long distance social networks, and the fact that messages or visits take shorter time does not always lead to significant alterations in structure, purpose or practice within the network. He adds that sometimes the matter of degree really counts. The extensiveness, intensity and velocity of networked flows of information and resources may indeed combine to fundamentally alter the way people do things. 3.1.3 Micro level On the micro level analysis, the focus rests in individual transnational migrants, their living conditions, experiences and conceptions. This includes both the political social economic positions of migrants and their transnational practices. It should be noted that all cross border moves are not regarded as transnational. Migrants will be referred to as transnational only in those cases in which they develop and maintain political, social, cultural, economic and/or educational relations that span national borders. Transmigrants are persons who live in either the country of emigration or destination and commute back and forth between the two locations. They may also return to their countries of origin. Sometimes returnees do not endure living in the original emigration countries upon return or are forced to leave again, maybe to a third country. Return migration is however different from circular migration: circular migration is characterized by frequent movement between two or more places, such as in seasonal labour migration. Not just work based migrants but also asylum seekers may live moving back and forth between two or more states, sometimes circumventing state controls. (Faist, 2000: 19; Fitzgerald, 2000: 10; Vertovec, 1999; 2001; 2004: 979.) It is obvious that the number of people not present in the past is going to increase. Peter Koehn (2006: 22) writes: Looking toward the future, the most likely population scenario will involve more people, more population movement, more displacement both internally and internationally and more demands for effective responses by relevant authorities (see Helton, 2002: 14). Among transnational migrants, even in the case of permanent settlement abroad, old ties to the country of origin may be maintained or new ones established both in the country of origin and in the immigration country. An increasing trend is that migrants and the overseas communities are increasingly engaging themselves in the political, social and economic lives of their country of origin. Thus, migration gives rise to a cyclical exchange between the emigration and immigration countries including not only migrants but also material goods, information, symbols and cultural practices. (Faist, 2000: 9 10.) In this project we seek to attain an understanding of the characteristics of transnational migration, on all above mentioned levels. Our starting premise is that transnational migration entails manifold political, economic, social, cultural and educational linkages across boundaries. Consequently, in order to analyse the concept of transnationalism, it will be broken down into following conceptual dimensions: political, socio cultural, economic and educational. 3.2 Conceptual dimensions of transnationalism 3.2.1 Political domain The political dimension of transnationalism inherently involves questions of transnational public space, civic order, and the cohesiveness of host societies. The emergence of transnational spaces that span two or more nationstates raises several questions on membership in nationally bounded societies. With the conventional model of the nation state, some sense of collective identity was presumed to characterize the people believed to be contiguous with a territory, demarcated by a border. Recently, this model has been radically challenged. Transnational migrants may claim membership in multiple polities in which they may be residents, part time residents, or absentees. They may also live in a country in which they do not possess citizenship, or claim citizenship in a country in which they do not live. (Fitzgerald, 2000: 10; Vertovec, 1999; 2001; 2004: 979.) Although the political power of national governments is not necessarily diminished, there is a current need to reconstitute and restructure the processes of governance in response to the increase in trans border commitments. Today, there is a tension that governments of migrant sending and receiving states address a range of migrant transnational practices with greater attention and policy intervention. The rise in dual and multiple citizenships especially is testing the nature and reach of nation states. Around the world, an increase in transnational mobility 7

has given rise to an increasing interest in multiple state membership and multinational citizenship; and, throughout the world, an evolving tendency is towards facilitating the attainment of dual citizenship. 15 (Held et al., 1999: 9; Faist, 2000; Vertovec, 2004: 980 984; Kalekin Fishman & Pitkänen, 2007; Pitkänen & Kalekin Fishman, 2007.) Dual citizenship pertains to the aspects of belonging and recognition. The main point is that dual state membership recognizes and legitimizes the circumstance that people can entertain multiple ties, some of them extending to other nation states. An important factor here is that the countries of immigration and emigration not only offer very different conditions for establishing political participation but also for specific citizenship rights to accompany transnational lives. These differences have given rise to series of questions related to state membership. The first question is to whom citizenship is allowed, and under what conditions. The second question is in regard to tolerance and the implementation of people s participation in political, social and economic arenas. (Icduygu, 1996; 2005; Pitkänen & Kalekin Fishman, 2007.) 3.2.2 Socio cultural domain The increasing transnational movement of people and the bi/multinational fields they gradually create transform the relations between individuals and their position within the communities and societies in which they try to improve their livelihoods. We ask how the larger social and cultural 16 patterns are changing. In particular, these factors amount to alternative integration models and adaptation paths in immigration countries. The immigration literature has generally assumed that, once newcomers arrive, they settle in the host society and undergo a gradual but inevitable process of assimilation. This literature makes allowances for a flow of returnees to their home countries, but not for sizeable back and forth movements of people between places of origin and destination. (Portes et al., 1999: 228 229.) Traditionally, the predominant ideology underlying the national system for receiving immigrants has been assimilationist, with the expectancy that newcomers become culturally absorbed and indistinguishable from the mainstream. Implicitly, transnational ties are deemed to gradually vanish, often in proportion to the intensity of new ties immigrants build in the immigration country. In past decades, the general principles of integration policy have undergone a significant change: in an increasing number of states, integration from a pluralistic starting point is being viewed as the goal. This implies that while sharing the values and norms of the mainstream culture newcomers should have an opportunity to maintain and develop their own cultural characteristics. At the same time, they should have equal opportunities to participate in the political, economic and social life of the host society. (Pitkänen, Kalekin Fishman & Verma, 2002.) Most versions of pluralistic theory are silent about transnational ties. They have also been criticised for an essentialized understanding of culture (Grillo, 1998: 195, e.g.). It seems evident that the dominant theories of integration need to reviewed: neither assimilationist nor pluralistic theories are capable of explaining new forms of transnational life styles. What is feasible at this point is to ask how migrants ties across nation state borders impact upon transformative processes of integration characterized by multiple activities in different transnational spaces. Portes and his colleagues (1999: 229) list alternative migration paths for transnationalists. Their list includes: (1) Successful transnational entrepreneurs eventually returning home, taking their children with them; (2) Transnationals giving up these activities to seek full assimilation into the receiving society; (3) Their remaining indefinitely in the transnational field, but their children becoming fully assimilated to the host society; (4) Parents passing on to their offspring both their transnational skills and outlooks, perpetuating this social field across generations. While nationally and culturally diverse environments provide new opportunities, they also entail challenges: a transnational lifestyle may lead to hybrid practices and even provoke conflicting identities. It is obvious that transnationalism as an everyday experience requires special competence to manage anxiety caused by cultural differences in interaction with people who see the world from perspectives which may be different or even in conflict with one s own personal values and beliefs 17 (Mannitz, 2002: 18 19). In comparison with the emphasis of cultural competence on standardized two culture interaction, there is a need for a more comprehensive approach for today s fluid and diverse multicultural encounters. Koehn and Rosenau (2002) provide one possible model for the aspects of transnational competence. According to them, the framework of transnational competence treats case relevant knowledge acquisition, perceptual sensitivity, creative partnering, communicative facility, and effective functional behaviour as interdependent, context specific, and ongoing individual skill based challenges. 15 In Europe, an important feature is the establishment of the legal and political concept of European citizenship that coexists with the national citizenship and thus in a way represents a certain kind of dual citizenship. 16 By 'culture' we refer to the way of life, including the assumptions and values of which people are not always conscious. 17 In Western countries, the most widely discussed examples concern the representatives of real or imagined Islam, the archetypal emblem of otherness. 8

3.2.3 Economic domain The economic domain includes multi level activities occupied the migrants directly, such as transnational ethnic entrepreneurship or the facilitation of international trade, or indirectly, for instance spin off industries catering for migrant transnational practices. Transnational economic participation may mean transnational entrepreneurs who mobilize their contacts across borders in search of suppliers, capital and/or markets. There are also industries or enterprises that are based in migrant sending countries but reach out to customers in diaspora. Macro level economic facets of transnationalism involve government schemes to attract migrants foreign currency, such as expatriate bonds, high interest foreign currency accounts, and tax exemptions for saving and investment. An issue of actual importance concerns remittances, the money migrants send to their families and communities of origin. Remittances are sent by all types of migrant workers: male and female, legal and undocumented, long term and temporary, manual and highly skilled. Especially in developing countries, remittances have broad effects, including the stimulation of change within a variety of socio cultural institutions, such as local status hierarchies, gender relations, marriage patterns, and consumer habits. 18 (Vertovec, 2004.) The most important transformation process in today s economics is the emergence of transnational and global pool of three level labour market: high skilled experts, professional workers and low skill services. To simplify, according to economic theories the economic growth may be based on the innovation and utilization of knowledge or low unit cost of the labour. In this process, the emerging division of labour between the South and the North and, more precisely amongst the nation states, is a crucial question for future growth and the forms it takes, whether based on lowering income or highly sophisticated utilization of knowledge. There are several examples how reverse brain drain of brain circulation has a significant part in growth of emerging economies (India, China, Taiwan, etc.). Moreover, scientific diasporas and global expert networks play a crucial role when considering the economic growth and interaction in transnational spaces. (Kuptsch & Pang, 2006; Saxenian, 2006.) Finally, today, the large scale transnational movement of labour is a striking feature of contemporary transnational migration. As Portes et al. (1999: 227) note, the current process of transnationalisation has the potential of subverting one of the fundamental premises of capitalist globalisation, namely that labour stays local, whereas capital ranges global. By availing themselves of the same technologies that make corporate strategies possible, transnational entrepreneurs not only deny their own labour to would be employers at home and abroad but become conduits of information for others. Labour migration has become increasingly global due to economic restructuring which is making hanging onto a job everywhere precarious. Likewise, there is an increasing trend of so called international students who go abroad in their early adulthood to study for a while in another country, often involving a South North or East West dimension. Some of these students later return to their countries of origin, move onwards to third countries (e.g. Chinese students studying in Germany migrating to the USA or UK where 'better' job opportunities are available), or stay in the country where they studied while maintaining links to the country of origin (e.g. scholars from Cameroun who studied in Germany, got a position in Europe, and subsequently copublish with authors from Cameroun). 3.2.4 Educational domain Education and transnationalism are linked in multiple ways. Migration may promote investment in education and educational institutions in sending contexts, both by those who have already migrated, and by those who see education as a way to enhance the opportunity of migrating. The expansion of primary and vocational education may also stimulate migration. At the same time, there is a risk that migration may disrupt children s education. The precise combination of effects is likely to be influenced by local circumstances. For example, while generally it may be believed that education will provide a passport to a better life abroad, in some contexts the implementation of quotas for skilled migrants has led to the development of specific types of schooling or training in sending communities (for example, IT colleges in Kerala, India). In other contexts there is a requirement for minimum standards of education for the release of work permits/visas to migrants. Migrants children often move between different locations during their schooldays. They may also be sent to distant locations by their parents, for instance to provide children with education in a specific cultural context. (Osella & Osella, 2006.) Traditionally, the state run school system has been construed in a nationalist idiom which both reflects and reinforces existing cleavages based on nation and language. Education for a nationally codified membership has come under pressure in the wake of complex phenomena surrounding transnationalisation. (Mannitz, 2002: 5, 16.) An important question here 18 The critique of development theories has led for the emergence of social transformation studies as a new analytical framework. As Castles (2001: 18 20) notes, using the concept of social transformation as an analytical tool does not mean abandoning the goal of development, rather it means moving away from earlier simplistic ideas that economic growth is the key to everything and will automatically trickle down to improve living standards for all. 9

is how the cross border livelihood strategies of parents (kinship networks, e.g.) and their own impact upon their life changes in the wake of transnational migration. Despite the increase in transnational mobility, very little is known about how to empower people to act and work in multiple transnational arenas. What this means, what kinds of competences it requires, is no longer bound to territorially framed nation state societies (Mannitz, 2002: 6). In addition to professional skills, multiple cultural and societal competences are important. The core question is whether educational institutions and existing services (private and public) succeed in enabling transnational migrants to obtain the competences needed to cope with in hybrid multinational and multicultural settings. For that purpose, an investigation of transformative learning theory will be needed. Edward Taylor (1994: 158 159), outlines three dimensions for such a transformative learning process: (1) Catalyst for change; (2) Process; and (3) Outcome. 4. POINT OF DEPARTURE IN THE PARTICIPATING COUNTRIES Within TRANS NET, the following transnational spaces will be taken as the main units to analyse the bordercrossing relationships: Estonia/Finland, India/U.K., Morocco/France, and Turkey/Germany. The eight participating countries, Finland, Estonia, France, Germany, India, Morocco, Turkey and United Kingdom, have been selected because they offer different cases of interest and relevance for addressing the objectives of the project. In each country, the political socio cultural, economic educational structures and everyday experiences of transformation processes will be investigated on macro, meso, and micro levels. The following sections include critical review of the most important research litterature in the participating countries. This will include different analytical levels (macro, meso and micro) with regard to the political, socio cultural, economic and educational domains of transnationalism. In addition to the scientific publications, the policy documents adequate to the questions under study will be introduced. 4.1 TRANSNATIONAL SPACE 1: ESTONIA FINLAND 4.1.1 Political domain 4.1.1.1 Estonia Although there is little emphasis on social sciences in Estonia, yet there is comparatively much research on migration (albeit few reports in international comparison). However, the amount of research on transnational migration is rather modest. The main research areas are labour migration and general statistical analysis of population patterns 19. Migration studies are a relatively new discipline in Estonia. During the Soviet era, the academic research was scarce in terms of population studies or migration and was much focused on statistical aspects and intra state migration. As the Soviet Union was a closed society, the migration over the Soviet borders was rare. The specific statistics do not indicate the share of the Estonian SSR in the migration over the Soviet borders nor the share of foreigners. Intra state migration statistics, regarding moving over the borders of the member republics of the USSR, were neither very detailed. By the end of the 1980s, some studies on internal migation, concerning especially Soviet time immigration into the Estonian SSR, were conducted. The social impact of the massive influx of workers (which was planned as a part of forced industralization) was examined by a group of researchers (Vihalem Lauristin et. al.). There has also been an ongoing tradition in historical demographic research focusing on the patterns of rural and urban settlement, urbanisation in the 19 th century, Baltic Germans in Estonia as well as the ethnic Estonian settlement abroad before the Soviet era. However, these issues are not in the focus of this research. Restoring the independent Estonian state in 1991, within nearly its traditional borders and the integration of Estonia into international structures, created preconditions for the control and monitoring of its borders as well as for the study and intensified interest for information related to immigration. In the middle of 1990s, Estonia re established more or less control over its borders. Integration of Estonia into the European Union in the turn of millennium gave a new birth to immigration studies and to series of applied studies. 19 As social sciences are meagrely financed in Estonia one cannot expect much detailed literature. Thus, this paper focuses on the sources from a larger field including various aspects of economic migration. 10