A cross-border perspective on migration: beyond the assimilation/transnationalism debate. Issue 1 (2nd January 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Waldinger, Roger
• Is Part Of: Journal of ethnic and migration studies. Volume 43:Issue 1(2017)
• Page Start: 3
• Page End: 17
• Publication Date: 2017-01-02
• Subjects: Transnationalism -- assimilation -- cross-border connections -- citizenship; Ethnic relations -- Periodicals; Race relations -- Periodicals; Emigration and immigration -- Periodicals; Assimilation (Sociology) -- Periodicals; 305.8005
• DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2016.1238863
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1369-183X

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The transnational perspective emerged in the early 1990s as an alternative to assimilation theory, gaining instant and wide influence. But curiously, the intellectual confrontation between these two perspectives was averted, as scholars concluded that persistent homeland engagement was fully compatible with hostland integration. This paper seeks to pick up that challenge. I demonstrate how a cross-border perspective, encompassing places of origin and destination and the flows of people, ideas, and resources between them, highlights the ways in which population movements across state borders create tensions on both receiving and sending sides. In the process, I will show how looking across borders paradoxically highlights the centrality of the territorial boundary, as it simultaneously underscores the importance of dissimilation – the social and political separation of immigrants from the people they have left behind – yet also the ways in which non-citizen status and foreign origins simultaneously hamper immigrants' ability to gain acceptance in receiving states while furnishing sending states with opportunities to reconnect with nationals abroad.