Trends and Impacts of Migrant Transnationalism

The transnational approach to migration phenomena, despite many critiques, suggests that a variety of institutions are changing, particularly among migrants themselves. How deep-seated and long-lasting are these changes, and to they have implications for broader forms of structural transformation in migration sending and receiving contexts? In this paper, a wide range of studies and materials are reviewed to address this question concerning possible modes of transformation affecting socio-cultural, political and economic transformation. These include shifting patterns impacts of transnational practices on families, norms and modes of perceptual orientation; dual citizenship, homeland politics in diaspora and the ‘identities-borders-orders’ of nation-states; and the sending and use of individual and collective remittances for economic development. These modes or sites of transformation both draw from and contribute to wider processes of globalization.