Social Transnationalism

Lifeworlds Beyond The Nation-State

Steffen Mau

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781134006120
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Nationalism & Patriotism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In recent decades, the rise of world markets and the technological revolutions in transportation and communication have brought what was once distant and inaccessible within easy reach of the individual. The territorial and social closure that characterized nation-states is fading, and this is reflected not only in new forms of governance and economic globalization, but also in individual mobility and transnational transactions, affiliations and networks. Social Transnationalism explores new forms of cross-border interactions and mobility which have expanded across physical space by looking at the individual level. It asks whether we are dealing with unbridled movements and cross-border interactions which transform the lifeworlds of individuals fundamentally. Furthermore, it investigates whether, and to what degree, increases in the volume of transnational interactions weaken the individual citizen's bond to the nation-state as such, and to what extent citizens' national identities are being replaced or complemented by cosmopolitan ones

1
Introduction

In recent decades, the rise of world markets, technological revolutions in transportation and communication, and the flood of images and messages from new media have brought what was once distant and inaccessible within easy reach of the individual. The territorial and social demarcations that characterized nation-states are rapidly disappearing; this is reflected not only in new forms of governance and economic globalization, but in transnational social integration, mobility, affiliations, and networks. Social relationships and interactions have expanded across physical space, leading to lives that are more transnational and mobile than ever.

Public debate about the integration of foreigners into mainstream societies, and what, precisely, comprises the mainstream culture – in Germany the discussion on Leitkultur–rages on in many countries. But in most cases, neither the assumption of societal unity and homogeneity nor the concept of multiculturalism that forms the starting points for these debates is still viable. National societies are becoming increasingly heterogeneous, socially and culturally diverse, and intertwined with each other. In Germany, for example, there has been a marked increase since the 1950s in the number of binational marriages, border crossings have become part of everyday life, the amount and range of interaction between Germans and foreigners has grown steadily, and the German’s sense of national identity is being transformed. Here, as elsewhere, the complexity of societal connections has intensified, and a return to the organized relationships of a national society seems unlikely. For the individual, as Habermas (2001) suggests, this is an ambiguous experience of increasing contingency. On the one hand, a release from the traditional relationships in the nation-state means more freedom and choice, providing citizens with the opportunity to determine social affiliation and spatial location. On the other hand, it signals a departure from clear, institutionally protected social relations and introduces the risk of social disintegration.

As the political and physical borders of nation-states weaken, we move into a “post-national constellation” (Habermas 2001). Scholars often assume that we are now dealing with the unbridled movements of individuals or “constant border crossings” (Beck and Grande 2004: 153), pointing out the risks of societal collapse and disintegration associated with such movements. Altvater and Mahnkopf (1996: 62) assert that society cannot “submit to the unreasonable demands of a world made smaller in space and time without severing the inner band of solidarity” (my translation). But the actual degree to which social networks and everyday activities have in fact transcended the political and geographic boundaries of the nation-state remains largely unknown. Social Transnationalism is an attempt to address this unknown by examining the formation and expansion of transnational social relationships and forms of cross-border mobility.

Traditionally, sociologists have defined concepts of society and examined societal structures with little attention to the physical spaces that contain them, while geographers have measured a society’s characteristics and clarified the relationship between territory and population without considering how and why a society functions and develops. The two disciplines have typically refused to take each other seriously (Stichweh 2003), but as societal change is expressed more and more in an altered “spatiality” of society (Berking 1998), such a stance, always dubious, has now become untenable. The extent to which Marshall McLuhan’s “global village” (McLuhan and Powers 1989) has been realized is a matter of debate, but there is little doubt that globalization has shattered the spatial integration and proximity of life’s everyday operations, a proximity which, traditionally, defined the field of sociology and determined its conceptual bias. Globalization, which Schroer (2006: 27) calls an “increasing emancipation from space” and Appadurai (1996) names a “deterritorialization,” clearly lessens the degree to which social relationships are attached to a particular place. Sociologists can no longer assume that social interaction partners occupy a common geographic space and live or stay in one location. This does not mean that everything can happen everywhere, or that barriers to mobility and communication have disappeared. Rather, it introduces a new fluidity to the spatial dimension, once regarded by sociologists as limited. Geographic distance, mobility, the permeability of borders, and people’s attachment to place have become important variables, and we must develop quantitative and qualitative methods for assessing them and factoring them into our theories of social structure.

The concepts of globalization, world society, and denationalization have, with varying degrees of rigor, incorporated some or all of these factors, as have the socio-political concepts of post-national membership (Soysal 1994), transnational social spaces (Portes et al. 1999; Pries 1999a), trans-state spaces (Faist 2000b), and the new cosmopolitanism (Beck 2006). The transnationalism concept in particular recognizes that markets, the flow of information, and global networks are dependent on the social, cultural, and economic practices of individuals, and that these follow a stubborn logic that may be largely decoupled from any market-based rationale. But, with the exception of migration research and the study of elites, both highly mobile sectors of the population, there have been few systematic attempts to determine the nature and extent of citizens’ integration into transnational social networks – the starting-point for assessing whether a “world society” exists. John W. Burton (1972) claimed that a comprehensive record of cross-border transactions is essential to any balanced or realistic image of the world:

Which is the more representative model of the world – the world of continents, islands and states or the world of transactions? […] If we adopt the nation-state we will use the language of relations between states and their relevant power, and have one set of solutions to the problems of conflict and world organization. If we adopt the transaction one, we will use a different language to describe the world society, and have a different set of solutions to world problems.

(43)

Studies of the links between migration and transnational social spaces have to date focused on the practices, networks, and symbolic systems of specific migrant groups – on how social interactions cross national borders – but neglected to quantify such interactions or examine their effects on society as a whole. These studies give us little idea of the breadth and depth of transnational fields of action, especially in relation to the non-migrant population. To this purpose we need to know who is integrated into transnational spaces and why, the nature of these relationships, and their geographical range. We need to ask whether, and to what degree, increases in the permeability of national borders and in the volume of transnational interactions eliminate the individual citizen’s bond to the nation-state as such, and to what extent citizens’ national identities and worldviews are being replaced by cosmopolitan ones.

Using data from existing academic studies, official statistics, and our own survey, Social Transnationalism presents a multidimensional map of the transnational activities of Germans that provides preliminary answers to these questions and might well be considered an example of the situation in the OECD world.

The survey was carried out in March and April of 2006, when 2,700 German citizens were asked about their social contacts and activities outside of Germany;¹ their movements across borders; and their attitudes toward globalization, the assignment of political competence, and foreigners. The transnational extent of individuals’ activities is just one aspect of the transformation of social structures that may accompany globalization, and I interpret our findings in their broadest context: do economic, technological, and political changes result in transnational forms of thinking, acting, and living (Beck 2000)?

I begin with a discussion of the various concepts of globalization, denationalization, world society, and transnationalism, all referring to the processes by which national borders are weakened or transcended. I then discuss how individual social relations and networks are affected by the new configurations of borders, space, and distance. In the empirical part a map of transnational interactions is generated that provides a precise image of their type, density, and frequency. This is used to test hypotheses about the social mechanisms for generating different interactions. Here the focus is on networks of acquaintances and friends, familial relations, migration, student mobility, tourism, and contacts with foreigners within national borders. I go on to determine whether this kind of objective transnational involvement finds expression in the attitudinal stances of the individuals involved. Is there a connection between one’s integration in transnational activities and the extent to which one’s political and social orientations are detached from national identity? Do such activities truly create cosmopolitan citizens? Finally, I employ a number of socio-economic variables, such as education, region, age, and sex, to determine which sections of the population are actually involved in transnational activities and networks. This allows us to address the question posed by Hannerz (1996: 29): “Who are the globalizers?” Are they elite individuals whose professional commitments make them dependent on long-distance communication (Sauvant 1976; Konrad 1984), as is often assumed? Are they the poorly educated manual laborers who cross national borders in search of work and maintain transnational networks? Or do they come from a wider range of social classes and vocations? Is social transnationalism a more generalized phenomenon than we have supposed up to now? And if so, is it creating new forms of social fragmentation?

Part 1
From national containers to transnational social spaces

2
The nation-state as container?

The traditional nation-state of the previous century has been characterized as a “container” where political, economic, and social relationships were geographically confined (Agnew and Corbridge 1995). During the so-called “golden age” of the nation-state in the 1950s and 1960s (Leibfried and Zürn 2005), such national containers were thick-walled and their societies were relatively homogeneous and isolated from each other. Giddens (1990: 14) even makes seclusion a trademark of modern national formations: “Modern societies (nation-states), in some respects at any rate, have a clearly defined boundedness. […] Virtually no pre-modern societies were as clearly bounded as modern nation-states.”

The basic characteristics of the nation-state were the formation of territorial rule and a monopoly on the use of force, the formation of a sovereign and unified nation, the intervention into the most varied areas of life, and the collectivization of social risks by means of a state-sponsored welfare system (Münch 2001). The formation of nation-states can be understood as a double process of closure: as closure of the geographic space by border controls and as closure of the space for membership (cf. Rokkan 2000). As a rule, these two aspects are usually regarded as independent of each other, but it seems reasonable to understand their relationship as a dialectical process of mutual conditioning and strengthening. Mobility control of entries and departures into and from a nation-state takes on the function of an external casing that regulates access to territories. Embedded in this casing is the space of membership, through which access to collective welfare goods is managed. In a historical retrospect, it can be shown that the territorial control and the inclusion of a resident population take on a crucial role in the construction of the relationship between the state and its population or citizens.

John Torpey goes so far as to say that the appropriation of controls over the movement of persons by means of border controls and passport and visa systems resulted in a fundamental transformation of the social order that was no less important than the monopolization of the means of production by the capitalist class as described by Marx, and the creation of the state monopoly on the use of force as described by Weber:

To these two, we must add a third type of “expropriation” in order to make sense of the modern world – the monopolization of the legitimate means of movement by modern states and the international state system more broadly. While hardly seamless, this monopolization has been extremely successful in regulating population movements and sorting out who belongs where.¹

(1998: 256)

Thus, state development is associated not only with the control of society, but also with an inclusion in the broadest sense. Accordingly, Torpey also writes:

In order to extract resources and implement policies, states must be in a position to locate and lay claim to people and goods. […] I believe we would do well to regard states as seeking not simply to penetrate but also to embrace societies, “surrounding” and “taking hold” of them – individually and collectively – as those states grow larger and more administratively adept.

(1998: 244)

The area of membership developed in close connection to this geographic space, enabling states to treat diverse groups of people in the territory in different ways according to whether or not they are citizens. The nation-state acquired civil “inclusionary exclusivity” (Halfmann 1998: 555), meaning it was able to control the inclusion of people in various functional systems, and thus also control the relationship between internal and external communication. The widely established understanding of citizenship as an “instrument of social closure” (Brubaker 1992) emphasizes in this sense the aspect of social exclusion. Membership inclusion is used for “overcoming the confusion of affiliations” (Halfmann 1998: 54) that can arise due to migration movements or transborder mobility. Special rules apply to those persons not citizens of the state in which they live, rules that regulate the length and status of residence, as well as the rights associated with their residence.

One factor was sociologically decisive for the ultimate success of the nation-states; through the convergence of territorial rule and the bonding and enclosure of a state’s population, nation-states were in a position to develop an integration concept based on closure. However, this concept contained elements not only of external exclusion, but also of internal homogenization, such as the establishment of an education canon, language standardization, legal and administrative regulations, mass communication, and the guarantee of welfare services (Münch 2001: 272). As a consequence of these political organizational achievements, communicative and normative relationships consolidated within nation-states. Internal communication, i.e. exchanges and relations between the members of a nation-state, became far more important than external communication, both for individuals and for the community. On the normative level as well, affiliations and mutual relations arose that reinforced the division between internal and external, between members and non-members. This is also the reason why, from a sociological point of view, the presumption about the congruence between state and society remained unquestioned (McCrone 1998).

Since the early 1970s, criticism of approaches that assume nation-states are based on closed and self-sufficient units has grown. With the progress of worldwide integration processes, those researchers who still consider the nation-state to be the sole relevant unit of reference of social science analyses have been reproached for falling victim to a “methodological nationalism.”² Above all, scholars have questioned whether the inherent idea of the “container nation-state” (Agnew and Corbridge 1995: 84) is still empirically correct. The intensification of interconnectedness and the increase of activities across distances modify the configuration of societies and the political order. A growing number of authors argue that global and international exchanges and networks are increasingly eroding the container model and lending transnational aspects more importance (Rosenau and Czempiel 1992; Beck 1998; Zürn 1998; Albrow 1996; Cerny 1999; Held et al. 1999; Rosecrance 1999; Sassen 2003). One central objection states that the nation-state must be regarded as a specific historical phenomenon with correspondingly only limited significance as an analytical category. Evidence for aweakening of the nation-state as the central unit for socio-political integration and exchange is the enormous increase of transborder transactions (trade, capital transfers, mobility, communication, migration, social exchange), international forms of cooperation (World Trade Organization, World Bank, United Nations) or supranational forms of community (European Union, North American Free Trade Agreement, Mercosur). These phenomena indicate that national borders can be considered less and less as interrupters of interdependence for social interactions and communication.

Various authors speak of “vanishing borders” (French 2000) and a “borderless” or “seamless world” (Ohmae 1990; Krugman and Venables 1995) and imply that new types of interdependence structures have emerged that run contrary to the nation-state containers and can no longer be controlled by them. This is especially obvious in the area of information flow across national borders, which in the age of the Internet and television can hardly be regulated by states anymore. In most countries of the world, state authorities have lost their monopoly on information and must accept that their populations can be influenced by media that are produced and provided with content in other places. Just as far-reaching is the loss of control with respect to the international movement of goods and the global financial markets that national economies are increasingly dependent on. Therefore, some researchers assume that in the long run, states will become subordinate subjects of a transnational economic liberalism. This change is initially based on a politically desired consolidation of economic relations of exchange, but finally le...

Table of contents

• International Library of Sociology
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• Part 1 From national containers to transnational social spaces
• Part 2 The cartography of transnational social relations
• Part 3 Transnationalism and the new cosmopolitanism
• Part 4 Unequal transnationalism
• Part 5 Conclusion
• Appendix
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index