Global Networks-A Journal of Transnational Affairs最新文献

The COVID-19 travel restrictions were especially distressing for migrants, whose transnational lifestyles and networks often rely on travelling, even in older age. Drawing on 20 interviews, this study analyses the effect of COVID restrictions on the transnational lives of older Russian migrants in Finland. The study highlights the importance of physical co-presence in transnational relationships, showing that older migrants suffered from ‘sensory disconnection’ caused by forced immobility. In Finland, participants typically maintained narrow social circles dominated by kin relations. Amidst the pandemic, they sought comfort through nature and gardening, sensory-rich practices akin to Soviet-era dacha practices. Yet, the inability to reconnect physically with their country of origin, particularly for practices such as visits to cemeteries, emerged as a substantial source of emotional distress. Connection with deceased kin was an integral part of their transnational network. The findings suggest that maintaining transnational visits is key to the well-being of many older migrants.

This article explores how foreign funders may promote good governance in a country without a history of established democratic processes. It examines the travel of ideas of democracy and human rights from Sweden to Russia through transnational cooperation projects during the period 1991–2005. Considering these projects as forms of high-stakes translations, the study finds that many of them engaged with Russian society only on a superficial level without embedding ideas in local organizational practices. Identifying the weaknesses often found in such translations, the study points to the difficulty of contributing to a democratic transformation of Russia by means of foreign-funded projects lacking contextual anchorage.

It is axiomatic that middle-class Asian migrant families invest heavily—practically and emotionally—in their children's education. Scholarship has linked this investment to strategies of capital accumulation. There has been little discussion, however, about the transformative nature of these strategies and how they might be framed in terms of migrants' whole lives. This paper applies theoretical concepts from migration studies and a framework proposed by philosopher Charles Taylor, to argue that educational migration should be seen as profoundly life shaping.

This research investigates engagement for refugees within the German socio-political landscape. Following the arrival of one million forced migrants from Ukraine to Germany in 2022, we conducted two surveys on those who volunteered in support. The first was on general engagement (N = 2000) and the second was on individuals who provided homestay accommodation (N = 3682). Our analysis explores the driving motivations for different types of engagement, comparing individuals involved in political activities with those engaged in social-humanitarian activities. We find that value-based motivations impact both political and social-humanitarian engagement, with universalism driving political engagement and benevolence linked to social-humanitarian involvement. Further, differing motivations and types of engagement align with varying beliefs about the role of the state, suggesting that individuals engaged politically believe in increased state responsibility, contrasting with views held by socially engaged individuals. These findings are contextualized within the broader literature on engagement and migration regimes.

This special issue explores the shifting landscape of global middle-class migration within and from East Asia by taking the relationship between mobility, parenting ideals and changing educational desires as its focus. Contributions explore how East Asian middle-class families balance the emergent emphasis on their children's well-being with the demands of global competitiveness as these often-antagonistic desires are projected onto old and new migration destinations against the background of global geopolitical and economic power shifts. Instead of reifying the simplistic binary of hierarchical, achievement-oriented East Asian ‘Confucian educational norms’ versus democratic, well-being-focussed Western ideals, the contributions offer a nuanced understanding of how these educational ideals coexist within the social, cultural, political and economic contexts of families. By carefully assessing the dialectically entwined intimate experiences of parents and children, the articles collected here set out to broaden our understanding of how middle-class families in Singapore, South Korea, Japan and China attempt to negotiate the tension between prioritizing children's happiness and maintaining global competitiveness result in a variety of strategies from migrating to less obvious international destinations to crafting domestic alternatives. Taken together, the articles reveal consistent patterns of middle-class migration and child-rearing decisions that contest and reshape conventional notions of success, attesting to a shift in global middle-class migration trends and to the importance of child-rearing in migratory decisions.

The experiences of displaced persons, currently particularly from Ukraine, are reflected in the concept of temporary protection as an immediate response to mass displacement. This article proposes a consideration of temporary protection from the perspective of ‘openness’, ‘in-betweenness’ and the various forms of insecurities in people's lives in new societies and on their journeys. Refugees are connected in multi-layered networks along their routes; forced migration goes in all directions; therefore, fluidity, situational dependency and macro factors determine its dynamics. The empirical data on Ukrainian refugees in Slovenia and the consideration of the situation of Bosnian refugees in the period of the Yugoslav wars show a complex interplay of structural and individual factors that determine the position of temporarily protected persons in larger transnational networks. The article also reflects on the relational question of international protection from the perspective of ‘deservedness’ and hierarchies among different migrant groups.

Sending and receiving remittances is central to the negotiation of transnational family life, and to nourishing a sense of copresence among physically distant parties. Although the lived experience of this transaction has a very intimate and personal basis, it is also subject to increasing visual and public representation, as a part of the working of dedicated migration industries. Based on an in-depth exploration of the advertising materials on the YouTube channel of Western Union (WU), we analyse how money circulation is made visible, emplaced in migrant life circumstances and co-produced through visual narratives that illuminate the micro-foundations of copresence and its structural limitations. While following the rationale of a commercial product, and despite their idealized contents, WU's stories are revealing about the relational affordances for virtual copresence, its shortcomings and the social embeddedness of remittances in family life.