Global Networks-A Journal of Transnational Affairs最新文献

The aerospace industry is a fast-growing high-tech sector related to the national economic lifeline and national defence security. In the context of prosperous cooperation and fierce competition between countries, a multi-layered global aerospace network, from production to trade, has been formed. However, the high-tech aerospace trade structure and its spatial pattern as the mirror of the industry lack systematic research. This study constructs global high-tech aerospace trade networks to review the trade dynamics, identify the core countries and explore the regional structure and geographical characteristics. Different high-tech aerospace segments show varying evolutionary characteristics, with exports more concentrated than imports. The United States and Western Europe dominate the import and export market in all categories of high-tech aerospace trade, especially in high-end segment, holding organizational authority in the community structure. Although Asia is rising rapidly in some areas, it still has a long way to go to become a global hub.

This paper examines the diverse Lagos international school sector as an arena in which Nigerian families are attempting to (re)produce status and good lives that work transnationally. ‘Elite’ international schools focus on securing entry into Anglo-American universities and distinguish themselves via discourses of ‘modern Britishness’, yet also emphasize the special value of schooling in Nigeria and seek to reproduce circulatory lives. There is also a competitive landscape of ‘mid-range’ international schools that do not simply serve ‘aspirant locals’ but have broad international horizons and are central to transnational family strategies. Lagos schools across the spectrum receive students ‘sent’ from the diaspora, demonstrating they are valued stations in the transnational social field to protect as well as accumulate. The paper contributes to understanding international schools in the ‘global South’ not simply as a backstage to Anglo-American centres but as offering unique resources for families navigating hierarchies at home and abroad.

This article focuses on ethnic hierarchies found within highly educated migrant women working in Istanbul traced through their everyday urban practices. It introduces the stratified and comparative results of migration and resettlement of those from the Global North and the Global South through a comprehensive analysis on their urban lives, including their social positionings, preferences of neighbourhoods and daily patterns of their use of the city. Contrary to the common conception that skilled migrants are privileged, our research reveals inequalities and discriminatory practices they face that intersect with gender, nationality and ethnicity. Our research, based on qualitative analyses of in-depth interviews along with online subjective mapping representing use of the city, also reveals that regardless of their origin and identity, almost all our participants experience verbal/physical sexual harassment or discrimination in public space in Istanbul, which forces women to produce spatial tactics of everyday life.

Although Hong Kong has always been transnational and its overseas communities longstanding, the queer experiences of diasporic Hongkongers have rarely been explored. Through interview-based research, this article examines the experiences of LGBTIQ+ Hongkongers who migrated to Taiwan after the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests, with the intention to accomplish three broader theoretical objectives. First, it introduces an intersectional approach to understanding the current Hong Kong diaspora by exploring how queerness came to shape and politicize a changing Hong Kong identity. Second, it considers Taiwan's role in global queer migration by investigating how it became a place of exception for LGBTIQ+ Hongkongers and, by extension, other ethnically Chinese queers. Lastly, it highlights how Hong Kong and Taiwan are linked by a structure of queer Sinophone consciousness, demonstrating how queerness and Chineseness are mutually productive and most amplified in transnational settings.

Driven by macro-level investment and strategic competition, engagement between China and African countries has expanded significantly in recent years, giving rise to increased migration flows between the two regions. Wary of Beijing's growing influence on the continent, Western scholarship and media often portray China as extractive and neo-colonialist, whereas Africa and Africans are depicted as passive and lacking agency. This study examines an important yet understudied group operating at the crux of contemporary Sino–African relations that challenges these assumptions: young, African student-entrepreneurs studying and working in China. Drawing on data from 10 months of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with African student-traders, as well as Chinese university administrators, students, and officials, this study finds that African student-traders have developed a set of strategies that allow them to navigate, exploit and reconfigure Chinese structures as they pursue their entrepreneurial aspirations, suggesting that the Sino–African relationship is far from one-sided.

As the processes of market liberalization and globalization increase the confidence of international actors involved in national third sectors, there exists a cosmopolitan tension between ‘mobile elites’ and ‘locked in’ nationals. This paper explores the impact of these tensions on the social enterprise ecosystem in the Republic of Poland and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Focused on the internationalized mechanisms of support, the relationship between the social enterprise incubators and international stakeholders, and power distance inherent to the global versus local debate, the findings suggest that normative isomorphic pressures are causing a fundamental ecosystem shift. The monopolization of support and terms of reference have led to entrepreneurs detrimentally being treated as ‘organizational heroes’ risking burnout, the primacy of international voices within the local context, and the transference of nationals from being ‘locked in’ to national processes to being ‘locked out’ of national support. The research suggests the cosmopolitan-led transformation of activists into entrepreneurs needs to be more carefully considered, to ensure that enforced alignment to international system does not alienate them from other sources and means of sustainability.

Despite being a traditional research topic in urban studies, competitive relations among cities have rarely been quantified in empirical research. Drawing on methods of social network analysis, this study aims to extract intercity competitive relations at the global scale based on the global corporate spatial organization of manufacturing. The geographies of competitive relations manifest different patterns from those of global city networks based on cooperative relations. This study finds an inverse U-shaped relationship between cities’ connectivities and their gross intensity of competition. Although most global cities have unique positions in global manufacturing competition, intensive competition occurs among some global cities, whereas extensive competition exists between wide-ranging cities with weak global connectivities. Furthermore, there is strong competition among cities of similar size and among those located in the same region. This research not only re-examines global intercity relations from a competitive perspective but also informs the formulation of policy-making on competition strategies of cities.

This article examines transnational social positioning through a family lens. Based on interviews with people who moved to Germany as young adults, we show that socialization and expectations in families coin individual understandings of success as an important baseline for social positioning, while migration challenges these understandings and social position evaluations in complex ways. With a specific focus on evolving processes of social comparison, we look at the role of the family in shaping three forms of transnational social position: (i) transnational status paradox, (ii) attached transnational social positions, and (iii) detached transnational social positions. By demonstrating the various ways in which family relationships affect social positioning in migration contexts, this study contributes to discussions on the links between migration and perceptions of social position, and to our understanding of transnational social structures.

As cities develop more and longer-range external relations, some have challenged the long-standing notion that population size indicates a city's power in its urban system. But are population size and network centrality really independent properties in practice, or do larger cities tend to be more central in urban networks? To answer this question, we conducted a systematic literature search and meta-analysed 41 reported correlations between city size and degree centrality. The results show that population size and degree centrality are significantly and positively correlated for cities across various urban systems (r = 0.77), but the correlation varies by network scale and type. The size-centrality association is weaker for global economic and transportation networks(r = 0.43), and stronger for non-global social and communication networks (r = 0.91). This clarifies seemingly contradictory predictions in the literature regarding the association betweensize and centrality for cities.

This article introduces a novel transnational family configuration (TNFC) approach to study the diversity of family forms across kinship and geographical boundaries. Integrating theoretical insights from family sociology and transnational family research, it examines contemporary families as personal networks that encompass both subjectively identified and potentially transnationally dispersed kin and non-kin members. Drawing on original survey data and in-depth interviews with adults aged 55+ living in Switzerland, it compares migrants’ and non-migrants’ personal family networks. The results indicate that these networks are both diverse and transnational. Although there is a strong correlation between transnationality and migration background, other life-course factors also contribute to the development of transnational family networks beyond the scope of migrant ‘exceptionalism’. By advocating the adoption of a TNFC approach to the study of contemporary families, in diverse population groups and various cultural contexts, this study paves the way for future research in this area.