Global Networks-A Journal of Transnational Affairs最新文献

Taking the perspective of grandparents living in the origin country, our article is innovative in examining a range of ties within social networks, not only transnational ones but also family ties in-country with both close-by and geographically dispersed relatives. We analyse focus group discussions with Polish grandparents whose grandchildren live in different locations. Thus, we are looking at transnational ties as part of interlocking personal networks spanning distances, including internal migration. By comparing grandparents’ interactions with those who are near and far, we advance understanding of how distance impacts feelings of closeness and bonding between generations. This networks lens reveals how varied communication practices and contact patterns affect emotional wellbeing of ageing (grand)parents at origin. Although technology helps maintain contact, especially transnationally, it does not offer a multisensory experience—a limitation which becomes evident when compared with in-person childcare and family socialising.

This book contributes to a growing literature that seeks to understand the meaning of transnational families in contexts of increasing human mobility. It adds to this literature by focusing on diverse African migration experiences from the perspective of migrants themselves. Capturing the multiple ways that family is made by migrants living in South Africa, it covers the experiences of those who move from rural to urban areas, as well as cross-border migrants from Malawi, Zimbabwe and Kenya. It answers important questions about how people perform family in contexts of extended separation due to migration. It helps to understand how, in contexts like South Africa, where Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are less available and data are more expensive than some parts of the world, this might challenge existing knowledge on transnational families. Most notably, the book covers migrant experiences from very different socio-economic circumstances, race and space without flattening out the diversity of experiences—something not common in the existing literature. It also includes significant reflexive writing from the authors’ own migration experiences.

The book consists of 10 chapters of which six offer empirical insights and four are conceptual in nature. The approach of the empirical chapters is to focus very much on individual narrative and migrant stories. These are valuable in their own right, but they also, in their individual focus, connect to broad themes that can shape future research in the field. This is where the true value of the book lies.

The first such theme is the significance of geography in an increasingly connected world. As with existing literature, this book shows how ICTs do indeed allow for connection across space that mean family life continues in the online world. For example, Chapter 2 discusses the impact of COVID on the research and how it normalized online family life, which is an important reflexive contribution. And yet, far from rendering geography irrelevant, the chapters also show the ongoing emotional pull that notions of co-present and often nuclear families hold over migrants (see, e.g., Chapter 4). The poignant narratives show what is possible in a world mediated by ICTs but also what is lost. Reading across the chapters, it would appear that what is most lost is intimacy. Whilst the practical activities of family life continue, the deeply emotive and intimate nature of family is hard to sustain over distance.

Connected to this, the nature of care and what care means in contexts of geographical distance comes through strongly across the chapters. Whilst ICTs allow for connection, many of them also allow for mediated representations of oneself (particularly on social media) that can reduce the honesty, and thus intimacy, of family connections. When reading Chapter 3, I was struck by how ICTs are not simply something people use to continue their family relationships. Rather, they

We analyse processes of supermarketisation in South Africa and its implications for inclusion, exclusion and industrial concentration in the mid-sections of agri-food value chains. Empirical material from maize processing shows differentiated impacts accompanying major retailers’ growing power and extended reach into the food system's township and rural peripheries. Large firms’ co-evolutionary adaptations and constitutive power counteract supermarket buyer power. Smaller firms struggle with adverse incorporation in supermarket supply chains, relying instead on strategies targeting independent wholesale and the informal retail economy. However, this carries major risks, requires complex capabilities and is increasingly threatened by market delocalisation accompanying supermarketisation. Contrary to expectations of retail modernisation enabling inclusive agri-food value chain development by connecting marginalised rural producers to larger urban markets, we highlight the potential for inverse processes whereby ‘peripheral supermarketisation’ extends the reach of large firms in rural markets and shrinks the ‘interstices’ incubating small agri-food producers.

The invasion of Ukraine in 2022 resulted in the largest wave of displacement in Europe since World War II, with approximately eight million people–primarily women, children and older people–leaving Ukraine. Over 42 thousand individuals arrived in Latvia in the first month after the outbreak of war, seeking refuge and received widespread government and civil organisation support. This study explores migration and settlement experiences of Ukrainian war-displaced people in Latvia over the very early period of displacement. It takes an intertemporal approach and studies the development of aspirations and perceptions in the decision-making process, based on 72 interviews conducted with Ukrainians during the early months of the conflict in March–April 2022 and 7 months later. We document the transition from immediate concerns around displacement to more long-term considerations about settling and integration. We find that plans with respect to settlement and integration are intertwined with uncertainties; intentions for returning home remain strong but tend to lose the time dimension. The displaced remain in the liminal space between countries caused by families left behind or in other countries, as well as duty and desires to return home but being unable to do so for safety reasons. We assert that social networks play a major role in the early stages of forced migration decisions but in varied ways depending on the time. Overall, the decision-making whether to settle in the host country, return to the home country or move onward are complex and dynamic processes that undergo temporal changes.

Elite theorists assume that transnational capitalist class unity is facilitated through transnational elite spaces and networks. We argue for a more glocal notion of transnational unification that highlights the role of same-nation networks of interlocking directorates linking major transnational corporations (TNCs) in disseminating corporate political behaviours on a global scale. The same-nation elite networks are effective mechanisms of transnational unity because their members, whom we call ‘glocal interlockers’, are at once socialized into the global system and influential figures in their national TNC communities. Empirically, we analyze how interlocking directorates among the world's largest 189 TNCs facilitated the worldwide adoption of private environmental practices in the period 2006–2013, in the context of TNCs’ mobilization to preempt an intergovernmental regulatory regime on climate change by promoting a global governance privatization agenda. We find that firms’ level of centrality in glocal interlocks networks explained their levels of private environmental practices adoption, while their centrality in the transnational inner circle of cross-border interlockers did not. These results suggest that the persistence of local elite formations can enable rather than hinder transnational corporate unity.

Scholars have extensively written about how convivial cross-cultural encounters, driven by global mobility, underpin mutual understanding and cosmopolitan aspirations. However, little attention has been paid to encounters that cause friction or require considerable effort to bridge differences. This paper centres on conflictual and negative experiences of encountering cultural diversity through the lens of Global South Fulbright students in the Boston area of the United States. As one of the most prestigious educational and cultural exchange programmes in the United States, the Fulbright Program advocates for cultural diplomacy, and its participants are regarded as cultural ambassadors to enhance cross-cultural understandings. By examining the unfavourable experiences of these cosmopolitan-oriented students, I develop a framework to analyse how the friction and fragility of cosmopolitanism are produced through interpersonal, structural and circumstantial causes, leading to their withdrawal from cosmopolitanism. This framework helps analyse challenges to cosmopolitanism in a post-pandemic world marked by growing xenophobia and provincialism.

This article examines the emerging position of women refugees during a global crisis. On the basis of an empirical study of the Eritrean community in Tel Aviv, Israel, I analysed the ways in which gender identity is formulated and recreated following the social and economic restrictions of the Covid-19 pandemic. In contrast to previous literature which has highlighted men's central position in forced migrant communities, I suggest viewing the global pandemic as an accelerator of women's presence in two circles of belonging: the family unit and the Eritrean community. I argue that structural changes imposed by the pandemic have established new gender roles and divisions of power, positioning women as a source of authority and a subject of choice. As a significant proportion of Eritrean men lost their income during the pandemic, they were forced to adopt a different role within the family unit. Eritrean women, on the other hand, managed to keep their jobs and became the family's sole provider. In addition to increasing their family's economic dependence on them, Eritrean women also became central figures in their community through the creation of new social networks designed to satisfy the emotional and economic needs of its members. This has enabled women refugees to reinforce their social mobility and become relatively autonomous.

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.