Navigating Between Worlds: The Life of Transnational Communities

When someone emigrates to a new country, the conventional assumption has long been that they leave one world behind and build another. But that assumption no longer holds. Today, millions of people live simultaneously across borders – working in one country, raising children in another, sending money home, voting in two elections, and celebrating festivals from two cultures. This is transnationalism: a phenomenon that is actively reshaping how we understand nationality, identity, and belonging in the modern world.

What transnationalism actually means 🔗

Transnationalism is defined as the processes by which immigrants forge and sustain multi-stranded social relations that link together their societies of origin and settlement. The key word is “multi-stranded.” It isn’t just about moving from one country to another – it is about building and maintaining meaningful connections in both simultaneously. These connections span economic, social, cultural, and political life.

Scholars distinguish between transmigrants – those who develop and maintain these multiple relationships across borders – and ordinary migrants who relocate and largely assimilate. Not every immigrant becomes a transnational actor. As sociologist Alejandro Portes noted, transnationalism involves relevant dynamic cross-border relationships and activities that continuously contribute to the forging of dual or plural identities and a sense of belonging. It is an ongoing process, not a fixed state.

The concept gained serious academic traction in the 1990s, though its roots go back further. With increased global mobility and access to instantaneous worldwide communication technology, boundaries dissolve and the territorial controls imposed by the traditional nation-state become less relevant. The internet, affordable international travel, and mobile communication have all dramatically accelerated transnational life.

The three pillars of transnational life 🔗

Economic ties: remittances and cross-border enterprise 🔗

The most measurable expression of transnationalism is economic. Economic transnational activities such as business investments in home countries and monetary remittances are both pervasive and well documented. Remittances – money sent by migrants back to their families – are a vital economic lifeline for many countries in the Global South. According to the Inter-American Development Bank’s estimates, immigrants in developed countries sent the equivalent of $300 billion in remittances in 2006 alone, more than double the level of international aid at the time.

Beyond remittances, transnational entrepreneurs build businesses that bridge markets in two or more countries. Transnational entrepreneurs in the U.S. are more likely to be U.S. citizens, which suggests that being a full member in their new land actually helps them run more successful businesses in their countries of origin. Full civic integration and transnational economic engagement are not opposites – they often reinforce each other.

Social and cultural ties: identity in motion 🔗

Beyond money, migrants also transfer ideas, values, and social norms. Researchers call these social remittances – the ideas, behaviors, identities, and social capital that migrants export to their home communities. These transfers happen through visits, phone calls, social media, and everyday correspondence. They flow in both directions: migrants absorb values from their host societies and carry them home, while non-migrants back home are influenced by what their relatives abroad send back.

Culturally, transnational communities actively reproduce their heritage – through language maintenance, religious practice, food, and festivals – while simultaneously integrating into host-country life. This is not confusion or divided loyalty; it is a distinct and coherent form of plural identity. A broad range of economic, sociocultural, and political cross-border activities modify people’s sense of belonging to places, affect their citizenship, change their aspirations, and influence their identity.

Political ties: voting, advocacy, and diaspora politics 🔗

Transnational communities are politically active on both sides of the border. Many countries now permit their diaspora populations to vote in national elections from abroad. Migrants lobby host-country governments on issues affecting their homelands, advocate for human rights, and even fund political campaigns back home. Transnationalism also manifests itself in the transfer of ideas through social remittances, with migrants engaged in social or political activism to raise awareness about their country of origin.

This political engagement is not always welcomed. Some host-country governments view transnational political activity with suspicion, interpreting it as split loyalties or a security concern. The tension between being politically active in two countries simultaneously sits at the heart of ongoing debates about integration, citizenship, and national loyalty.

How transnationalism challenges traditional ideas of belonging 🔗

Historically, migration was understood as a one-way journey. Immigrants were expected to assimilate – to adopt the language, customs, and political identity of their new country. Historically, migrant groups moving from one nation to another were expected to prove their belonging and loyalty by adopting the prescribed moral and political values of their nation of immigration. Permanent residence carried an expectation of full cultural absorption.

Transnationalism disrupts this model entirely. It reveals that belonging is not zero-sum. A person can feel genuinely attached to two or more places, cultures, and communities without betraying any of them. Anthropologist Nina Glick Schiller draws a useful distinction here between ways of being – the actual relationships and practices people engage in – and ways of belonging – the identities people consciously claim and perform. A social field perspective reveals that one does not have to move to engage in transnational practices; people who stay behind are also shaped by the constant flow of economic and social remittances from abroad.

This has direct implications for citizenship. New forms of transnational citizenship are emerging that incorporate plural allegiances and policies in both host and origin countries, including recognition of dual citizenship, special incentives for investment in countries of origin, and granting voting rights from abroad. Countries like Mexico, Turkey, Morocco, and Pakistan have introduced or expanded dual citizenship laws specifically to maintain ties with their diaspora populations.

Transnationalism vs. nationalism: a live tension 🔗

Transnationalism is commonly contrasted with nationalism, which is characterized as a strong belief that the interests of the nation-state are paramount, requiring a strong sense of belonging and loyalty where the benefits of membership are acquired through citizenship. Nationalist frameworks assume that identity is singular and territorially bounded. Transnationalism challenges this assumption directly.

This tension is not abstract. In practice, transnational practices redefine nationalism, producing a non-territorial sense of belonging for groups and extraterritorial sovereignty for states, leading to a redefinition of the link between territory, nation, and political space. Nationalist movements in the 21st century have increasingly pushed back against this fluidity, framing transnational identities as a threat to cultural coherence and national sovereignty.

Yet this framing misses an important nuance. Transnationalism does not abolish national identity – it multiplies it. Many transmigrants are intensely loyal to their home countries precisely because they live abroad. The very act of maintaining homeland ties is an expression of national feeling, just not one confined within a single state’s borders. In the 21st century, those pursuing pluralistic forms of nationalism must also draw on the normative desirability and practical implications of dual citizenship and transnationalism.

The role of technology in sustaining transnational communities 🔗

Modern transnationalism would not be possible at its current scale without digital communication. Social media platforms, video calls, instant money-transfer apps, and online news have fundamentally changed what it means to live across borders. A migrant in London can attend a family wedding in Lagos via video call, track local politics in their home city, and send money to a parent in real time – all in the same evening.

Through economic remittances and social, cultural, and political transmittances, regions of emigration and immigration remain connected to each other in ways that make transnational migration a self-reinforcing process. Communication technology does not simply support transnational communities – it actively helps to create them, enabling people to maintain daily emotional and practical presence across vast distances.

This sustained connectivity also shapes second-generation migrants in new ways. Children born in host countries to transnational parents grow up navigating multiple cultural worlds from birth, with digital ties to places they may never have lived. Their identities are shaped not by choosing between cultures but by inhabiting both at once.

The challenges of living between worlds 🔗

Transnational life is not without its difficulties. The legal architecture of most nation-states was not designed with transnational actors in mind. Many countries still do not permit dual citizenship, forcing migrants to formally renounce one national identity to gain another. Immigration policies, tax laws, and social welfare systems often create practical barriers for those whose lives span borders.

There are also social and psychological costs. Transnational individuals frequently navigate conflicting cultural expectations, social pressures from both communities, and what researchers describe as a sense of being neither fully here nor fully there. While two-thirds of the global population lacks the right to move freely beyond their national borders, transnational connections persist – sustained by family networks, communication technologies, and the deep human need to maintain roots.

Migrants’ transnational ties can also be misread as a failure to integrate. In some instances, migrants’ transnational links are interpreted as split loyalties, and as a result, migrants and the intentions of their transnational activities may be regarded with suspicion in both home and host countries. This suspicion ignores the substantial evidence that transnational engagement and successful integration are fully compatible.

What transnationalism means for the future 🔗

Transnationalism is not a temporary feature of migration – it is becoming a permanent structure of global social life. As international migration continues to grow, as digital communication deepens cross-border ties, and as more countries recognize the economic and political value of their diaspora communities, transnational communities will only become more significant.

The challenge for states, societies, and institutions is to catch up with a social reality that has already outpaced traditional frameworks. Citizenship models, welfare systems, labor laws, and cultural policies all need to grapple with the fact that the economic interdependence between nation-states and their transnational communities is forcing states to redefine concepts such as citizenship and nationality, which are deeply embedded in a nation’s culture, history, and traditions.

More broadly, transnationalism asks us to rethink what belonging means. It suggests that identity does not require exclusivity, that home can be more than one place, and that connections forged across borders can be just as deep and genuine as those formed within them. In a world where people, ideas, and money move freely across national lines, rigid notions of singular national identity are increasingly insufficient to describe human experience.

What do you think? As transnational communities grow and digital connectivity makes cross-border life ever more feasible, should nation-states fundamentally rethink what citizenship and national belonging mean – or do strong national identities still serve an essential social purpose? And for those who live between two cultural worlds, is that dual belonging a source of strength, complexity, or both?

References

1. https://stateofnationalism.eu/article/transnationalism/
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4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnationalism
5. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/transnational-migrants-when-home-means-more-one-country
6. https://www.iom.int/sites/g/files/tmzbdl486/files/jahia/webdav/shared/shared/mainsite/microsites/IDM/workshops/migration_and_transnationalism_030910/background_paper_en.pdf
7. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12134068/
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