Transnationalism and Borderlands
Transnationalism and borderlands describe lives and cultures that span national boundaries, generating new identities at the edges and across the spaces between states.
Definition
The study of cross-border social and cultural connections sustained by migrants, and of borderlands as zones that generate hybrid identities and contested belonging.
Scope
This topic examines transnational ties that connect migrants across borders and the cultural condition of the borderland: Glick Schiller's transnational perspective on migration, Anzaldua's mestiza consciousness of the US-Mexico border, and the broader concept of transnationalism. It centers on the cultural forms produced by cross-border life.
Core questions
- How do migrants sustain ties across national borders?
- What kinds of identity and culture do borderlands produce?
- How does transnationalism challenge the nation-state frame?
Key theories
- Transnational migration
- Glick Schiller and colleagues argued that many migrants build and maintain social fields spanning home and host countries, requiring a transnational rather than assimilationist frame.
- Borderlands and mestiza consciousness
- Gloria Anzaldua theorized the borderland as a site of pain and creativity that produces a plural, hybrid 'mestiza' consciousness exceeding fixed national and cultural categories.
History
Transnationalism emerged as a framework in migration studies in the early 1990s, while Anzaldua's Borderlands (1987) became a foundational text in border and Chicana studies. Together they reoriented analysis away from the bounded nation toward cross-border and liminal spaces.
Debates
- Novelty and limits of transnationalism
- Scholars debate how new transnational ties really are and whether the concept is overextended, as Vertovec's survey discusses.
Key figures
- Gloria Anzaldua
- Nina Glick Schiller
- Steven Vertovec
Related topics
Seminal works
- anzaldua1987
- glickschiller1992
Frequently asked questions
- What is a 'borderland' in this field?
- Beyond a literal frontier, a borderland is a cultural zone where peoples and identities meet and mix, famously theorized by Gloria Anzaldua for the US-Mexico border.