Conceptualizing Transnational
Engagements: A Structure and Agency
Perspective on (Hometown)
Transnationalism1
Thomas Lacroix
University of Poitiers
University of Oxford
This paper unfolds a conceptual framework of migrants’ transnational
engagements. It combines three elements: a concept of social agent
apprehended in its plurality of roles and social embedding; the Habermas
theory of communicative action accounting for the communicative
dimension of transnational engagements; a concept of social
institution explaining the role of migrant organizations in framing
transnational activities. This framework is applied to the analysis of
cross border engagements of Moroccan, Algerian and Indian hometown
organizations in the development of their respective sending
areas.
Transnationalism is a multifaceted reality. Transnational networks irrigate
North and West Africa with merchants and goods, provide funding to
orphanages in Punjab, Mali, Vietnam, and Morocco, accommodate social
spaces for Korean flight attendants in Dubai, link Veracruz workers with
New York state farmers and Chinese spouses to Korean farmers, introduce
Brazilian soap operas on Angolese TV channels, support the creation of
nation states in Eastern Europe, etc. Much has been said about the
embedding of such social formations into the wider context of neoliberal
globalization, the role played by modern technologies, and the (dis)
connection with traditional integration models of immigrants. And yet,
1
I express my gratitude to the editorial team of International Migration Review, including
the three anonymous reviewers whose work and comments have allowed me to greatly
improve this article. I thank Alex Jong-Seok Lee and Amelia Schubert for their fantastic
work and support. Finally, this article owes a debt of gratitude to Robert Carter and other
participants of the workshop on Migration and Social Theory (University of Pisa, April
2012).
© 2014 Center for Migration Studies of New York Inc
DOI: 10.1111/imre.12105
IMR Volume ** Number ** (**** 2014):1–37 1
the mechanisms that explain why people choose to devote time, money,
and energy to maintain long distance relations and practices remain, at
best, unpacked – in fact, unknown. No wonder. In the face of such
diverse engagements, any attempt to uncover a common ground seems
doomed to fail. The emergence of transnational socialities is usually
explained in macro-structural terms. The phenomenon is either seen as the
grassroots facet of neoliberal globalization, or an emergent social entity
re-welded by new technologies. The explanation of transnational behaviors
rests on a critique of assimilationist models: migrants go transnational
with a view to circumvent their underclass position in the destination
(Piore, 1979; Basch, Glick Schiller, and Szanton Blanc, 1994; Goldring,
1998).
This study explores a new pathway by engaging with general social
theory on the one hand, and migration studies on the other. Moving
away from context-based explanations, this article seeks to capture the
social mechanics of transnational engagement. Its aim is to outline a theoretical
model of transnational engagements that dwells on a structure
and agency (S/A) framework. This approach builds on a variety of influences:
the role-set theory, Habermas’ understanding of communicative
rationality and Heidegger’s concept of Dasein. It revisits Latour’s actor
network theory and opens avenues for bridging migration and transnational
studies. This approach does not only acknowledge the pluri-dimensionality
of human agency but also argues that the plurality of structural
embedding of agents is at the very source of their agential capacities.
The study draws on an empirical research on the development practices
of hometown organizations among three immigrant groups: Algerian
and Moroccan Berbers in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, and
Indian Punjabis in the United Kingdom (U.K.). This study does not
address the capacity of hometown organizations to achieve and manage
long distance initiatives but seeks theoretically to explain the motives of
their engagement. Altogether, over 100 semi-structured interviews have
been carried out, first during a doctoral study on Moroccan transnationalism
(1999–2003; Lacroix, 2005, 2009), and second during postdoctoral
study between 2005 and 2010 based on a comparison of the three groups
(Lacroix, 2012b, 2013). Interviews were made with leaders and members
of hometown organizations in Birmingham, London, Coventry, Brussels,
Almere, Amsterdam, Paris, France, and the Northern suburbs of Paris
(Clichy, Gennevilliers, Saint Denis. . .), Perpignan, and Poitiers. Field visits
were made in Punjab and Southern Morocco during which I observed
2 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW
development projects and interviewed members of village associations.
The sampling was mostly made through snowballing with a view to
follow the organizational networks across regional and national borders.
Complementary interviews were made with NGO representatives, major
migrant associations, and local and national authorities.
The first part of this article makes the case for a reformulated S/A
approach to transnationalism. It reviews extant approaches to transnational
engagement and the use of S/A perspective in migration studies. The second
part of the article unfolds the analytical framework: emergent transnational
practices are framed as the result of the multiple embeddings of migrants in
their host and origin places; the communicative dimension of their engagement
underpins the convergence or divergence of collective behaviors;
hometown organizations as a form of migrant social institutions provide a
framework for the production and reproduction of transnational engagement
that enables the communicative dynamics of actors’ rationality. In the
concluding section, I argue that this approach offers a ground for bridging
the two largely separate fields of migration and transnational studies.
TOWARD A STRUCTURE AND AGENCY APPROACH TO
TRANSNATIONALISM
Recent evidence questions the theoretical grounding of the transnational
paradigm. Endorsing a more quantitative stance, recent research shows
that only a small proportion of migrants engage in regular transnational
practices (Portes, Guarnizo, and Haller, 2002; Waldinger, 2008). Among
those who do, their engagement is not necessarily incompatible with an
assimilation trajectory into the host society (Guarnizo, Portes, and Haller,
2003; Snel, Engbersen, and Leerkes, 2006; Mazzucato, 2008; Schans,
2009). One wonders what remains of the heuristic value of this paradigm
if it does not propose an alternative to integration as a general framework
of understanding post migration processes? For Faist (2010), Glick Schiller
(2010), and Boccagni (2011), the paradigm’s legitimacy can be preserved
if a rapprochement is made between transnational and
globalization studies. In doing so, these authors reproduce another postulate
of the transnationalist paradigm: transnationalism is conceived as the
symptom of a new era, a social trend that draws postindustrial societies
into postmodernity. However, this view has also been questioned by historians
who have highlighted the long-standing existence of cross-border
CONCEPTUALIZING TRANSNATIONAL ENGAGEMENTS 3
behaviors, practices, and policies (Waldinger, 2006; Green and Weil,
2007). There is something in transnationalism that is not context-dependent
and that remains to be captured. The reproduction of long distance
ties is a universal tendency that has taken different shape throughout
times, just like migration itself.
A recent body of research in migration studies uses S/A theory to
give a better account of human agency in migration systems. S/A theory
is a generic label that includes the different theories modeling social action
in relation with their structural context: practice theory (Bourdieu, 1977,
1998), structuration (Giddens, 1984), and morphogenetics (Archer,
1995). These theories all take routinized practices as the locus of the
social and structures as the outcome of collective practices (Reckwitz,
2002). It is my contention that S/A theory can provide a common ground
on which a rapprochement between transnational and migration studies
can be made. Indeed, evidence shows that transnational engagements of
actors are affected by the initial conditions of migration. Conversely,
immigrant transnationalism constitutes a feedback effect that impacts current
migration trends. Both dynamics are intimately intertwined.
However, extant approaches remain ill-fitted for the analysis of transnational
phenomena. Forged for the study of human activities in “classical”
society-bonded contexts, they fail to take into account the agential implications
of specific positioning of migrants, namely their inscription and socialization
in a plurality of social fields. Indeed, migration de-multiplies the
social embeddings of actors and makes their roles and spaces more complex.
Migration disrupts the scales of actors’ social spaces at the local, plurinational,
and even global levels. In that sense, transnationalism offers a borderline
case to test and improve S/A theory. At the same time, drawing
transnational studies toward general social theories would offer the possibility
to seize the normality of everyday transnationalism (Boccagni, 2010).
Both sides, it is also argued, have much to gain from a cross-fertilizing dia-
logue.
The S/A approach should be adapted to provide an analytical tool
that navigates between different levels of the transnational condition of
migrancy. This framework builds upon Habermas’ theory of communicative
action and a renewed version of the role set theory. This study
expands on previous work that delineates the key elements characterizing
the S/A theory (Lacroix, 2012a): (1) a concept of agent defined as reflexive
actors; (2) a concept of social structures addressed in their material
4 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW
and immaterial dimensions; and (3) a reciprocal relation between social
structure and agentic behaviors’ of actors.2
In this study, I retain these key elements but further unpack the S/A
relation by focusing on three specific moments: emergence of innovative
behaviors that lead to social change; convergence, which is to say the adoption
of emerging behaviors by a sizable number of people, large enough
to, in turn, affect societal structuration OR divergence displayed by those
who do not adopt collective norms or courses of action. With this in
mind, I propose a structure/agency perspective that combines three
elements:
• A reformulated version of the role-set theory (Merton, 1957; Mead
1967; Lahire, 1998; Corcuff, 1999), which defines agents’ reflexivity
and emergence in the context of social complexity. Actors, in this case,
international migrants, are conceived as composite agents enmeshed in
a complex role-set, and beyond that, in an array of societal arenas;
• the Habermassian theory of communicative action accounting for
agency and convergence: the communicative dimension of actors’
behaviors is what enable them to move beyond the plural and (potentially)
contradictory nature of their social condition;
• the Habermassian approach to the formation of societies will be complemented
by a novel conception of social institution. This concept is
key to linking up agents’ practices and structural elaboration processes.
In this framework, social institutions are not a mere outcome of hidden
norms, or an extension of agentic capacities, but places in which
the deliberation process of communicative action is possible.
This theoretical framework will be applied to unravel the mechanics
of hometown transnationalism. From the 1990s onward, one observes a
growing commitment of hometown organizations to the development of
the place of origin of the migrant membership. These hometown groups
2
The different approaches differ in their vocabulary and the way they articulate these different
elements. For example, Giddens’ structuration theory encapsulates the idea of reciprocity
in the notion of duality of social structures: the latter are both the outcome and
medium of human actions. The concept of social structure is broken down into, on the
one hand, its material facet – financial, human (network configuration, skills, etc.), natural
and technical resources – and social constructed rules. Those are “techniques or generalizable
procedures applied in the enactment/reproduction of social practices” (Giddens,
1984:21) that include moral rules or culturally embedded techniques.
CONCEPTUALIZING TRANSNATIONAL ENGAGEMENTS 5
originate from a wide array of origin countries: Berbers from southern
Morocco, sub-Saharan people from the Valley of the Senegal River, Mexicans
from Zacatecas, Guanajato or Michoacan, Punjabis from India,
Guinean emigrants, etc. These long-distance development initiatives, also
called “collective remittances,” are not new, and historians have long documented
the philanthropic activities of village fellows abroad (Moya,
2005). However, the literature points out an unprecedented surge of this
type of engagement during the last 20 years (Zabin and Radaban, 1998;
Orozco, 2000; Lacroix, 2013). This dynamic is typically an issue of
“emergence” (a new behavior appearing in different settings) and of “convergence”
(the aggregation of behaviors of a sizable number of actors,
large enough to affect their structural context). Accounting for such a parallelism
requires an adequate understanding of macro- and micro-level
dynamics: the cultural foundations of hometown networks explaining collaborative
endeavors, the policy and economic contexts favoring local
development initiatives, etc. The structure/agency approach, designed to
address the reciprocal effects of actors’ behaviors and their structural context,
is extremely well-suited to this analysis of migrant organizations,
remittances, and development.
“Hometown Transnationalism” Among North African and Indian
Immigrants to Europe
The three groups investigated are archetypical examples of colonial and
postcolonial immigrant groups. The migrations of Moroccan Berbers from
Southern Morocco, Algerian Kabyles, and Indian Punjabis were first
framed by colonial authorities prior to the Second World War: these ethnic
and religious (for Sikh Punjabis) minorities were targets of colonial
administrations’ divide-and-rule strategies. Their migration gained
momentum after the war owing to the need for an unskilled workforce in
Europe. These groups formed the majority of immigrant flows coming
from North Africa and India until the 1960s, when the surge of labor
immigration went along with a diffusion of the emigration dynamics to
the rest of these countries. These groups are concentrated in the main
industrial areas: on the one hand, in the U.K. – Greater London, the
Midlands, Bradford, Manchester, Liverpool, and on the other hand, in
Northern France, in addition to Paris, Lyon, and Marseilles.
6 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW
The chain migration that characterized the mobility of these three
groups during this period was conducive to the clustering of village groups
in the arrival setting and to the subsequent creation of community institutions
coined as hometown organizations. These organizations were initially
created to support the arrival and settlement of newcomers. However, they
also played a cultural and political role.
Indeed, these three migrant groups originate from three cultural
minorities in North Africa and India: the Berbers on the one hand and
the Sikhs on the other. After independence, these minority groups had to
negotiate their incorporation into newly formed nation-states. This led to
open conflicts with state authorities: in the early fifties in Morocco, in
1981 and 2001 the so-called “Berber Springs” in Algeria, and in 1984 the
Punjab conflict. During the conflict period and throughout the eighties,
the overseas organizations (and hometown organizations in particular)
became a crucible for political contestation and cultural production.
These migrant organizations found a new “raison d’^etre” from the
nineties onward with their growing implication into collective remittances.
For example, a survey in 477 villages of the Punjab shows NRI (non-resident
Indian) transfers into religious and social development projects
amounted to $4.5 million. Places of worship, schools, and hospitals
absorb the largest shares of these monies (Dusenbery and Tatla,
2009:111, 131). Beyond their similar initial migratory conditions, these
three groups display radically different forms and intensities of transnational
engagement. Indian Punjabis can rely on large internal resources
linked to their successful economic integration. Moroccans do not enjoy
the same level of economic capacity but they may count on long-standing,
dense, and embedded organizational networks to attract external funding.
Algerian Kabyles, in contrast, display a lower level of transnationalism.
Like Moroccans, they cannot count on important internal resources, and
the decade long civil war in Algeria heavily disrupted their organizational
networks (see Lacroix, 2013).
Common Approaches to Transnational Engagements
Three sets of (partial) explanation can be distinguished: transnationalism as
a duty, as an exit, or as an outlet. The first set has to do with the relations
between migrants and their origin societies. Economists are more interested
in a specific (but widespread) form of transnationalism: remittances (Taylor,
1999; Vargas-Silva and Ruiz, 2009). For proponents of the New Economics
CONCEPTUALIZING TRANSNATIONAL ENGAGEMENTS 7
of Labor Migration, transnationalism is grounded in a pre-migratory household
strategy in reaction to adverse economic conditions (e.g., lack of credit
access, insufficiency of local sources of income). A member of a household is
sent abroad with the duty to provide complementary revenue. Remittances,
and the transnational relationships that come with it, stand at the core of the
migration project. Economics being what it is, this literature is exclusively
interested in financial aspects of transnationalism. Carling (2008) displaces
this focus from the terrain of economic strategies to the one of moral economy.
Carling identifies three types of asymmetries that inform the transnational
relationships between migrants and non-migrants: moral, resource,
and imaginary. The departure and physical distance of migrants induces a
moral debt vis-a-vis those who stayed (Hage, 2002). In the eyes of nonmigrants,
the socialization in the destination country is a source of moral
and cultural corruption. The gift giving relationship between migrants and
non-migrants takes the form of the “repayment of communality” hiding an
actual dependency toward migration monies. Through remittances and frequent
gifts, migrants reassert their membership to the community lest they
are accused of egoistic ingratitude (Carling, 2008:1459).
The second type of explanation focuses on the host country context. In
this regard, transnationalism appears as a form of exit, a way out of an
underclass position in which migrants are confined (Basch, Glick Schiller,
and Szanton Blanc, 1994). Their transnational engagements provide
migrants with the psychological, financial, and social resources that enable
them to challenge the subordinating model of incorporation proposed by
receiving nation states. Exit transnationalism foresees a proportional relationship
between cross-border engagement and discrimination, and, conversely,
a reverse relationship between transnationalism and incorporation.
Much recent work dismisses the latter part of this assertion. Transnationalism,
in any domain of social life, is not weakened by integration (Itzigsohn
and Saucedo, 2002; Portes, Guarnizo, and Haller, 2002; Guarnizo, Portes,
and Haller, 2003; Snel, Engbersen, and Leerkes, 2006; Mazzucato, 2008;
Schans, 2009; Cela, Fokkema, and Ambrosetti, 2013). The same appears
true for hometown transnationalism (Lacroix, 2013). However, it seems that
some form of exit transnationalism is observed among children of immigrants
that face discrimination (Beauchemin, Hamel, and Simon, 2010).
The third type of explanation (transnationalism as an outlet) links
transnationalism to the relative position of immigrants in their host and
origin areas. A first instance is provided by Roberts, Frank, and LozanoAscencio
(1999) who argue that the relative situation of the job market in
8 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW
both countries informs the type of migration that links them. When the
job availability is relatively high in both contexts, migratory movements
are more likely to be temporary. When job availability in the host setting
is significantly better, this fuels permanent migration – and return migration
if the reverse is true. With this in mind, Roberts et al. argue that
transnational mobility happens when both contexts offer poor employment
perspectives. A second instance is given by Goldring (1998). Goldring
notes the sheer contrast of consumption behaviors and housing at
both ends of the migratory lifestyle. She argues that transmigrants compensate
for their underclass condition in the receiving area while they
enjoy a privileged status in their place of origin (an idea also found in Piore
(1979)). In this regard, transnationalism is an outlet that makes the
sustaining of social and economic frustrations bearable.
Each of these explanations remain partial. They all relate to a specific
form of migration, namely South to North labor migration and do
not account for other types of transnationalism that move beyond the primary
linkages maintained with the origin community such as long distance
nationalism, religious transnationalism, etc. In addition, these
explanations generally point to the positive role of sending communities
and to the negative role of receiving contexts and in part draw on a
reverse push–pull type of thinking according to which the behavior of
actors is predetermined by the social conditions in which they live.
Despite these limitations, these explanations also identify a large array of
factors that matter, from the economic and social conditions that precede
migration, to the situation of immigrants long after they have settled in
the destination. Understanding transnational engagements demand that
we consider the migration process in its widest sense and how it unfolds
over time, from the steps that precede migration to its consequences in
the arrival settings over several generations. This calls for a better integration
of transnational and migration theories. In the section below, the
focus is turned on two divergent but complementary trends in current
research.
Recent Trends in Migration and Transnational Studies: Accounting for
Migrants’ Agency in Transnational Assemblages
It seems that recent research on immigrant transnationalism has deserted
the problem of actors’ engagement. Current theoretical efforts focus on
CONCEPTUALIZING TRANSNATIONAL ENGAGEMENTS 9
the functioning of transnational social fields and their embedding into
wider neoliberal globalization dynamics. A recent strand of research casting
a bridge between transnational theory and actor network theory, is, in
this regard, a case in point. Central to the transnationalist literature, the
concept of transnational social field is defined by Levitt and Glick Schiller
as “sets of multiple interlocking networks of social relationships
through which ideas, practices, and resources are unequally exchanges and
transformed” (Levitt and Glick Schiller, 2004:1009). The notion of field,
as opposed to that of community, moves away from a pre-defined identity-bounded
unit of analysis. Transnational social fields are delimited by
spatially embedded relations (networks) rather than culturally embedded
ones (habitus). The concept of transnational social field thereby puts the
emphasis on the fluidity and openness of social relations. A migrant-centered
perspective of transnationalism, reinforced by an anti-statist stance
that characterized postmodern anthropology of mobility, tended to depict
transnational social fields as self-contained, “ungrounded,” and “deterritorialized”
social formations. This anti-statism explains why the role of
assimilation, state policies, and interstate relations in the shaping of pluriterritorial
socialities, has long been underestimated. From the early 2000s
onward, a new body of research renewed the transnationalist literature by
highlighting the importance of the spatial and temporal inscription of
transnational phenomena: the past instances of transnationalism (Lucassen,
Feldman, and Oltmer, 2006; Waldinger, 2006; Green and Weil, 2007),
the place taken by the host context (with a specific focus on the role of
cities), the importance of non-migrant actors and migrant organizations
(Portes, Escobar, and Walton Radford, 2005; Lacroix, 2011; Pries and
Sezgin, 2012), the implications of integration dynamics, and the impacts
of state policies in the shaping of transnational fields, etc. Actors of different
types and scales that do not necessarily move nor migrate increasingly
populated the transnational scholarship.
Against this backdrop, scholars in search of an overarching theoretical
framework accounting for this diversity introduced the concept of
assemblage (DeLanda, 2006; Ong and Collier, 2008). This concept comes
from science studies and is associated with Latour’s actor network theory
(Latour, 2005; Martin, 2005; Law, 2009). This approach was originally
articulated to highlight the strong continuum that exists between a diversity
of actors (scientists, technicians, lawyers, funding bodies, etc.) and
material and immaterial entities (equipment, money, scientific paradigm,
flows of ideas) that intervene in the process of scientific production. Actor
10 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW
network theory rejects the modern idea that knowledge is the outcome of
a duality between a mental “cogito” that comes to grip with a separate
physical “res extensa.” On the contrary, the actor network theory postulates
that social action is supported by an intimate interrelation between
actors, objects, and ideas. The term assemblage is used to characterize the
assembling/disassembling of contingent but tangled practices/groups/
dynamics (McFarlane, 2009). Assemblages are configurations made of
disparate elements that cohere for a given period. They are characterized
by both spatial and temporal trajectories. In the transnational literature,
an assemblage points to the ideological (discursive relationships, systems
of belief, political or religious mindset, etc.) and material (new technologies,
transports, natural elements, physical laws, etc.) aspects that support
and are supported by transnational social fields (Lendvai and Stubbs,
2009; Legg, 2010; Datta, 2013; Levitt and Rajaram, 2013). The concept
of assemblage also points to the important role of states and other nonmigrant
organizations such as religious bodies, multinational companies,
and political parties that intervene in the shaping of cross-border social
formations. Transnational scholars are primarily concerned by the spatial
deployment of transnational processes. The scholarship insists on the multidimensional,
fluid, poly-scalar nature of transnational (translocal) processes
(Featherstone, Phillips, and Waters, 2007; Legg, 2009; Brenner,
2011).
In contrast, little is said about the temporality of transnational practices.
There is no theoretical attempt to rely on the assemblage theory to
explain how transnational social formations come to being, evolve, and
dismantle.3
Arguably, the time factor is crucial to the consolidation of
cross-border social formations. Likewise, the various theories regarding the
drivers of transnational engagements have not been reassessed in light of
the inputs of assemblage. Such an approach, Law asserts, is “descriptive
rather than foundational” (2009:141). It focuses on how material/immaterial
relations assemble rather than on why. It focuses on the logics of durability
that stabilize a given configuration, rather than on the mechanics of
rationality that spur emergent practices. In this regard, I fear that the followers
of Gaia so eager to build up an egalitarian vision of the world
3
This contrasts with the efforts made by migration theorists to grapple with the longue
duree of migration cycles (see below).
CONCEPTUALIZING TRANSNATIONAL ENGAGEMENTS 11
between the human and the non-human, jettison the ontological specificities
of human beings.4
In this respect, the distance between assemblage
and structuralist theory can be very proximate. While the former seeks a
structural feature within agents, the latter uncovers agentic features in
structures. But the result remains the same: a world in which humans and
non-humans are tied in a chain of functional relations. The actor network
theory leaves open the space occupied by human beings, their agency, and
moreover the questions of innovation and reproduction, or, in other
words, the question of liberty. In my view, leaving this space solely to
rational actor theory and its avatars is not, for either heuristic or for political
reasons, a smart move. My intent is to respond to this caveat by outlining
a S/A approach that would cast a bridge between the pluralistic
visions of role-set and assemblage theory.
Migration theorists have increasingly sought to incorporate S/A
approaches in extant models. This tendency is part of a broader effort to
reassess the place of actors’ agency in network and system theories of
migration processes. Morawska’s study of Polish immigration to Germany,
in this regard (Morawska, 2001), draws on Giddens’ structuration
theory to analyze the constitution of petty trade and labor networks
despite the restrictive policies enforced by the destination country in the
1990s. Morawska argues that the structuration theory complements existing
migration theories in two ways: first by interrelating micro and
macro-level processes into one single framework; second, by showing
how immigrant agency affects the different elements of material and
immaterial migration structures over time. For example, she shows how
pioneer migrants in the 1970s and 1980s relied on specific trading and
circulation skills developed during the communist period to cross the
German border. The experience of pioneers adapted these culturally
embedded schemes to their new context, which, in turn, facilitated the
arrival of new immigrants in the nineties. In particular, the structuration
theory amends Massey’s cumulative causation by shedding light on
aspects otherwise not addressed: the migration skills of migrants, their
capacity to react to policy reforms, etc. (2001:62). Goss and Lindquist
4
Latour (2012) talks about multiple ontologies, which is to say a multiplicity of universes
each endowed with a specific ontological trajectory. However, if Latour identifies and
describes the modes of being of a number of objects (such as material, technical, ideational,
fictional, etc.), he does not include human beings that sit alongside them, but
rather (as far as I may say) as beings that stand at the crossroads of these objects and welcome
them in their ontological vacuity.
12 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW
(1995) also import the structuration theory to build an integrative model
that account for the micro and macrolevel forces of migration. Interestingly,
their work brings to the fore a different aspect of the structuration
theory, namely the concept of institution. This meso-level entity, it is
argued, provides the possibility to articulate the different levels of analysis.
Following Giddens, they define a migrant institution as “a complex
articulation of individuals, associations and organizations, which extend
the social action of and interaction between these agents and agencies
across time and space” (Goss and Lindquist, 1995:319). Drawing on the
case of Filipino migration, the authors outline the contours and evolution
of a migrant institution framing migration pattern through a routinized
set of rules and resources. The routinization of social practices is
institutionalized through the constitution of a web of formal and informal
organizations, networks of knowledgeable actors, associations, businesses.
This process not only ensures the reproduction of migratory flows
but also adapts to shifting mutations in national policy and global economic
contexts. The latest attempt to make use of the S/A approach
challenges the implicit conception of migration systems as “fully formed
entities” with no account of their formation or demise (Bakewell, De
Haas, and Kubal, 2011). This argument is developed from the perspective
of pioneer migrants. It is argued that their capacity to become
bridgeheads for new incoming flows depends on the morphology of their
social context (or social capital). High levels of social capital are more
likely to lead to the take-off and sustenance of migration processes. Conversely,
exclusionary social capital explains why migration trends remain
confined to translocal or community based networks.
The use of the S/A theory by these different authors discussed above
is motivated by different reasons. Morawska introduces social aspects that
are overlooked by existing models: the cultural skills developed by
migrants and their capacity to react to state policies. Goss and Lindquist
draw on the S/A approach to have a better grip on macro, meso and microlevel
dimensions of migration phenomena. Bakewell et al. introduce
the same approach to uncover the temporal dimension of migration systems.
Although these authors are primarily addressing the weaknesses of
existing migration theories, this overview raises points that can be transposed
in the transnationalist debate. As shown above, the need to better
grasp the temporality of transnational social field, the articulation of their
different dimensions and scales can be addressed by combining such an
approach with the S/A perspective.
CONCEPTUALIZING TRANSNATIONAL ENGAGEMENTS 13
But this overview also highlights two weaknesses of S/A theory. In
the first place, current approaches tend to reinforce a bias that traverses
migration theories in general: migration theorists fundamentally consider
migrants as migrants, and only address the role they play in the maintaining
of migration/transnational networks. But migrants endorse a multiplicity
of identification and roles: parents, workers, political actors, social
activists, sports fan, etc. Migration and settlement always induce a process
of bipolarization of life experiences between host and origin contexts,
and thereby a multiplication of identity referentials. Current theories do
not account for the pluralization of social roles and the bearing they can
have on migration/transnational processes. This leaning is not likely to
be corrected with dominant S/A approaches. The latter have been forged
for the study of social processes in “standard” societies. The conceptual
frameworks conflate cultural structures incorporated by actors and social
belonging. The concept of habitus, in particular, firmly embeds actors
within homogeneous social groups. Primarily forged for the study of the
Algerian agrarian society, the Bourdieusian concept of habitus (Bourdieu,
1977) is conceived as a set of dispositions incorporated at a young age
that are not (or only marginally) subject to change (for a discussion of
these concepts, see Lahire, 1998:38–50). In addition, migration theorists
tend to consider the subjective skills, moral norms, and objective social
and material other types of resources as a ready-to-hand toolkit. What is
too often neglected is the fact that these dispositions are context dependent.
Their mobilization is a communicative process that implies the
participation and validation by other actors, be they migrants or nonmigrants.
The situated dimension of actors’ agency becomes salient when
attention is paid to the plurality of contexts in which migrants are
embedded.
Acknowledging the plurality of roles endorsed by actors problematizes
the questions of interest formation, the shift from individual to collective
interest and, more generally, of action coordination. This problem is
central insofar as individuals do not weigh individually on structures. The
appearance of isolated behaviors has no social meaning until this behavior
is adopted by a number of people large enough to affect social structures.
Envisaging migrants strictly within the confines of their migrancy spares
the trouble of explaining how migrants must articulate their cross-border
relations and activities with other domains of their lives, and how their
multipolarity affects the relations and functioning of the group at destination
and origin. In fact, the plurality perspective questions the very
14 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW
definition of a social group as defined by the S/A approach, which is to say
as an aggregate of material configuration, immaterial norms and meanings,
and individual agents. When agents are plural and when distinct structural
orders conflate, it becomes difficult to define the limits of social groupings.
To respond to these challenges, I define below a version of the S/A
approach that would be tailored for the study of postmigration phenomena.
I outline three basic components: a conception of the plural social
agent, a description of the mechanics of convergence based on Habermas’
communicative theory, and a definition of social institutions that provide
a methodological and logical ground for understanding how groups maintain
beyond the multiplicity of actors’ embedding.
OUTLINE OF A STRUCTURE/AGENCY PERSPECTIVE ON
HOMETOWN TRANSNATIONALISM
Plural Man’s Reflexivity: The Composite Being of Social Agents
As argued above, existing S/A approaches are ill fitted for analyzing postmigration
processes that span several social fields. Being forged for the
study of social processes in self-contained societies, they do not incorporate
the central postmigratory condition of migrants, namely the multiplicity
of identity referentials.
The S/A approach developed in this paper dwells on a specific ontological
conception of the social actor in line with an existentialist perspective,
“the plural man”. I characterize this ontology of the social actor as
follows. First, humans are to found their being (Sartre, 1943): they are to
take a stand on their own being (Heidegger, 2008: chapter 2), a stand
where they need to constantly reassert their existentiality through their
daily behaviors as gendered, political, or economic actors. Second, this existentiality
is plural, ambiguous, and multipolar. The term “plural man” is
borrowed from the French sociologist Bernard Lahire (1998), but it refers
to a line of thought that dates from Merton (1957), Mead 1967; Dahrendorf
(1968), Deleuze and Guattari (1980), and more recently, Nancy
(1996). From this perspective, social actors cannot be conceived as unitary
entities. Individuals possess multiple facets, roles and identity levels. This
is all the more so for migrants who have to manage their social positions
at destination and origin. They are socialized in a variety of contexts,
learning the codes and norms of each of them. They are immersed in
CONCEPTUALIZING TRANSNATIONAL ENGAGEMENTS 15
their multiple structural embeddings, and are thus to cope with an array
of expectations and obligations. It requires a great deal of courage, diplomacy,
compromise, or submission to articulate a coherent identity. Third,
humans regulate their relations to the world (including other humans)
through a web of meanings that reflect this interior ambivalence (Smelser,
1998). This mode of interaction ensures the continuity and correspondence
between social structures and identity configuration. In this regard,
subjective meanings and objective structures are co-produced. Understanding
the world implies understanding the meaning of the world, which further
implies understanding oneself within this world, and conversely at
the same time. This non-Cartesian perspective moves away from the structuralist
and deterministic conception encapsulated in role theory: objects
and subjects, structures and agents, although ontologically distinct, maintain
a reciprocal relationship of co-production.
Out of this complexity, actors build up their individuality by forging
and asserting a stand on their own existentiality in the world. In the
face of complex reality, actors build up a narrative about their own
being (Ricoeur, 2003). This segmentation of the being can also be a
source of suffering and alienation when the individuals are confronted
with identity referentials that cannot be reconciled. Conflicts arise when
simultaneously being the child of one’s parents and the spouse of one’s
partner, a believer and a member of a materialist party, a factory worker
and a basketball player, an African or Asian immigrant facing postcolonial
logics, or poor in a society that promotes wealth. The sociologist
Merton points directly to this issue when he shows that criminality in
Chicago between the two world wars stems from the contradiction
between the subjective “ideal” of the American family head (which associates
masculinity with economic affluence) and the objective conditions
of economic and job scarcity (Merton, 1938). The same analysis could
apply to labor immigrants shared between the expectations of their kins
back home and their duties of parents in the receiving society (see
below). Yet later work suggests the multiplication of roles and social
belongings bolster a sense of uniqueness among actors (Corcuff,
1999:162–163). The range of possible combinations sustains the feeling
of one’s own specificity. Individuality stems from complexity. At the
same time, the greater possibility of bargaining between different social
positions produces a sense of autonomy. By and large, this segmentation
is the roots of both alienation and liberation. It is therefore the source
of our fundamentally political nature. In this sense, women are not less
16 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW
plural than men. The history of their emancipation is the story of the
legitimation of their plurality. However, women have even less room to
maneuver between conflicting roles, given the difficulty of delegating
their traditional position of motherhood. Studies on migrant women
working in the care sector in Western countries illustrate this (McGregor,
2007; Fresnoza-Flot, 2008; Romero, 2012).
Agency emerges from the necessity to take action in a composite
world and to build up an identity despite often-contradictory roles. Emer-
gence,5
in this sense, can be seen as the innovative accommodation of
conflicting obligations. The literature provides a long series of analytical
tools to address the individual’s range of possible behaviors. In times of
peace or crisis, people can voice, exit, or be loyal (Hirschman, 1970), protest
or accommodate (Myrdal, Sterner, and Rose, 1962), turn to past
experience or project themselves into the future (Emirbayer and Mische,
1998). By and large, they can exhibit a whole range of behaviors taken
from their daily life: lying, convincing, coercing, deterring, etc. But, whatever
the degree of innovation in their behavior, actors are never cut off
from the culturally embedded interpretation of the world they share with
their counterparts. Agency is always directed by social structures.
The transnational engagements of migrant organizations are best
understood as a form of agency resulting from the plural embedding of
their members. The three cases of Moroccan, Algerian, and Indian hometown
organizations in France and the U.K. considered in the empirical
component of this project illustrate this perspective. The migration of
these three groups is characterized by their community orientation. The
choice to migrate is taken in a complex social framework that bears the
mark of heavy collective control. Their migration project is a combination
of personal and collective considerations. Future migrants are themselves
in search of self-fulfillment, improvement of their economic or training
5
Emergence is a term usually associated with Critical Realist philosophy (Collier, 1994).
This school of thought is a post-Cartesian philosophy that posits a rigorous distinction
between object/subject (or structure/agents human and non-human). In this framework, it
designates the capacity of social structures to orient in a non-deterministic way human
agency. Although the concept is tailored to preserve the subject/object distinction, it is
often used by Latourian scholars (Bennett, 2005; Murray Li, 2007) and transposed in
Assemblage theory (itself asserting a continuum between human and non-humans). In the
theory of engagement developed in this paper, an aporical use of the term is avoided using
the term in renewed sense, characterizing not a property of social structures but a characteristic
of agency.
CONCEPTUALIZING TRANSNATIONAL ENGAGEMENTS 17
conditions, etc. But their endeavor is framed by their place and role
within the village community. They are also members of a household that
expect to gain from the departure of their kin, and of the village community
that expects compliance with community obligations and social order.
Migrants are expected to show the success of their personal endeavor, to
meet the economic needs of their relatives abroad by sending money, and
to show their allegiance to the political order of the village. To exist as a
migrant in their own eyes and in the eyes of their relatives back home,
those who leave have to behave in accordance with this triple expectation.
They follow the migration routes delineated by those who went before
them, join the expatriated village community, and participate in hometown
activities in the place of arrival. The hometown group creates a
space of intimacy by clustering in the same urban settings. The case of
Kabyles in Paris is, in this regard, exemplary. Several researchers have
attempted to map the distribution of immigrants in the city in accordance
with their origin. For example, the Ighil Ali from the municipality of Akbou
are to be found in the 14th, 13th, and 10th arrondissement (Direche-Slimani,
1997:46), the Ait Fliqs in the 17th and 15th (Khellil,
1979:111). Migrants’ sense of belonging to the community of origin commands
the sending of money, gifts, and news to the family in the place of
departure. Transnational connections with the homeland are therefore not
to be restricted to a livelihood strategy, but derive from their mode of
multipolar existence within distinct social spaces.
However, as time goes by, the presence of migrants in the arrival
setting widens the field of their existence. The socialization of migrants in
their place of work is conducive to the formation of a working-class ethos,
especially among those who become unionists or political activists. Over
the years, the divergent socio-professional trajectories of migrants have
diversified their class identities. The economic crisis of the 1980s encouraged
a number of migrants to create their own jobs and become entrepreneurs.
Finally, family reunification and the arrival of children affect
migrants’ status. Migrants, themselves once children in an origin-society
household, become parents of children who are part of the host society.
Social mobility and the need for larger housing lead newly formed households
to move to new neighborhoods. This entails the spatial and social
dispersal of hometown groups over several cities and, sometimes, several
countries. Clustered hometown groups become dispersed hometown networks.
In parallel, the schooling of children leads to the weaving of new
relations with local authorities, and within the neighborhood. The process
18 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW
entails the appearance of new responsibilities. As Mohamed, a factory
worker, unionist and hometown leader from Gennevilliers reports: “You
have roots in the [origin] country and you have built up roots here,
[because] children are here, they grew up here, and they have
French nationality”6
(Interview, Gennevilliers, 2000). As a consequence,
integration and the subsequent surge of new personal identities challenge
this village identity. The one-time community of villagers becomes a disparate
collection of people sharing little more than a common origin.
Within the framework of the plural man, migration appears as a
multidimensional act and migrants as actors torn between different social
statuses. This highlights the social complexity of migration and the paradoxes
actors must face. These diverging dynamics set the background for
migratory behaviors in general and collective remittances in particular. In
the following section, we will see how this situation affects the transnational
orientation of hometowners.
Communicative Action: Connected Behaviors
Habermas, along with Theodor Adorno, Horkheimer, and, more recently,
Axel Honneth, is one of the leading figures of the Frankfort School of
social theory. His groundbreaking book The Theory of Communicative
Action (Habermas 1984, 1987) is acknowledged by the International
Sociological Association as one of the ten most influential works of sociology.
Paradoxically, this theory holds a very minor place in migrationrelated
studies in comparison to his work on public space, citizenship,
and deliberative democracy. This is particularly true in the transnational
scholarship in which the communicative approach has hardly been mentioned.
Communicative action is usually understood as a form of speech
act (Austin, 1962). I here expand on his work to argue that any form of
action, not only verbal action, is to be understood within a communicational
framework. The theory of communicative action is primarily a critique
of the Weberian model of rationality, named “instrumental
rationality,” according to which action is intended to achieve personal
ends with available means within the limits of a moral framework. Habermas
argues that this model focuses on individuals and fails to explain the
dynamics of action coordination, and beyond, the convergence of social
behaviors. Habermas coined the term communicative rationality to identify
6
Translated from French by the author.
CONCEPTUALIZING TRANSNATIONAL ENGAGEMENTS 19
the second level of rationality. This concept is posited on the idea that an
action requires the mediation of an external observer to be acknowledged
as rational. It cannot be purely assessed as an internal relation between
personal ends and available means. Habermas defines communicative
rationality as a mode of truth claim. In other words, acting is taking a
stand on the world order and its functioning. He distinguishes three
orders of reality, three “worlds”: the objective/natural world, the intersubjective
sphere delineated by meanings and norms, and the subjective representations
that individuals build internally. From there, he identifies
three possible forms of “truth claims”: conformity with objective facts,
normative and moral rightness, and subjective truthfulness. Communicative
rationality is the relation to the world that people use to assert validity
claims in order to achieve mutual understanding (Habermas, 1984:98–
100). Communicative rationality makes actions meaningful to observers,
and this meaningfulness makes them assessable as rational or irrational.
Rationality appears as a coherent articulation between behavioral conduct
and collective understanding of the world. Furthermore, because rationality
is not the mere outcome of an internal relation between actors’ subjectivity
and the outside world but also requires the intervention of an
external agent, acting is immediately embedded into an intersubjective
framework of reference. Rationality is therefore relative to the position of
the observer. For example, the spending of emigrants into conspicuous
houses they only occupy a couple a month a year may be deemed rational
for actors who are part of a competition for social recognition in the place
of origin but not for external observers who may see it as a loss of financial
resources. Communicative action is conducive to the production of a
shared understanding of the world. Beyond this, it fosters the convergence
of social behaviors.
The lifeworld is defined by Habermas as an internal, subjective perception
of the world, a ground, which renders possible the monitoring of
rationality of people’s behavior. People’s lifeworld is subjective insofar as
it incorporates personal memories, skills, and psychological leanings. But
it also rests on a collective framework of reference, which encapsulates the
social and natural order. The lifeworld is therefore a ground for transmitting
and renewing cultural knowledge, inserting actors into the social hierarchy
of the group, and shaping personal identities (Habermas,
1984:335–337). It is transmitted through education and imitation of
other’s doings, but also through practice itself. The notion of lifeworld
establishes a bridge between “coping with” and “understanding” the
20 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW
world, between subjective and intersubjective interpretations, between
identity shaping and group formation, and between emergence and conver-
gence.
But this framework of analysis also explains divergence, a course of
action that differs from the general line and that may border on irrationality
in the eyes of external observers. There is no deterministic relationship
between the building of a lifeworld and convergence. A collective is
always questioning the order of its reasons: as shown below, belonging to
a collective of migrants does not necessarily involve a unilateral implication
into hometown organizations. But convergence and divergence are to
be seen as two sides of the same agential coin. These dynamics do not differ
in their fundamental nature but of directionality: the centripetal movement
of convergence is opposed to the centrifuge one of divergence.
Individuals are tied to a multiplicity of social fields. A divergence in a
given context can hide a convergence process in another. In such cases,
divergence may have a structural efficiency. If the occurrence of a diverging
behavior remained unrelated to any larger dynamics, it would only be
an isolated, ec-centric event.
With this framework in mind, one can analyze the practices of
migrants. Remittances in different forms can be understood as a type of
communicative action. They can be regarded as a message through which
migrants express a positioning with regard to both other migrants and
non-migrants alike – a way of expressing their interpretation of the rights
and duties attached to their role of migrant. As shown above, this role
emerges at the crossroads of personal, family, and community expectations.
Any form of remittances (the monies sent back home, the gifts
given to relatives, and even personal projects such as the building of a
house) is to be construed under this triple lens. The migrant house is
emblematic; it is simultaneously an obvious sign of success, a warranty
against life risks for the family and, when built in the place of origin, a
sign of allegiance to the village. Remittances are communicative acts to
meet expectations of observers, both in terms of material and symbolic
expectations. In this regard, collective remittances are conceived as meaningful
and rational actions for both senders and receivers. The comparative
study of Kurien in three Keralese villages (Muslim, Christian and
Hindu) shows that the relative weight of responsibility differs according
to the cultural background of the sending setting. In the Muslim village,
migrants spent large sums of money under the form of gifts to the poor,
support to a local orphanage, and/or donations to the mosque. In Hindu
CONCEPTUALIZING TRANSNATIONAL ENGAGEMENTS 21
villages, individuals show off the success of their migration through
conspicuous religious life cycle rituals and usurious lending. In Christian
villages, emigrants invest in productive activities for the benefit of their
close kin (Kurien, 2008).
As shown above, integration over time adds layers to migrants’ identity.
Their identification with the place of settlement and their new associated
obligations undermine their “raison d’^etre” as a villager. The life
experience and socialization of migrants in alternative social fields enriches
their lifeworld with new references. But in turn, this multi-polarization
challenges people’s sense of belonging. In this context, the latter needs to
be constantly re-asserted and/or re-invented. In hometown organizations,
fellows stop attending meetings and paying fees. These “divergent behaviors”
reveal a process of individuation that undermines hometown organizations’
legitimacy, to which (the latter) must adapt or disappear.
In this context, the surge of engagement with long-distance development
initiatives observed among hometown organizations is the result of
this necessity to reassert “villageness”. Collective remittances emerged as a
response to the multi-polarization of personal roles. On the one hand,
collective remittances became a rallying point to regenerate not only their
commitment to the hometown organization but also their ties with the
village of origin.7
In effect, development projects are fully inscribed into
the three-pronged role-set of hometowners (mark of personal fulfillment,
compliance with family obligations, and allegiance to the village social
hierarchy). On the other hand, they also bear the mark of their inscription
into the society of arrival: through development practices, migrants
become vectors of modernity and thereby of values and lifestyles associated
with the place where they settled. For example, hometown organizations
from Southern Morocco finance the electrification of their place of
origin (Lacroix, 2005). The building of hospitals is a common project
among Indian Punjabis (Dusenbery and Tatla, 2009; Lacroix, 2010).
Likewise, the funding of sewage systems by U.S.-based Mexican hometown
associations has been well-documented (Orozco, 2003; Fox, 2005;
7
Of course, this is not a rallying point for everybody. Any convergent dynamics generate
divergence. Those who refuse to partake are often presented as selfish and individualistic
(not to say “mad” or “alcoholics”). A Kabyle hometowner admitted to paying for the
membership fees of his brother to hide his refusal to partake in community activities. But
these outsiders are not necessarily people who have cut off with the place of origin. They
prefer an intimate and family based transnationalism away from HTO’s communitarian
citizenship they regard as outdated.
22 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW
Smith, 2006). These projects all contribute to align the villages’ landscape
and lifestyle with those of the arrival setting. Collective remittances are
located at the crossroads of three mental universes, three lifeworlds: the
one of migrants, the one of non-migrants in origin communities, and the
one of non-migrants in receiving societies. Remittances are not a mere act
of transfer but also an act of translation between different cultural orders.
These projects are therefore a complex form of communicative action,
which, beyond the material impact of the village, asserts the dual embedding
of migrants. Collective remittances are an output of a dual positioning
of migrants toward both the sending and settlement areas. What
remains to be seen is the place of social and public institutions (and therefore
of hometown organizations and state policies) within these processes.
The Role of Social Institutions in Structural Elaboration
Habermas’ major theoretical accomplishment is to link the structures of
society with the structures of rationality. As seen above, the communicative
dimension of daily practices builds a shared understanding of the
world, and therefore fosters social integration through the three forms of
truth claims (objective conformity, normative rightness, subjective truthfulness).
Henceforth, these three forms of relation to the world create
three spheres of value: science, law, and art. The emergence of distinct
spheres is the result of a specialization in the different ways of coping with
reality (instrumental and communicative). Habermas thereby identifies
first a process of specialization of societal fields. Economy and polity occupies
a specific place in this process. Habermas draws from Parsons’ concept
of medium (Habermas, 1987:261) to account for their stratification.
Instrumental rationality, he argues, has led to money being substituted for
language in order to mediate interactions for the exchanges of goods. The
economy thus became a distinct sphere of society. Likewise, the regulation
of the pursuit of power through a power normative framework has been
conducive to the emergence of a specialized polity. Habermas sees the
emergence of economy, polity, science, and art as autonomous societal
fields backed upon their specific set of rules, institutions, and socialities.
Habermas thus provides a vision of society as an ensemble of heterogeneous
and conflicting structural levels. In line with a system perspective,
he claims that the stages of evolution from tribal to modern societies are
“marked by the appearance of new systemic mechanisms and corresponding
levels of complexity” (p. 154). In modern societies, where structural
CONCEPTUALIZING TRANSNATIONAL ENGAGEMENTS 23
specialization is at its height, the plural embedding of actors sets the stage
for a high level of role-set contradictions. Modern societies are therefore
the crucible of individualistic behaviors.
Beneath this partition of specialized societal arenas lies the level of
everyday interpersonal interactions, in which instrumental and communicative
rationalities coexist in people’s practices. For Habermas, the communication
flows between the levels of the interpersonal sphere and
specialized structures are ensured by civil society. Media (including the internet),
associations, and a whole range of intermediary bodies impede the
formal disconnection between different areas of the society and ensure
that the res publica does not fall into the exclusive hands of appointed
experts. Habermas thus re-locates mid-range social institutions within the
formation of social structures. Political parties, unions, associations, and
media all contribute to produce this social glue. Civil society is a transmission
belt, which prevents the misappropriation of public matters. Habermas
thus renews the definition of civil society. His reasoning unfolds
with regards to state bounded societies. But I assume it also applies to the
emergence of transnational civil societies that follows suit the consolidation
of cross-border social, legal, or economic structures and the internationalization
of environmental issues. It is, however, true that the absence
of genuine transnationalization of political institutions constrains the
development of cross-border civil societies (Faist, 2000).
One can draw from this conception of civil society to reassess the
concept of social institution.8
It is my contention that social institutions
in general, and not only those that are part of civil society, are to be seen
as the grassroots matrix of social cohesion. Enterprises and families
(including transnational businesses and families) also play a role in the
reconciliation of contradictory interests and positions. I see social institutions
as social entities wherein individuals strive collectively to solve the
8
This perspective contrasts with common conceptions of social institutions. A conservative
conception defines them as entrenched practices (Giddens, 1984:17) that ensures the
reproduction of a normative order (Bourdieu, 1977). A more recent line of thought conceives
institutions as a social device meant to improve agentic capacities of actors. Put differently,
they consider social institutions as agentic prostheses meant to enhance the spatial
and temporal scope of the capacity to act. The account given by Goss and Lindquist is a
case in point (Goss and Lindquist, 1995). In contrast, I conceive social institutions, neither
through the norms they are supposed to reproduce nor through their instrumental
functions, but as spaces of deliberation between actors that enable them to cope with the
constraints of their wider context.
24 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW
problems posed by structural contradictions. Social institutions are a
framework of production and re-production for practices, and moreover,
for a normative understanding of the lifeworld. The course of action chosen
by individuals always takes shape with reference to a set of social institutions
(families, enterprises, associations, etc.)
Social institutions provide the possibility for agents to assert the
validity of their behaviors, and thereby, to renew/reproduce a shared
understanding of the world and of themselves within the world. They
bridge actors’ behaviors with their immaterial collective and personal lifeworlds.
Second, they enable actors and collectives to engage with other
public and private institutions (voluntary groups, states, businesses, etc.).
They connect the realm of daily interactions with the longue duree structural
features of society. In this regard, social institutions constitute the
missing link between coordinated individual actions and structural elabo-
ration.
This conception can be applied to the case of migrant social institutions.
I define migrant social institutions as the families, associations, and
businesses that enable migrants to overcome the structural constraints
posed by the migration process. Among these institutions, hometown
organizations play a key role (Moya, 2005). In the case of North African
and Punjabi organizations, one observes an evolution of their function
over time. In the early days of migration, they eased the settlement of
newcomers by providing information about job opportunities and accommodation.
In the seventies and eighties, changes in both French and British
policy restrictions put an end to the arrival of new immigrants.
During this period, their role was to preserve the identity of villager in
the place of arrival. They ensured that expatriates carried on fulfilling
their duties as villagers and household members, and that members continued
sending remittances to their parents and participating in collective
events. For example, emigrants were still expected to participate in customary
duties, such as the maintaining of public equipment (collective
irrigation systems, religious buildings and festivals, etc.). But as they
could not contribute their time or physical labor, migrants instead sent
financial contributions. This form of participation in collective endeavors
prefigured contemporary long-distance development projects. These organizations
also provided a space of social gathering and support that fostered
communicative dynamics. This changed again from the nineties
onward, as hometown organizations became increasingly versed in collective
remittances. Mobilization to benefit village communities remained
CONCEPTUALIZING TRANSNATIONAL ENGAGEMENTS 25
appealing enough to attract hometowners beyond their age, political, or
status differences. As seen above, development projects are communicative
acts that allow migrants to take a stand on their plural being. In this
context, hometown organizations provided a space of deliberation where
development projects were elaborated. In that regard, they played the role
of a social institution in which members wove together the disjointed
poles of their existence.
Finally, hometown organizations mediate the relations of the group
with other institutional partners. In sending areas, the need for public
equipment is the result of wider structural dynamics. This is the direct
consequence of declining public investment in rural settings in the wake
of structural adjustment policies. Local populations are left to take charge
of the maintenance of public infrastructures, schools, and health equipment
to offset the withdrawal of the state. Public–private partnerships
and the “market citizenship” (Goldring, 2002) imposed by public
authorities are part and parcel of the neoliberal credo that infuses new
models of local governance in Southern countries. This shift of responsibilities
from public institutions to local populations has been all the easier
given that the areas benefiting from collective remittances are often
areas that display a troubled historical relationship with the central state.
As mentioned above, this is the case of the three areas studied in my
personal research (Punjab, Kabylia, and the Moroccan Anti-Atlas), and
in many other investigated areas (the Kayes region in Mali, Oaxaca in
Mexico, etc.). These are areas populated with cultural or religious minorities,
which have sometimes been in open conflict with the government.
Another factor that has favored this shift is the multiplication of policies
linking migration and development. This is true in Northern countries
(codevelopment policies in France, Belgium, and southern Europe and
migration and development schemes in the U.K. and the Netherlands),
and in sending countries (the Programme d’Electrification Rurale
Generalisee in Morocco, the NRI-1 programme of the government of
Punjab, the Indian Development Foundation plan at the Federal level,
the “Tres por Uno” scheme in Mexico; Iskander, 2010). Hometown
organizations have amply benefited from this array of national and local
schemes. Through her study of Mexican and Moroccan diasporic
policies, Natasha Iskander shows that states collaborate with migrant
organizations to fine-tune and implement these programs. The conjunction
between migrants’ identity issues and policy interests explains the
surge in collective remittances from the nineties onward. Hometown
26 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW
organizations are key actors in this dynamic. They are platforms connecting
migrants’ practices with immaterial (lifeworld) and material (private
and public institutions) structures. They are spaces in which migrants
strive to connect the different poles of their existence. They also are
organizations that enable funding applications, decision-making, and project
management.
CONCLUSION: BRIDGING TRANSNATIONAL AND
MIGRATION STUDIES
In this article, I have outlined the contours of a new approach to transnational
engagement. This approach rests on the principle that the need
for humans to take action is rooted in the lines of fractures that traverse
actors’ identities and their social environment. The “plural man” conception,
associated with the Habermassian theory of communicative action,
provides an ontological grounding to the S/A approach that discards
economistic (rational actor theory) and structuralist (context driven) conceptions
of agency. From this perspective, transnationalism is understood
as a form of agency for migrants inserted simultaneously in multiple
social spaces and structural universes. The emergence of transnational
practices results from the effort to overcome the contradictions posed by
their dual embedding. I have used this approach to disentangle the various
micro-level and macro-level cultural, economic, and political dynamics
which have been conducive to the surge of collective remittances in
the 1990s. This phenomenon is the outcome of several parallel trends:
the evolution of migrant communities as they integrate into the host
society, the geopolitical background in sending areas, the transformation
of local governance in the wake of structural adjustment policies, and
the support provided by migration and development policies in Southern
and Northern countries. These observations do not only apply to
the three case studies investigated in this article but also to other
migrant groups in the North America and Europe. A wealth of studies
shows that collective remittances are the outcome of the dual embedding
of their members at the local level (Daum, 1998; Fitzgerald, 2004;
Grillo and Riccio, 2004; Smith, 2006). The analytical framework sheds
light on the communicative dimension of this engagement: migrants
have not chosen development as the lexical register to express the pluralization
of their social insertion for random reasons. Contrary to other
CONCEPTUALIZING TRANSNATIONAL ENGAGEMENTS 27
forms of migrant practices in their place of origin (such as conspicuous
consumption, or large spending in religious rituals), development can be
deemed as “rational” for observers in both sending and receiving countries.
This is particularly obvious among Moroccan organizations, which
tend to include a large proportion of native French members. Development
practices thereby build up an inclusive lifeworld that incorporate
actors at destination and origin.
The present approach bridges the gap between post-migration studies
focused on integration, diaspora and transnational processes, and
migration studies focused on determinants and systems. It highlights the
importance of the initial conditions in which emigration took place. Each
type of migration tends to produce one or several specific forms of social
institution. We have seen the example of hometown organizations that are
themselves the outcome of rural labor migration. Likewise, political exile
often gives rise to refugee organizations. High skilled labor migrants form
professional organizations, while for female migrants, the role of transnational
families appears to be central. In addition, the role of private organizations
has been highlighted by research on the so-called migration
industry (Garapich, 2008; Light, 2013). In turn, these different forms of
social institutions that were initially meant to facilitate new immigration
flows can shift their function and become key players in the integration of
actors and the reproduction of cross-border ties (Portes, Guarnizo, and
Haller, 2002; Grillo, 2008).
Acknowledging the migration and postmigration role of social institutions
provides a possibility to better account for premigration dynamics
in the making of transnational spaces, and for transnational dynamics fertilizing
new migration trends. In this regard, three generic types of institutions
have been identified, each tied to a specific societal field: the family,
the enterprise, and the association. This list remains partial and invites
further research. In particular, the question of whether the Internet can be
a locus for new forms of (virtual) social institutions remains open. It is
true that the internet has produced an interesting form of (immobile)
transnationalism (Kuah-Pearce, 2008). Yet, it remains to be seen whether
websites and online forums are truly either places of socialization or spaces
for the dissemination of a new habitus that informs the lifeworld of actors
and helps them to reassemble the fragmented parts of their selves. The
same question can be posed for public spaces, such as bars that can
become a rallying point for specific groups that do not fit into classical
social frameworks (gay migrants are a case in point). This research hints
28 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW
at ambiguous new structures of “quasi-social institutions.” Beyond their
instrumental function, much could be gained by addressing them as
spaces of communicative interactions. This approach opens new avenues
of investigation on the shaping of identities within the confines of migrant
institutions, and their inscription into wider societal and inter-societal
structural dynamics.
In migration studies, the S/A perspective offers an alternative to the
dominant economistic framework for understanding migrants’ decisions.
In this way, emigrating is not the result of a rational calculation between
current costs and expected gains but a total social (and communicational)
act that engages actors in their economic, social and political existence. In
addition, this framework enriches the cumulative causation perspective
that remains overly focused on the cultural processes in the place of
departure, overlooking identity processes (and integration) in the place of
arrival. Finally, it complements network and S/A approaches to migration
by accounting for the impacts of identity processes. Migration not only
affects future migrants’ capacity to act (e.g., by providing or depriving
people from financial of informational resources) but it also transforms
the migrants themselves through their socialization into new social spaces.
In transnational studies, this analytical framework complements the
assemblage approach. As shown above, transnational theory combined
with globalization and assemblage provides a window on how multidimensional
cross-border social, material, and immaterial fields articulate,
but remains silent on the micro-level drivers for actors’ (dis-)engagements.
A focus on the S/A relationship bridges the intrinsic multidimensionality
of transnational assemblages on the one hand and the agential position of
multipolar individuals on the other. However, the present perspective also
differs in several key ways from current conceptions of transnationalism.
In particular, it moves transnational theory out of the compound of globalization
studies. Without denying their importance, it leaves aside traditional
terms of reference in transnational studies: mobility,
communication technologies, and the critique of methodological nationalism.
In exchange, it foregrounds the importance of identity processes and
social institutions. It grants more importance to the temporality of transnational
processes (in line with recent research in transnational history)
and focuses less on the spatiality of network configuration.
By sketching a more “embedded” theoretical framework, this theory
of engagement provides an analytical perspective that complements recent
works on the transnationalism and integration relationship. Transnational
CONCEPTUALIZING TRANSNATIONAL ENGAGEMENTS 29
theorists have tended to search for the determinants of transnational practices
exclusively in the host country (job insecurity, discrimination, integration,
etc.). I argue that transnationalism is an outcome of societal
dynamics at both ends of the migration trajectory. This approach rests on
an attempt to reassess migrants’ self-understanding as complex and plural.
Migrants do not identify solely as migrants; that is to say, individuals who
rely on alternate statuses and personas, such as citizens, villagers, workers,
sons (daughters), or fathers (mothers). As such, they must cope with the
dynamics of the multiple social contexts in which they are embedded.
Against the proponents of “reactive transnationalism” (Itzigsohn and Saucedo,
2002), it is my contention that transnationalism is not the result of
a failure of integration, but the consequence of multiple insertion, or, one
could say, of “hyper-integration.”9
Transnationalism is coterminous with
the evolution of host and sending societies. When approached through
the present framework, it provides a richer and more detailed account of
the role of state policies and integration in transnational dynamics without
reducing the transnational practices of actors to intra- and inter-state
policies.
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