Cultural Geography

Transnational theory also emphasizes the

production of boundaries and the ongoing

performance of the nation as integral to the

everyday practices of states. ‘In contrast to con-

ventional geography and geopolitics, both the

material borders at the edge of the state and the

conceptual borders designating this as a bound-

ary between a secure inside and an anarchic out-

side are objects of investigation’ (Ó Tuathail and

Dalby, 1998: 3). Drawing from the works of

postcolonial critics such as Homi Bhabha,

theories of the transin transnational constantly

bring into play the ambivalences within the

nation; they highlight the process of nation-

making, especially the ways in which an ‘irre-

deemably plural modern space’ (Bhabha, 1994:

140) is inexorably reworked into a politically

unified space through national narratives and

state practices.

Borders are, of course, differentially porous,

varying not just by nation or by political regime,

but by types of flows and by particular narratives

of the nation transpiring at differing moments. In

geopolitical research states are often assumed as

the de factocontainers of the nation in ways that

elide the ongoing processes of nation-building.

Rather than an emphasis on state-making as a

process and the state as a set of routinized insti-

tutional norms and practices as Timothy Mitchell

(1991) has outlined, the state is conceived as a

complete and circumscribed entity. In the con-

temporary period of globalization, however, the

role and boundaries of the state are in constant

flux. The state is not pre-eminent, nor has it lost

its general viability; rather, there is an insistent

tension between the project of the modern

nation-state and its ideological control over the

circulation of both its citizens and their capital in

diaspora.

Another of the assumptions within conven-

tional geopolitical theory is the natural corres-

pondence between the state and its territory. In

path-breaking books such as Basch et al.’s

Nations Unbound(1994), and in other empirical

research on transnational migration, these ‘nec-

essary’ correspondences are problematized. As

Luis Guarnizo (1994; 1997; 1998) has shown in

his research on Mexico and the Dominican

Republic for example, and Sarah Mahler (1998)

for El Salvador, foreign revenue from migrant

remittances has spurred state interest in reaching

beyond the territorial borders of the nation to

maintain connections with migrants working

abroad. The state’s attempt to capture these

migrants and their capital remittances has

included positive incentives such as various

health and welfare benefits, property rights,

voting rights and even rights to dual citizenship.

In this scenario nationalism is not based on an

understanding of the modern state as a territorial

container, nor are citizenship rights granted

through one’s location in the spaces of the

nation-state. Rather, state practices and the

rights and responsibilities of state citizenship

expand and contract with prevailing transmigra-

tion currents and capital flows. As Wakeman

rightly discerns, the ‘loosening of the bonds

between people, wealth and territories has

altered the basis of many significant global

interactions, while simultaneously calling into

question the traditional definition of the state’

(1988: 86).

Tensions withinthe state and between state

practices and the performance of national narra-

tives can also be exposed in transnational

research. Moving away from the conceptualiza-

tion of the state as a monolithic black box, it is

immediately possible to see the potential for

rivalries, conflicting priorities and differing

agendas between different bureaucratic struc-

tures lodged within the tiers of state governance.

These tensions often become manifest around

issues of migration, where internal conflicts,

even between individual politicians and parties,

are rife. With regard to transnational migration

research, the multitude of ways in which state

immigration laws, citizenship statutes and infor-

mal policies come into conflict with national

narratives of territorialization or multiculturalism

or timelessness are also brought to the surface.

Thus the insistent tension between the nation and

global forces is mirrored in many respects by the

tensions evident in the hyphen between the

nation and the state.

Finally, as Hyndman (1997: 150) shows in

her work on cross-border humanitarian organi-

zations and the ‘refugee industry’, the hereto-

fore common theoretical analyses which

foregrounded core–periphery and centre–

margin binaries are no longer adequate for

addressing the dialectical and ever-shifting

relationships between refugee flows and the

flows of humanitarian assistance. Emphasizing

a ‘transnational politics of mobility’, Hyndman

argues that static geopolitical divisions of north

and south or First and Third Worlds are unsuc-

cessful in capturing the contemporary dynamics

of refugee movement or of the ways in which

supranational institutions such as the Office of

the United Nations High Commissioner for

Refugees (UNHCR) are implicated in this

movement.^2

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