on the ways in which capital connections and
transnational business ties affect cultural
consciousness and vice versa (Dwyer and
Prinjha, 2000; Jackson and Crang, 2000).
Cultural, transnational research is primarily
ethnographic, and must be multisited and spa-
tial in order for the interconnections between
places, people and events to become evident.
Unlike most of the work in literary criticism,
geographical research draws on current epis-
temological understandings as well as grounded
empirical research. Cultural geographies of
transnationality examine the embodied move-
ments and practices of migrants and/or the
flows of commodities and capital, and analyse
these flows with respect to national borders
and the cultural constructions of nation, citizen
and social life. It is the interweaving of
economic and cultural processes and theory
in cross-border studies which allows for this
rich interplay and in which the best scholar-
ship in transnational studies continues to be
conducted.
In future work on transnationalism, there are
several areas in which research could fruitfully
expand. The conceptualization of the economic
effects of transnational migration, for example,
has remained somewhat limited because of the
overweening focus on the impact of remittances.
Although global remittances are monumental in
scale (somewhere around $71 billion world-
wide) and have a crucial importance to certain
countries such as India and El Salvador, the
overall economic effects of transnational
mobility are probably far greater even than this.
Clearly there are numerous multiplier effects
associated with the accelerated movements of
people and goods. Research investigating the
shifting policies and practices of corporations,
especially those involved in banking, insurance,
money transfer (such as Moneygram or Western
Union) and other international services, would
begin to tease out some of the tremendous
economic ramifications of an increasing
transnationalism.
Similarly, contemporary work on the political
effects of transnationalism could be usefully
broadened. Currently research focuses primarily
on the scale of the nation-state. Of equal interest,
however, are questions related to the politics of
other scales, and of the interrelations between
scales. What, for example, is the impact of
transnational migration on conceptions of educa-
tion, particularly how children should be edu-
cated to become ‘citizens’ of a particular nation?
In England, Canada and the United States,debates are now raging over the purpose of
education, as well as how education should be
best delivered. Should students be educated to
become effective global workers or to participate
actively in the national arena? Is the national
government the best provider of education, or
should it be opened to market, perhaps inter-
national, forces? These debates are clearly tied
up with the condition of transnationality, and
research in this vein would shed greater light
on institutional politics that are tightly inter-
twined with those of the nation, but yet which
operate on different scales (see, for example,
Mitchell, 2001).
Other issues associated with social reproduc-
tion include those of health and urban consump-
tion more generally. Do migrants demand the
same services or products? Do markets and gov-
ernment programmes shift as a result of differing
needs and demands? Do patterns of consumption
alter, and do these impact on commodity chains
and production processes more generally? Does
capital follow transnational actors? Do they open
up new market niches for specific kinds of ‘eth-
nic’ products or services? These are the kinds of
questions that will begin to uncover the embed-
ded activities and ramifications of transnational
movements in specific, contextually grounded
sites. In the future, transnational research should
begin to cast a wider net in order to capture the
nuanced cultural changes associated with the
new networks, transactions and socio-cultural
interactions that are occurring in the contem-
porary period of accelerated movements and
exchange.NOTESParts of this chapter draw on an earlier essay on
transnationality published in Antipode(Mitchell,
1997a).
1 There are literally hundreds of contemporary books on
globalization, but few of these provide a particularly
spatial emphasis. The best studies of globalization
written from a specifically geographical perspective
include Agnew and Corbridge (1995), Amin and Thrift
(1994), Cox (1997), Dicken (1992), Herod et al.
(1998), Olds et al. (1999).
2 For other work on transnational organizations and their
implications for geopolitical theory see Drainville
(1998) and Kriesberg (1997).
3 For some of the early work in this vein, see especially
Basch et al. (1994), Glick Schiller et al. (1992),
Guarnizo (1994), Kearney (1991), Rouse (1991).84 RETHINKING THE SOCIAL3029-ch03.qxd 03-10-02 4:50 PM Page 84