Social spaces, transnational immigrant communities, and the politics of incorporation

Transnational social spaces exist both `from above' and, in the case of contemporary immigrants, `from below'. This article is intended to offer conceptual clarity to current research agendas concerned with transnational immigration in general and the establishment of transnational immigrant communities in particular. It does so by first exploring theoretical developments in the analysis of social space and connecting these developments to the idea of transnational social spaces. It next turns to the topic of transnational immigrant communities within those spaces, suggesting the importance of examining those communities in terms of the rates of circulation between homeland and migratory setting, the production of an institutional structure, and the social horizons of immigrants. This leads to the final section which, in making a case for construing transnationalism and assimilation as potentially complementary, points to the role of the state in either facilitating or inhibiting a politics of multicultural incorporation.

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