“Transnational” Socio-Cultural Systems and Ethnographic Research: Views from an Extended Field Site

Abstract

This article discusses a widespread pattern of migratory moves that is often overlooked in contemporary research on transnational migration. Transnational theory has successfully highlighted the significance of migrants’ attachments to people and places transcending the confines of nation-states. By emphasizing, a priori, the national, this theory tends to overlook the full complexity and meaning of migrants’ extra-local socio-cultural relations. Through an ethnographic study of dispersed family networks of Caribbean origin, I explore the wide range of migration practices in which differing actors engage and the nature of the sociocultural systems that emerge as migrants move between places.