Transnational Migration Studies: Past Developments and Future Trends

TLDR

Migration scholarship has undergone a sea change in the past two decades, with scholars recognizing that contemporary migrants maintain simultaneous ties to their homelands while integrating into host societies, leading to a transnational field that spans economics, politics, culture, and religion. This review offers a concise history of theoretical developments in transnational migration, outlining how scholars have defined and approached the phenomenon. The authors summarize existing knowledge across economic, political, social, cultural, and religious arenas, discuss methodological implications, highlight promising scholarship, and propose future research directions.

Abstract

The past two decades have witnessed a sea change in migration scholarship. Most scholars now recognize that many contemporary migrants and their predecessors maintain various kinds of ties to their homelands at the same time that they are incorporated into the countries that receive them. Increasingly, social life takes place across borders, even as the political and cultural salience of nation-state boundaries remains strong. Transnational migration studies has emerged as an inherently interdisciplinary field, made up of scholars around the world, seeking to describe and analyze these dynamics and invent new methodological tools with which to do so. In this review, we offer a short history of theoretical developments, outlining the different ways in which scholars have defined and approached transnational migration. We then summarize what is known about migrant transnationalism in different arenas—economics, politics, the social, the cultural, and the religious. Finally, we discuss methodological implications for the study of international migration, present promising new scholarship, and highlight future research directions.