In the past, people sent letters. Today, people send emails. In the past, people used the Post Office. Today, people use Western Union. In the past, people traveled in ships across the sea. Today, people travel in planes across the sky.
As you can see, the world has undergone many technological advancements within the past decades. As Nancy Foner points out in “Transnational Ties”, such advancements have allowed immigrants to maintain closer ties to their homeland, and even actively participate in life in their homeland. This does not mean, however, that immigrants in the past were not able to maintain ties to their homeland. Contrary to what some believe, Foner points out that immigrants in the past were also successful in maintaining “familial, economic, political, and cultural links to their home societies” while simultaneously developing “ties and connections in their new land” (Foner 171). Immigrants in the past may not have enjoyed the same benefits of technology that immigrants of the present do, but they were still able to maintain ties to the homes and families they had left behind. They were able to do this by sending letters through snail mail, traveling for weeks on ships across the sea, and creating associations that sent monetary aid to their home country. The Italians, for example, continuously traveled back and forth between New York and Italy, working in New York to earn enough money for land back in Italy. I couldn’t help but wonder what impact this must have had on the domus centered life that Italians held. Although it may have been harder, I would think that familial connections would have remained strong despite the separation of space.
Today, it is easier than ever for immigrants to maintain connections to their homeland. They can pick up a newspaper to see what is going on in their country, they can send videos to each other to keep in touch, and if they ever forgot how to say “wine rack” in Portuguese, they can frantically and easily place a call to Brazil to find out how indeed is it that you say “wine rack” in Portuguese. I can say that I see a lot of transnationalism in my aunt’s life, whose days center around receiving endless calls from people in India, and watching the Indian news morning, afternoon, and night on cable television. Furthermore, transnationalism no longer holds the same negative connotations that it once did. In the past, transnationalism was frowned upon. People claimed that immigrants were not interested in becoming American, but merely interested in reaping the benefits of a life in America so that they could return home to their families. Today, however, with technological advancements and companies doing business internationally, such ideas have changed. I would only wish that it was this easy to change all the other negative thoughts people still hold about immigrants today.