This week I’m going to focus on the Nancy Foner reading on transnationalism. Foner compares transmigrants during the turn-of-the century to the transmigrants today, with respect to the extent of their relations back home, political ties, economic ties, cultural ties, and much more.
According to Foner, many historians believe that transnationalism is a fairly new idea that just began to emerge. However, transmigrants have existed since the turn-of-the century and probably even beforehand. One major example of transmigrants during the end of the 19th century were the Italians. Due to the economic hardships in Italy, it was not uncommon for Italians to come to America to find work, accumulate a sum of wealth, and bring it back home to purchase land or support their family. Italians would travel back and forth by boat, and did so more often when prices became cheaper. The Italian government even condoned such transnationalism as they reaped the economic benefits, so they set laws that allowed immigrants to easily regain italian citizenship after becoming an American. Besides economic advantages, Italians returned back to Italy due to close family ties, similar to numerous other immigrants such as Jews. However Jews were not as likely to return home due to the vast amount of oppression they would receive in their homeland, but this did not stop them from forming organizations that sent money to Jews back home who suffered from the repercussions of war.
Despite common belief, transmigrants are not as common as they were in the past. Although there is now dual citizenship and interrelations between countries is encouraged for business, people are not as likely to return back to their country of origin as often as they did in the past. The change in this trend is greatly due to the advancements of technology. Today, it is much easier to communicate to people back at home over telephone, email, and, in emergencies, a cheap ride by plane can have someone back home in a matter of hours. This sort of technology is far less time consuming as sending letters over month’s time and taking long boat rides. People can now run businesses in their home country, mothers can send advice to those taking care of their children, and people can watch concerts from their home country without ever leaving America. Also, culture is far less suppressed America and actually encouraged to be displayed through festivals and celebrations so America can feel more like home. Nonetheless, there are still those who do return home to do great things. Some who went to school in America, went back home to become political leaders in their home country. Others come to America to open a business, and then return home to reap the benefits. And then there are those who simply miss their homeland.
As you can see, there are numerous differences between the transmigrants in the past as opposed to today. Technology is the greatest factor that distinguishes these people from two different time periods. In the future, people will only further utilize dual citizenship and transnationalism in order to gain political, economical, or social advantages.
