Transnationalism and Community Building

Abstract

An emergent literature on transnationalism has been burgeoning since the 1990s to examine new patterns of immigrant settlement. Research to date has emphasized the effects of transnationalism on the development in sending countries rather than receiving countries, focused on immigrant groups from Latin America rather than Asia, and examined individuals rather than immigrant organizations as units of analysis. As a consequence, we do not have reliable knowledge about the impacts of transnationalism on immigrant communities in the host society and the extent and sources of intergroup variations. To fill this gap and to supplement knowledge gained from Latin American experiences, this article offers a conceptual framework for analyzing the relationship between transnationalism and community building by examining Chinese ethnic organizations in the United States. We show that immigrants often engage their ancestral homelands via organizations and that organizational transnationalism contributes to strengthening the infrastructure and symbolic systems of the ethnic community and enhancing the community’s capacity to generate resources conducive to immigrant incorporation.

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