Truly Transnational: The Political Practices of Middle-Class Migrants

Abstract

Recently, scholars have argued that transnational political involvement among migrants is a rather marginal phenomenon. This conclusion is based on the fact that migrants' political activities are much more often directed to their country of settlement than to their country of origin. However, by solely focusing on migrants' bi-national political ties, the relevance of political involvement beyond the borders of the nation-state is ignored. Focusing on the geographical scale of different types of political action, this article moves beyond a bi-national approach. Research on middle-class immigrants in the Netherlands shows that, although involvement in homeland politics is indeed quite rare, ‘truly’ transnational political activities—i.e. activities which transcend the borders of the sending and receiving countries—prove to be very common. Taking consumer boycotts as an example, the article further scrutinises the nature of this transnational involvement. It appears that, although the migrants' activities in part resemble the ‘universalistic’ activism of non-migrants as studied in the literature on environmental and human-rights movements, many of their actions are more ‘particularistic’ in character and related to ethnic and religious issues.

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