ABSTRACT

Because of improved communications technology and transport, links across national borders are easier than they were in the past. This means that many migrants now live what have been termed ‘transnational lives’. According to Basch, Glick Schiller and Blanc-Szanton (1994: 6) ‘transnationalism’ in relation to migration is ‘the process by which transmigrants, through their daily activities, forge and sustain multi-stranded social, economic, and political relations that link together their societies of origin and settlement, and through which they create transnational social fields that cross national borders’. This ability to live both ‘here’ and ‘there’ has implications for the construction of migrant identities, but the focus of this chapter will be on the role of transnational migration in development practices in the Global South.