ABSTRACT
Cross-border communication and mobility, through which citizens make a conscious decision to transcend their national roots, only tell part of the transnationalization story. In order to gauge how and to what extent lifestyles, activities, and ways of thinking “pass through the walls” of nation-states we must also consider how the environment within the nation-state container is altered and its population influenced by the incursion of foreign citizens, products, and information (Beck 2006).1 As Hartmut Esser recently noted: “Increasing international migration, the constant presence of foreign ethnic groups, and the pluralization of (host) societies have, in the meantime, become global norms” (2006: 525, my translation). An examination of the interactions and networks that form between stationary citizens and incoming foreigners is thus crucial to our assessment of the extent and effects of transnationalization.
