ABSTRACT
During the 1990s, pioneer research on transnational migration and on transnationalism in general, especially when confronted with sceptical criticism, frequently concentrated its efforts on proving the mere existence of transnational phenomena. Today, the transnationalism approach as a research programme has spread into such different disciplines as geography, sociology, political science, anthropology, economics, literature and history; moreover, the actual occurrence of transnational ‘social facts’ can be considered to be substantiated in many ways. Sometimes the terms transnational and transnationalism are used so vaguely and indistinctly that they are likely to become ‘catch-all and say nothing’ terms, as was the case with the globalisation concept. Therefore, conceptual precision and debate, as well as more explicit and closely defined empirical research, is needed. As underlined by a number of authors,1 the main task is currently no longer to show that transnational social phenomena exist, but rather, as most researchers in this field agree, to demonstrate that the successful establishment of transnationalism as a valuable concept has led to new theoretical and empirical challenges. Many of the volumes – already more than twenty! – of the Routledge
Research in Transnationalism series focus on analysing transnational social phenomena in areas such as migration, identities and citizenship. Other volumes concentrate on such different topics as transnational value chains and fashion, transnational feminist approaches in literature, transnational policy and security, or regional approaches to transnationalism in the European Union, the Islamic world, or Asia. Thus, the Routledge Research in Transnationalism series is a vivid example of the broad scope of disciplinary, thematic and regional traditions of the transnational studies field. However, whereas a fair amount of volumes concentrate on empirical research in specific themes, only a few volumes focus on conceptual, theoretical and methodological issues of transnationalism as a research programme.2 While many of the volumes represent specific approaches and traditions, this volume addresses both central current theoretical and methodological issues of the field as well as what has been, until now, a largely ignored aspect of transnationalism: transnational organisations. Thus, the
specific ‘add on’ of this volume is twofold. The first four chapters represent more general readings in this field and make conceptual proposals for further research. In Chapters 5 to 8, the ‘meso-level’ of transnational organisations is treated as a specific approach to transnational research between the macro-view on general, institutional, and societal relations, and the microlevel of individual and everyday life social relations. This chapter aims at integrating the contributions of the book by identi-
fying the main advances and challenges of transnationalism as a research programme, as derived from the first part of each chapter, and by addressing the meso-level of transnational organisations, as treated in the second half of this volume. First, it identifies four main challenges of the transnational studies approach that result from a general reading of the transnationalism debate. In a second step, it concentrates on one of these pending problems: the appropriate definition of units of analysis and units of reference for transnational social phenomena and studies. It discusses different units of reference for analysing transnational phenomena and develops a proposal for conceptualising different ideal types of transnational social spaces. Then it looks at the following chapters of the book and underlines some important proposals made in order to cope with the aforementioned general challenges, especially in the field of transnational organisations. Finally, some conclusions will be drawn.
