ABSTRACT
Since the main ideas for this book came from talking with people, I am aware that the best evidence I have for substantiating those ideas are the stories people tell me. My own experience has also been important, since I have lived and continue to live these transnational realities. But a lot of others live them in many different ways, sometimes more intensely than I myself. As time went by over the past ten years or so I went about identifying good stories, and good storytellers. Some of these tellers were, or have become, good friends, and others are friends, or acquaintances, of friends. For as people came to learn what I was interested in they would mention others they knew or heard of, and steer me toward them. I started to make lists of people I had to get back to, for clarifications or elaborations or more chapters in their life-stories. As my ideas took shape I knew I had to follow up, and to follow leads.
