ABSTRACT
Contemporary international migrations and movements of people have led to the emergence of transnationalism, transnational communities and deterritorialization. While complex transnational communities are emerging throughout the world, they, along with other forms of human migration and circulation, are also threatening the normative charter of the modern nationstate (Appadurai 1996a: 191). Thus, there is a crisis of nationalism and the nation-state in the current global system, where the nation is losing its privilege as the site of mediation between the local and the global. However, with respect to control of human migration and citizenship, the nation-state continues to be a powerful site, albeit with somewhat diminishing authority. The social processes of globalization have produced a disjuncture between how people are politically organized – such as traditional states based on nations, regions and cities – and many of their familial, cultural, economic and physical activities that are transnational and globalized. Herein lies the paradox: transnational communities operate in opposition to politically bounded nation-states, yet it is precisely these same nation-states that attempt to control their transnational geographies and spaces. Thus, increasing globalization, ‘diasporization’, transnationalization and deterritorialization have produced contested meanings of the notion of ‘home’ at the individual level and of the notion of citizenship at the nation-state level.
