ABSTRACT
This collection of readings endeavours to extend the frontiers of our understanding concerning the increasing significance of transnationalism in national and global life. Most of the literature on transnationalism to date has concentrated on the experience of new immigrants. These experiences suggest that their ethnic, religious or national diasporic relations and connections span national borders, thereby establishing the claim that such relations represent a qualitatively new phenomenon. As important and interesting as this rapidly expanding literature is, it cannot encompass – nor does it claim to do so – the actual range of transnational communities increasingly shaping the everyday lives of people across the world. While lipservice is often paid to the need to widen our explorations of transnational communities beyond migrants and diasporas, little research of this kind has so far been conducted (for an important exception, see Sklair 1995, 2001).
