ABSTRACT
These contested spaces that Butler (2000) speaks of come partly as a result of transnational immigration. In case of the US, every wave of migration has brought significant changes to the nation and its social systems. Most importantly, the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 has had a profound impact on the ethnic and racial composition of the US population that continues to influence all aspects of American life (Portes and Rumbaut, 2006). Unlike past waves of migration that were drawn primarily from Europe, today’s immigrant groups come mainly from the developing nations of Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean (Schmidley, 2003) with immigrants of colour representing about 80 per cent of US foreign-born population. Indeed, only 12 per cent of today’s foreign-born population originates from Europe. This massive demographic shift makes the nation ‘visibly mixed race, multiethnic, and multicultural’ (Butler, 2000, p. 8). As a result, this wave of transnational migrants is, perhaps, more controversial than earlier waves of white European immigrant because it is dominated by people of colour who bring their cultures, values and mores to the new nation, some of which are in contrast to those of the receiving country. As with the US, other world nations are faced with similar demographic shifts as a result of migration and globalization.
