ABSTRACT
Migrants are in the Americas, as in other parts of the world, frequently seen as victims pushed around by external forces while looking for a better place to resettle and stay for the rest of their lives, being attracted by supposedly higher standards of living. The initial concept of transnationalism by Glick-Schiller, Nina, Linda Basch, and Christina Szanton-Blanc saw transnational migration as a central element of the capitalist expansion of the world-system that served the economic purpose to reallocate cheap labor force. Against this background, the practices of migrants were studied showing their agency and highlighting the political implications of this kind of migration. The concept of transnationality is sometimes used in an unspecific manner, as it is applied to any kind of relatively sustained border-crossing link and process. In this sense, migration that crosses a national border per se could be seen as transnational, a de facto replacement of the term international migration by transnational migration.
