Political Agency and Macro-Structural Implications of Migration in Transregional Social Spaces
How does migration affect macrostructures of political agency in the countries of origin? How do individual and collective migrant actors exert political influence in their home societies and what are the implications of their activities for political configurations on the regional and national level? In order to answer these questions, the impact of financial and social remittances, citizenship issues, claims to social status, the roles of migrant organizations and general frameworks for political participation will be discussed. The chosen approach turns its focus on issues and cases in which the translocal, transregional and transnational dimensions of interconnectedness overlap one another. The analytical reach of the project goes beyond micro-sociological implications of transnational migrant activities and modes of immigrant incorporation, and directly addresses questions concerning a reconfiguration of political conciliation processes within the increasingly challenged framework of the nation-state and what can be called “emigrant re-incorporation”. Along with migration specific issues, the research project will try to identify political subjects characterized by the convergence of migrant and domestic interests in order to reveal processes of political negotiation shaped by transregional interdependencies and inequalities. Under a shared critical focus, the proposed project’s ambition is to contribute to the desiguALdades.net network’s objective of overcoming the methodological nationalism in social sciences.
