Transnational Agency and Migration: Actors, Movements, and Social Support 9780415899079, 9781315680644

Table of contents :
Cover
Title
Copyright
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments
1 Transnational Agency: Migrants, Movements, and Social Support Crossing Borders
PART I Transnational Migration
2 Between Empowerment and Exploitation: Migrant Women's Transnational Practices on the Northern Mexican Border
3 Integration and Agency: African Refugee Women and a Playgroup in Melbourne, Australia
4 Return Migration as an Engine of Social Change?: Reverse Diasporas' Capital Investments at Home
PART II Transnational Movements
5 The Translation of Knowledge Across the Atlantic: Constructions of the 'Immigration Problem' in the Settlement Movement
6 Reconstructing the Narrative of Transnational Feminist Agency: The Women's Caucus for Gender Justice in the International Criminal Court
7 People Living with HIV and AIDS in Thailand as Transnational Social Actors
8 Asian New Religious Movements as Transnational Cultural Systems: Implications for Agency
PART III Transnational Education and Social Support
9 Transnational Transformations of Schooling in Toronto, Canada
10 Relaunching Citizenship within an Agency-Oriented Perspective: Transnational Lessons for Social Work and Educational Studies
11 Transnational Social Work Communities: NGOs Organizing Social Support in International Development Cooperation
12 Social Security in Transnational Legal Space: Limitations and Opportunities
Contributors
Index

Citation preview

Transnational Agency and Migration

Migrants, both spatially and mentally, no longer settle in only one national territory but interact or move across borders regularly, profoundly challenging the nation-state and the image of society as a container. This volume explores the ways in which migrants, activists, and professionals connect social worlds across national boundaries through a variety of social practices. The contributions from various disciplines—anthropology, economics, political and social sciences, educational studies, and social work— illuminate the meaning of agency in situations where the capabilities of transnational actors are constrained by nation-states, their borders, and social institutions. Based on a relational understanding of transnational agency that builds upon new insights and developments within transnational studies and network theory, this compilation of chapters presents transnational processes and developments in and across various regions of the globe—in East Asia, the Americas, the European Union, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Australia, in the borderlands of Mexico and the US, in the transatlantic space of the 19th century fin de siècle world—in order to demonstrate the importance of gaining, assisting, and expanding agency in transnational contexts. Stefan Köngeter is Professor for Social Pedagogy at the School of Education, University of Trier, Germany. Wendy Smith is an anthropologist in the fields of management, religious, and Asian Studies. She formerly lectured in management and Japanese Studies at Monash University, Australia, and was the Director of the Centre for Malaysian Studies at the Monash Asia Institute.

Routledge Research in Transnationalism

1 New Transnational Social Spaces International Migration and Transnational Companies in the Early 21st Century Edited by Ludger Pries 2 Transnational Muslim Politics Reimagining the Umma Peter G. Mandaville 3 New Approaches to Migration? Transnational Communities and the Transformation of Home Edited by Nadje Al-Ali and Khalid Koser 4 Work and Migration Life and Livelihoods in a Globalizing World Edited by Ninna Nyberg Sorensen and Karen Fog Olwig 5 Communities across Borders New Immigrants and Transnational Cultures Edited by Paul Kennedy and Victor Roudometof 6 Transnational Spaces Edited by Peter Jackson, Phil Crang, and Claire Dwyer 7 The Media of Diaspora Edited by Karim H. Karim

8 Transnational Politics Turks and Kurds in Germany Eva Østergaard-Nielsen 9 Culture and Economy in the Indian Diaspora Edited by Bhikhu Parekh, Gurharpal Singh, and Steven Vertovec 10 International Migration and the Globalization of Domestic Politics Edited by Rey Koslowski 11 Gender in Transnationalism Home, Longing and Belonging among Moroccan Migrant Women Ruba Salih 12 State/Nation/Transnation Perspectives on Transnationalism in the Asia-Pacific Edited by Brenda S. A. Yeoh and Katie Willis 13 Transnational Activism in Asia Problems of Power and Democracy Edited by Nicola Piper and Anders Uhlin 14 Diaspora, Identity, and Religion New Directions in Theory and Research Edited by Waltraud Kokot, Khachig Tölölyan, and Carolin Alfonso

15 Cross-Border Governance in the European Union Edited by Olivier Thomas Kramsch, and Barbara Hooper 16 Transnational Connections and the Arab Gulf Edited by Madawi Al-Rasheed 17 Central Asia and the Caucasus Transnationalism and Diaspora Edited by Touraj Atabaki and Sanjyot Mehendale

24 Beyond Methodological Nationalism Research Methodologies for Cross-Border Studies Edited by Anna Amelina, Devrimsel D. Nergiz, Thomas Faist, and Nina Glick Schiller 25 Transnationalism and Urbanism Edited by Stefan Krätke, Kathrin Wildner, and Stephan Lanz

18 International Migration and Security Opportunities and Challenges Edited by Elspeth Guild and Joanne van Selm

26 Transnational Marriage New Perspectives from Europe and Beyond Edited by Katharine Charsley

19 Transnational European Union Towards a Common Political Space Edited by Wolfram Kaiser with Peter Starie

27 Transnational Politics and the State The External Voting Rights of Diasporas Jean-Michel Lafleur

20 Geopolitics of European Union Enlargement The Fortress Empire Edited by Warwick Armstrong and James Anderson

28 Transbordering Latin Americas Liminal Places, Cultures, and Powers (T)Here Edited by Clara Irazábal

21 Rethinking Transnationalism The Meso-Link of Organisations Edited by Ludger Pries 22 Theorising Transnational Migration The Status Paradox of Migration Boris Nieswand 23 Migration, Nation States, and International Cooperation Edited by Randall Hansen, Jobst Koehler, and Jeannette Money

29 Transnational Families, Migration, and the Circulation of Care Understanding Mobility and Absence in Family Life Edited by Loretta Baldassar and Laura Merla 30 Transnational Agency and Migration Actors, Movements, and Social Support Edited by Stefan Köngeter and Wendy Smith

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Transnational Agency and Migration Actors, Movements, and Social Support Edited by Stefan Köngeter and Wendy Smith

First published 2015 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2015 Taylor & Francis The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Transnational agency and migration : actors, movements, and social support / edited by Stefan Köngeter and Wendy Smith. pages cm. — (Routledge research in transnationalism ; 30) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Emigration and immigration—Social aspects. 2. Social networks. I. Köngeter, Stefan. JV6225.T69 2015 304.8—dc23 2015007725 ISBN: 978-0-415-89907-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-68064-4 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

1

Preface and Acknowledgments

ix

Transnational Agency: Migrants, Movements, and Social Support Crossing Borders

1

STEFAN KÖNGETER AND WENDY SMITH

PART I Transnational Migration 2

Between Empowerment and Exploitation: Migrant Women’s Transnational Practices on the Northern Mexican Border

23

ELISABETH TUIDER

3

4

Integration and Agency: African Refugee Women and a Playgroup in Melbourne, Australia KARI GIBSON, KATIE VASEY, AND LENORE MANDERSON Return Migration as an Engine of Social Change?: Reverse Diasporas’ Capital Investments at Home

44

67

HEIDI DAHLES

PART II Transnational Movements 5

The Translation of Knowledge Across the Atlantic: Constructions of the ‘Immigration Problem’ in the Settlement Movement STEFAN KÖNGETER

87

viii

Contents

6 Reconstructing the Narrative of Transnational Feminist Agency: The Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice in the International Criminal Court MA. LOURDES VENERACION-RALLONZA 7 People Living with HIV and AIDS in Thailand as Transnational Social Actors

109

130

WOLFRAM SCHAFFAR

8 Asian New Religious Movements as Transnational Cultural Systems: Implications for Agency

148

WENDY SMITH

PART III Transnational Education and Social Support 9 Transnational Transformations of Schooling in Toronto, Canada

177

NAOMI LIGHTMAN

10 Relaunching Citizenship within an Agency-Oriented Perspective: Transnational Lessons for Social Work and Educational Studies

195

EBERHARD RAITHELHUBER

11 Transnational Social Work Communities: NGOs Organizing Social Support in International Development Cooperation

217

NADIN TETTSCHLAG

12 Social Security in Transnational Legal Space: Limitations and Opportunities KEEBET VON BENDA-BECKMANN Contributors Index

245

263 267

Preface and Acknowledgments

This volume is an outcome of the University of Hildesheim’s Open University event, “Crossing Borders”, a series of academic lectures open to the public that took place in the German summer of 2009. Organizing this forum was an early milestone for the Hildesheim members of the Research Training Group “Transnational Social Support (TSS)”, a program funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) that aims at promoting research opportunities for young scholars. The TSS is a joint collaboration between the Institute of Social and Organizational Pedagogy, the University of Hildesheim, and the Institute of Educational Science, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and has set up a mutually supportive group of doctoral and postdoctoral researchers working on the transnationalization of social support processes. We take this opportunity to acknowledge the team of postgraduate students from the first generation of the TSS who organized the Open University forum, especially Nadin Tettschlag and Andreas Steinert. The original program of lectures, from an international field of scholars from the Netherlands, the Philippines, Malaysia, Switzerland, Australia, and Germany (with a later contribution to our book from a Canadian scholar), inspired this volume and its pivotal aim, which is to shed light on the emergence of agency in the context of transnational practices. Transnational Studies contribute a fresh perspective on migration, by considering not only the consequences of ongoing cross-border activities of migrants, their relatives, and friends, but also of social movements, institutions, and organizations for the provision of education and social services. The chapters examine the emerging importance of cross-border practices for gaining, expanding, and assisting agency in transnational contexts. We would like to thank our contributors for their excellent chapters and their patience during the publication process. This collection of contributions from a variety of disciplines—anthropology, economics, gender studies, history, legal anthropology, political and social sciences, religious studies, and social work, some taking a multidisciplinary approach— illuminates the meaning of agency in transnational contexts in all its facets. Thanks to them, the chapters present transnational processes and developments in and across various regions of the globe, for instance, East Asia,

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Preface and Acknowledgments

North and South America, Southeast Asia, Australia, in the borderlands between Mexico and the US, in the transatlantic space of the late 19th century and many more. Working with them on this book has truly been an exercise in transnationality. Furthermore, we would like to thank the members of our wider global “Transnational Social Support” research center, namely Adrienne Chambon, Luann Good Gingrich, Ernie Lightman, Cornelia Schweppe, Wolfgang Schröer, and Frank Wang. Our working alliance across national and disciplinary boundaries on issues of transnational social support and the gracious and collegial intellectual environment they have provided have been a constant source of inspiration during the last years. Particularly, we would like to thank Wolfgang Schröer for his constant support and encouragement, and Andreas Herz, Kiaras Gharabaghi, and Florian Esser for their valuable feedback on questions of agency and transnationalism. Wendy Smith gratefully acknowledges the Gervinus Visiting Professorial Fellowship from Lower Saxony, which enabled her to spend a year at the University of Hildesheim in 2009, and her debt of gratitude to Claudia Derichs, then Director of the Institute of Social Science, University of Hildesheim. No preface would be complete without an expression of our deepest gratitude to our family members, not least for the considerable emotional and intellectual support and inspiration they have provided. Stefan thanks Maren Zeller, Malte, and Selma, and Wendy thanks Shamsul A.B, Maryam, and Imran. Finally, we would like to thank Manuela Popovici for her editorial work on this volume and Max Novick at Routledge. His invaluable support and advice have sustained us through this editorial journey.

1

Transnational Agency Migrants, Movements, and Social Support Crossing Borders Stefan Köngeter and Wendy Smith

In today’s world, we experience fluidity in our social lives due to the bordercrossing activities of workers, asylum seekers, and migrants, as individuals, families, or even whole communities. We also see the increasing interconnectedness of political conflicts (e.g. the Arab spring, Middle-East conflict), economic processes (e.g. the global economic crises of the last decade), and of everyday life through media usage (e.g. the global use and surveillance of the Internet), professional contacts (e.g. in multinational enterprises or academia), care arrangements (e.g. elderly care by transnational domestic workers), and many more. One of the most important and palpable phenomena in transnational processes is migration, voluntary, forced, or in the context of asylum seeking. Migrants, both spatially and mentally, no longer settle in only one national territory but interact or move across borders regularly: “Transmigrants develop and maintain multiple relations—familial, economic, social, organizational, religious, and political that span borders. Transmigrants take actions, make decisions, and feel concerns, and develop identities within social networks that connect them to two or more societies simultaneously” (Glick Schiller, Basch, and Blanc-Szanton 1992, 2). This definition already emphasizes two important aspects. First of all, it points to the fact that migration can no longer be conceptualized only in terms of nation-state policies, such as assimilation, integration, or multiculturalism. In fact, migrants do maintain ties, build up networks, and construct transnational social fields across national boundaries. Secondly, and more importantly for the intention of this book, is the emphasis on agency in the context of migration. Migrants are no longer conceptualized as victims of economic globalization or neoliberal governmentality, but are instead perceived as transnational actors in a world characterized by social inequality and power relations. Subsequently, a theoretical conceptualization of transnational agency has to keep in mind both the social conditions of global capitalism and the transnational practices that affect “power relations, cultural constructions, economic interactions, and, more generally, social organization at the level of the locality” (Guarnizo and Smith 1999, 5). This edited volume examines the emerging importance of cross-border practices for gaining, expanding, and assisting agency. Its chapters include

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contributions from several disciplines, such as anthropology, economics, political and social sciences, educational studies, and social work, in order to illuminate the meaning of agency in transnational contexts in all its facets. Furthermore, the chapters present transnational processes and developments in and across various regions of the globe (e.g. in East Asia, the Americas, Indonesia and Australia, in the borderlands of Mexico and the US, in the transatlantic space of the 19th century fin de siècle world and many more). This introduction aims to provide a theoretical basis for the chapters that connects the topical and geographical breadth of the volume. More importantly, this chapter makes a case for a relational understanding of transnational agency that takes up new insights and developments of transnational studies and network theory and that is able to connect the variety of cross-border activities, namely migration, movements, and social support. Anna Tsing (2000) encapsulates the connectedness of these various practices in a brilliant metaphor that is the guiding idea behind this volume: Imagine a creek cutting through a hillside. As the water rushes down, it carves rock and moves gravel; it deposits silt on slow turns; it switches courses and breaks earth dams after a sudden storm. As the creek flows, it makes and remakes its channels. Imagine an internet system, linking up computer users. Or a rush of immigrants across national borders. Or capital investments shuttled to varied offshore locations. These world-making ‘flows,’ too, are not just interconnections but also the recarving of channels and the remapping of the possibilities of geography. Imagine ethnic groups, corporations, refugees, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), nation-states, consumers, social movements, media moguls, trade organizations, social scientists, international lawyers, and bankers, all swarming alongside creeks and earthworms to compose the landscape, to define its elements, carve its channels of flow, and establish its units of historical agency. (327) This metaphor reminds us that agency is the result of a great variety of actors with different perspectives and positions, including the academic community of social scientists who were responsible for an ongoing scientization of society (Brückweh et al. 2012). Therefore, our volume starts with the importance of migration for the transnationalization of the social world (Pries 2008), but follows the development of transnational studies that have broadened their scope and focus in the last twenty years. Transnational processes are not only experienced by migrants, but affect the everyday life of the majority of the population in many countries (Herz and Olivier 2013; Mau 2010). Hence, transnational practices have profoundly challenged our modern social imaginaries (Taylor 2004) of nation-states as containers (Beck 1997). Transnational processes disturb the seemingly natural ordering of the social world into distinct nation-states: citizenship, sovereignty, social solidarity, and culture are all institutions which

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have been organized and perpetuated with primary reference to nations and nation-states (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002, 226f). But as transnational social practices show, nationally constructed institutions are not the natural categories they appear to be at first sight. In fact, the nation-state and its institutions are the outcome of global historical processes which started in the 18th century and are still ongoing (Anderson 1983). Nation-states, therefore, play a paradoxical role in this context. On the one hand, they keep reasserting their national boundaries and sometimes try to erect impermeable borders. On the other hand, some nation-states recognize the potential of cross-border activities and strategically decide to weaken the national boundaries or encourage dual citizenship to obtain remittances from their citizens working abroad (see the chapters by Schaffar and Köngeter). Our concern with the topic of contemporary transnational processes emphasizes this resonance between the continuing transnational practices (e.g. of migration, advocacy, support, remittances) and the varying responses of nationstates and their institutions, and conceptualizes the growing importance of new practices and actors in the “world-making ‘flows’ ” (see Tsing 2000). In this chapter, we start with the discourse on agency in transnational studies (part 1) and develop from there a relational understanding of transnational agency (part 2). This conceptualization of transnational agency is then exemplified and expanded, following the structure of our volume, to a focus on the transnational practices of migrants (part 3), movements (part 4), and social support (part 5). 1

THE FOUNDING PRINCIPLE OF AGENCY IN TRANSNATIONAL STUDIES

Transnationalism is a key term that is used in different disciplines with different objectives. One of the most cited starting points is migration studies, in which pivotal scholars such as Nina Glick Schiller, Roger Rouse, Alejandro Portes, and others have realized that migration is not a one-way street, but migrants do connect home and host country for longer periods of time by border-crossing activities. Only nowadays do we realize that these phenomena are much older, and historical research shows that transnational connections and contacts shaped the rise and fall of empires in the last 2500 years (Burbank and Cooper 2010). However, as a modern phenomenon, transnationality has only been recognized and researched in the last forty years. Three disciplines, international relations, anthropology, and migration studies, have placed the emphasis on a transnational research perspective and have emphasized the importance of agency within this context. All of these disciplines oppose any predominant research focus perceiving the nation-state as a natural unit of research. This methodological nationalism (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002) led in the past to the neglect of research on the everyday activities of

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migrants (see for instance the emergence of transnational spaces, Faist and Özveren 2004; Pries 2001) and of political actors beyond the nation-states (see for instance the rising importance of transnational social movements in the political arena, Keck and Sikkink 1998). However, agency plays different roles in these disciplinary contexts, as we point out below. In International Politics and International Relations, the rising importance of transnational relations was recognized first from the beginning of the 1970s, when Joseph S. Nye and Robert O. Keohane (1971) gathered a range of studies in the journal International Organization that exposed the gaps in international politics theory due to its primary focus on the relationships between states or state actors. Their often-cited introduction outlines a broad field of research on transnational relations and, in particular, shows how transnational interactions and organizations influence international politics. The increasing activities of transnational organizations, such as multinational enterprises, social movements, academic networks, etc. and their impact on national and international politics aroused the curiosity of many scholars. However, at the time most of the studies focused on large organizations, such as the Catholic Church, airlines, trade unions, and so on. Only a few scholars took up the question of how individual actors can impact international politics as actors. One of the first was Robert C. Angell (1969), who emphasized the importance of the transnational participation of young elites for the development of global peace politics. This perspective was extended by Donald P. Warwick (1971), who criticized the fact that Angell neglected “public opinion” and focused so strongly on future elites and their influence on governmental representatives. Further research on transnational social movements and their influence on international and national politics endorsed this critique (Khagram, Rikker, and Sikkink 2002) and gave rise to more studies that pointed to the complex interplay of several actors in the global political arena and the power of social movements which give voice to people who are (or were once) subaltern and silenced (see for example Veneracion-Rallonza and Schaffar in this volume). Although this was at the time not clearly foreseeable, Nye and Keohane envisaged the rising impact of collective agency, manifested only recently, for instance, during the Arab Spring, which was greatly facilitated and enhanced by new media technologies (cf. Khondker 2011): As a result of global mass communications various groups in different societies, such as radical students, military officers, or racial minorities, can observe each other’s behavior and copy it when it seems appropriate. (. . .) Although its immediate effects are on the sensitivity of one state’s domestic politics to that of another, its secondary effects—or the effects of efforts to halt unwanted communication—may well have consequences for interstate politics. (Nye and Keohane 1971, 337) The importance of agency beyond nation-states was also acknowledged by Anthropology and Cultural Studies. In contrast to world-system theorists

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(Wallerstein 1974) and historians of capitalism (Bayly 1989), Appadurai, for example, emphasized the simultaneity of a global diffusion of cultural practices and of resistances against them and suggested a complex analytical framework of overlapping landscapes of global cultural flows. In his perspective, the “individual actor is the last locus of this perspectival set of landscapes, for these landscapes are eventually navigated by agents who both experience and constitute larger formations, in part by their own sense of what these landscapes offer” (Appadurai 1990, 7). The act of considering the mobility of agents and their ability to create social spaces across nationstate borders was also a starting point for new ethnographic reflections on the meaning of location in a globalizing world. The paradigm of global ethnography (Gille and Ó Riain 2002) aims to reveal the interconnectedness of local processes and global economic, social, and political forces. Therefore, the salient focus of global ethnographers is to explore the intersection of different spatial scales (e.g. local, national, transnational, global) and to examine how these different scales were produced at different places (Gille and Ó Riain 2002). Unlike classic ethnography, these interdisciplinary arenas no longer simply investigate the local with a view to situating it in a worldsystem context (Wallerstein 1974). Rather, cultural phenomena are tracked at multiple locales and across national boundaries. Ethnography is no longer (merely) ethnography within the world system; it is simultaneously ethnography of the world system, as Marcus (1995) states in his seminal article. The introduction of a new theoretical framework for Migration Studies under the conditions of global capitalism by Nina Glick Schiller, Linda Basch, and Cristina Blanc-Szanton (1992) was pioneering for numerous studies exploring the transnational ties of migrants. To distinguish it both from classical migration research and from globalization studies, they grounded transnationalism as the research focus in understanding the “daily lives, activities, and social relationships of migrants” (5). The new perspective on these aspects of migration, by which national boundaries are crossed on a regular basis, led to the emergence of the concept of transnational social fields (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004). For almost the first time, migration practices are conceptualized as processes that have an essential impact on the changing face and meaning of nation-states in a globalizing world. With the emergence of a transnational theoretical framework, global economic, cultural, academic, etc. processes are no longer attributed to localized societal forces (Giddens 1990, 139). Instead, transnationalism is conceptualized to emphasize the contribution of actors at the front line of globalization (e.g. not only forced migrants, labor migrants, or care workers, but also journalists, managers, etc.) and, particularly, to analyze the linkage of agency among transnational migrants and those who are affected by migration, by the persistent, but changing importance of nation-states and their institutions, and by global economic processes (Glick Schiller, Basch, and BlancSzanton 1992, 8). These developments in academia reveal a change in how everyday life activities are seen and the power of the many in global processes. Agency

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is the key term now used in migration theories, anthropology, and politics for a better comprehension of these cross-border practices that have been taking place for a long time, but which had not been adequately recognized as meaningful for societal processes. The widespread metaphor of “transnationalism from below” (Smith and Guarnizo 1999), however, should not be misinterpreted as a plea for focusing solely on the liberating and counterhegemonic practices of those transnationals who resist and oppose the hegemonic processes of economic globalization, which are promoted, for instance, by multinational capital (cf. Guarnizo and Smith 1999, 5). Instead, the authors explicitly warn that it is not possible to analyze “unmediated agency” because “structural factors are omnipresent” (24). Agency, on the one hand, can benefit from structural forces, for instance, when migrant-sending nation-states take up transnational practices from below and encourage migrants’ transnational links. This takes place when national economies of countries that are marginalized in the global economy become more and more dependent on the financial remittances of these migrants. On the other hand, transnational practices, for instance, see the discourse on the expansion of Chinese investments in the US economy (Meunier 2012), can also be perceived as a threat to the national economy and, therefore, be restricted. The result is an often paradoxical situation in which “the expansion of transnational practices from above and from below has resulted in outbursts of entrenched, essentialist nationalism” (Guarnizo and Smith 1999, 10). Therefore, the social construction of places, particularly by institutions, for example, through migration regulations, (supra)national laws, economic development, language, religious influences, etc. has to be taken into account in research on transnational practices and the assessment of agency across boundaries. This is also emphasized by Glick Schiller (1997), who insists on a theoretical framework that is able to investigate the power of social agents performing these border-crossing activities. Transnational practices do not per se contest traditional gender roles, nationalist identities, or social inequalities, but can reinforce or transform them, depending on the relationships among actors and their positioning in the various social fields and their national or transnational frames of reference. 2

A RELATIONAL UNDERSTANDING OF AGENCY

Migrants’ transnational practices are often understood as ways of gaining or maintaining agency in situations where their capacity to act is constrained by nation-states and their border practices. In recent years, scholars in transnational studies have expanded the scope of transnational phenomena by including the cross-border activities of nonmigrants (Mau 2010) and by pointing to the importance of these transnational ties in everyday life, for instance, in transnational marriages (Hsia 2010), governmental programs for young people volunteering in developing countries (Mangold 2013),

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or transnational support networks within Europe (Herz 2014). A transnational perspective on agency is, therefore, not only of high importance for anthropology and migration studies, but also for a whole range of disciplines and their related fields of practice, for management theories (see the chapter by Dahles), for educational studies (see Lightman and Raithelhuber), for political science (see Schaffar), for gender studies (see Veneracion-Rallonza), for development cooperation (see Tettschlag), or for religion (see Smith). The reference to agency in transnational studies, however, is often implicit and not well defined, as the warnings of Smith and Guarnizo have shown. It is therefore crucial to take up the elaborate theoretical conceptualizations of agency in social sciences (Archer 2003; Barnes 2000; Emirbayer and Mische 1998; Giddens 1984; Sewell 1992) and to make them productive for transnational practices, for example, in the provision of social support across national boundaries (Chambon, Schröer, and Schweppe 2012). The discourse on agency in sociology is diverse and far from lacking in contradiction (Raithelhuber 2011). However, a widely shared assumption is that a theoretically advanced concept cannot start out from an essentialist understanding of agency in which the ability to act is located in an autonomous actor, whereas structure is located in societal institutions that encompass agents and restrain their actions (King 2004). Instead, following Emirbayer and Mische (1998), new theories of agency stress the temporal and social embeddedness of agents. From this theoretical angle, structural aspects are not separable from agency, but must be conceptualized as part and parcel of it. Agency is therefore not a characteristic of any individual (or other kind of actor), but a constitutional element of a social situation that derives from the practices of an actor and the available resources, networks, and conventions (Crossley 2011). The new discourse on agency is connected to relational approaches in sociology that became influential in the last two decades (Crossley 2011; Emirbayer 1997; Fuhse and Mützel 2010; White 2008). Although these relational theories are more diverse than the term suggests, they agree on an understanding of social relations and networks of relations, which does not determine agency but is constitutional for it. Drawing on the social world theory of Howard S. Becker (1984) and Anselm Strauss (1993), Crossley (2011) argues that agency emerges in social worlds, consisting of actors with “shared commitments to certain activities, sharing resources of many kinds to achieve their goals, and building shared ideologies about how to go about their business” (Clarke 1991, 131). These social worlds can be of different sizes and scopes: families, peer groups, networks, organizations, etc. An analysis of the characteristics of social worlds, in which agency occurs is important, as it is the only means by which we can understand the patterns of action and interpretation displayed by actors and the standards, values, and aims for which they thus strive. For a theoretical conceptualization of agency, however, the focal question remains: How can we conceptualize agency when social worlds are dispersed over more than one nation-state?

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3

TRANSNATIONAL MIGRATION AND GAINING AGENCY

A social world perspective offers a finely nuanced view of the different social worlds in which actors participate and which they help to shape. Agency can be defined in various ways depending on whether we investigate the social world of a company or regional economy (see Tuider), social services or a community (see Gibson, Vasey, and Manderson), economic processes or national political arenas (see Dahles). In the first section of our edited volume, we therefore gather three chapters that shed light from different angles on the question of agency among migrants and their transnational interconnections. The duality of empowerment and exploitation in a gendered job market (see Tuider), the integration of humanitarian settlers in a new cultural environment (see Gibson et al.), and the entrepreneurship of transnational migrants and their potential to bring social change back home with them (see Dahles) are three crucial facets for the understanding of agency in transnational contexts. These notions describe the diversity of relationships that migrants have or could have to various social worlds and how their agency is in fact related to these social worlds. The chapter by Gibson, Vasey, and Manderson analyzes the multiple challenges faced by humanitarian settlers as they gain the knowledge and skills necessary to adjust to a setting that is often culturally and structurally unfamiliar. In Australia, humanitarian entrants are provided with various forms of post-settlement support in order to facilitate integration. However, additional support is often necessary to overcome the social isolation brought about by the circumstances of migration and compounded by resettlement in public housing estates and isolated peri-urban areas. In their examination of a localized nongovernment intervention (a community playgroup program designed to support African mothers from a refugee background in Melbourne, Australia), Gibson and colleagues reveal that women interpreted and utilized this program in line with their evolving needs, even though their expectations were not entirely congruous with the intentions of the program. The tensions between different norms—norms which are influenced by national frames of reference—play a major role in the migration experience of the group which Gibson and colleagues investigated. Elisabeth Tuider focuses not only on these tensions between norms, but also on the transnationalization of social norms, for example, with regard to gender roles and relations. Here she documents the physical, cultural, and emotional “border-crossing” existence of female Mexican employees in the maquiladora industrial zone in the binational metropolitan area of Ciudad Juares (Mexico)/El Paso (USA). Taking as her basis the subjective perspective displayed in these women’s biographical narratives, she shows how women are empowered and exploited through the interrelationship of their roles as migrants, women, and workers. This affects not only their own biographies, as the case stories reveal, but also the far-reaching network of transnational family relationships. These results show that transnational migrants can potentially become actors of social change, but do not necessarily do so.

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Concluding the first section, Heidi Dahles looks into the conditions in which transnational processes can encourage social change in her comparative examination of the phenomenon of returnee migration from developed to developing economies. In her overview of the literature, she gives reasons for a change of perspective away from the fixation on financial remittances from diaspora economies and toward the agency of remigrants in generating social change by bringing entrepreneurial skill, business assets, and expertise to their countries of origin. Capital investment by returnees may also fuel conflict as well as generating networks of social capital, knowledge, technology, and overall capacity building. This points out to the theoretical and empirical challenge involved in gaining a more accurate picture of the different social fields (the economy, education, politics, etc.) and their social circumstances, especially when trying to identify differences which are reconciled and transformed by means of transnational processes. These contributions highlight an aspect of transnational migration that is obfuscated by popular terms in transnational studies (i.e., the phenomenon of inconsistency and sometimes incommensurability between the social worlds influenced by different nation-states). Transnational studies often emphasize the connecting practices adopted by migrants, through which transnational communities (Al-Ali and Koser 2002), transnational social spaces (Pries 2008), or transnational social fields (cf. Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004) emerge. The fascination of these new social worlds beyond the traditional compartmentalized thinking of methodological nationalism tends to promote an underestimation of the extent to which these transnational worlds are characterized by frictions (to make use of a term of Tsing 2005), which are displayed in the lives and biographies of transnational migrants. Tuider, for instance, describes emerging tensions in family life due to frictions and transformations in the gender order as a result of the transnationalization of family life. Frictions can also occur between different communities, as Gibson and colleagues show, taking the example of different ideas and norms of parenting. Finally, Dahles points to the frictions that emerge in the economic and political fields of a country, such as Taiwan, India, or mainland China, when migrants return, bringing with them their social networks, know-how, and last, but not least, economic capital. However, the question remains of how to conceptualize these various frictions between divergent social worlds connected by transnational practices. We are starting from the assumption that the distribution of capital (Bourdieu 1977) is crucial to analyze agency in a given social context. For transnational practices, however, it is important to understand how actors can make use of the capital they have acquired in one social world when they move to another. Particularly, research on transnational social inequality (Schuerkens 2010) point to the problems that occur when it comes to the transposed use of resources in different societies that are only commensurable up to a certain extent. Only a few studies have pointed out the need to locate these frictions theoretically in the agency of transnational actors. The study by Boris

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Nieswand (2011) about the status inconsistencies of Ghanaian migrants is of particular importance here. It shows that the value they and relevant others place on economic capital, educational achievements, and social capital, among other forms of resources, is highly dependent on the national frame of reference. Nieswand summarizes this problem for Ghanaian migrants in Germany as follows: “As a result, many transcontinental migrants are caught in a transnational status paradox of migration as their status gain in the country of origin relies on a simultaneous loss of status in the receiving country” (150). The transnational status inconsistencies they experience impact the Ghanaians’ agency, as they have to display the success of their migration project (in terms of social, economic, and cultural capital) to other persons in Ghana while grappling with an often-underprivileged situation in Germany. These findings demonstrate that one major challenge for theorizing agency in transnational contexts is the question of how to conceptualize the interdependency of agency and social worlds with heterogeneous national frames of reference. To answer this question, we draw on the seminal contribution on structure and agency by Sewell (1992), who pointed out that “agents are empowered to act with and against others by structures: they have knowledge of the schemas that inform social life and have access to some measure of human and nonhuman resources. (. . .) Agency is implied by the existence of structures” (20). Drawing on the French term transposer, introduced by Pierre Bourdieu, Sewell argues that schemas (the knowledge to make use of resources, such as economic capital) are characterized by their transposability. This means that social practices take place within a social world, but they can be used in a wide range of other social worlds. Knowing a schema (or a convention) means that one can apply it to unfamiliar cases. “If this is so, then agency, which I would define as entailing the capacity to transpose and extend schemas to new contexts, is inherent in the knowledge of cultural schemas that characterizes all minimally competent members of society” (18). Precisely this is the challenge in transnational situations where agency depends on the transposition of capital from one social world (with its specific national frames of references) to another (and back). The frictions and power imbalances between different nation-states (and their institutions, economies, educational systems, and so on) impede the transposition of social, economic, and cultural capital. Based on the foregoing theoretical considerations, we obtain a different perspective on transnational social fields. They are an infrastructure that helps people to transpose their knowledge and their resources more easily to different social contexts and to make use of the resources they have gained (be they economic, cultural, or social) across national boundaries. Transnational social fields encompass different and divergent social worlds with sometimes-incompatible, cultural conventions, economic resources, and social networks. We can infer from this argument that transnational actors gain agency through the translation of capital (be it social, economic,

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or cultural) to other different social worlds by making use of schemas that emerge in transnational social fields. 4

TRANSNATIONAL MOVEMENTS AND EXPANDING AGENCY

The second section shifts the focus from migration to social movements. The chapters in this section focus on the agency of networks of actors who are affected by or involved in transnational and global processes and who aim to influence these cross-border developments by creating social networks across national boundaries. These (transnational) social movements are particularly well researched in the political sciences (Crossley 2002; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Sklair 1997; Tilly 2004). Most research in this context focuses on social movements from below, grassroots movements (see e.g. Castells 1983), or antiglobalization movements (see e.g. Mayo 2004). However, Sklair’s studies (1997) show that it is effective and worthwhile to think of even apparently hegemonic orders and actors, such as the global capitalist class, as involved in a struggle for hegemonic order, and, thus, not to assume that transnational networks and movements are antihegemonic. Historical studies, too, draw attention to the fact that social movements are always used by hegemonic actors to strengthen their position in hard-fought political, economic, or social arenas. For example, in the 19th and 20th centuries, transnational social movements were of great significance to the progress of capitalism, in that welfare state programs were implemented around the world to ease social tension in the industrialized countries (Rodgers 1998). From the point of view of political science research, the main point is to establish the significance of transnational actors, be they epistemic communities (Haas 1992), global think tanks (McGann and Sabatini 2011), or advocacy networks (Keck and Sikkink 1998), in the development of national policies and international relations. However, social movements play another role when it comes to the agency perspective at the focus of this work. Here, they are understood as transnational processes used to mobilize resources (Jenkins 1983) and extend the range of ways in which individuals can act. Social movements give individuals greater opportunity to gain an audience for their beliefs and ideas in contentious social fields (cf. the overview of definitions in Crossley 2002). In this context, many studies concentrate on confrontations in political fields, especially world politics. Veneracion-Rallonza’s case study, in particular, shows how the new women’s movement has affected the shape taken by the International Criminal Court. The other articles, meanwhile, reveal the influence that social movements have on other social fields, for example, the establishment of welfare state programs (Köngeter); the contested field of religious affiliation based on individual conviction, seen in the anticult movements of the

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major denominations and nation-states legislature (Smith); or the interplay between international relations and the global economy (Schaffar). From our perspective on transnational agency, the question given the most attention is that of how social movements can be used to mobilize resources across nation-state borders, and how this opens up further opportunities for trade. The introduction to the influential volume Bringing Transnational Relations Back In, edited by Thomas Risse-Kappen (1999, 5), poses the central question: “Under what domestic and international circumstances do transnational coalitions and actors who attempt to change policy outcomes in a specific issue-area succeed or fail to achieve their goals?” In a way, we would like to turn this question on its head by asking how actors and coalitions are created transnationally. Thus, by examining the subject from the proposed perspective on transnational agency, the point is not to investigate the significance of transnational actors in the context of international relations and world politics, but instead to analyze the processes by which transnational agency occurs in the first place. Here, it is essential not only to stress the importance of transnational social networks per se, but also to take into account the fact that interactions and communication (involving the reproduction and transformation of meanings, ideas, norms, and values) play a constitutive role in the creation of social networks. A good example of the approach to transnational movements and agency proposed here is Ann Mische’s (2008) study investigating the networks and organizations formed by youth activists in Brazil. In particular, she investigates the interactions within and between various networks of activists, showing the importance of spaces where social relationships can be formed outside the influence of institutional order; spaces in which boundaries can be overcome between social networks based on different cultures. These interactive practices and discursive spaces encourage the flow of social problems, models, and ideas (knowledge in a broad sense) across cultural borders shaped by the nation-state. These relational practices allow knowledge to be translated, transformed, and adapted to new situations, opening up new courses of action and collective agency, despite that knowledge sometimes being embedded in different cultures. As this collection of studies shows, these translations do not only take place horizontally, but also vertically. Thus, social movements do not only gain further agency within the framework of their own nation-state; they also use their transnational networks to influence organizations, companies, and states at local, regional, and international levels. As an interactive practice, the translation of knowledge must therefore be viewed in the context of a politics of scale through which social problems and solutions are subjected to a complex process of scaling up and down (see the analyses of the politics of scale by Wissen, Röttger, and Heeg 2008). Stefan Köngeter’s historical study investigates precisely these processes of translation in local texts, focusing on the example of social reform movements at the start of the 20th century. At the end of the 19th century, the

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class segregation of society and especially its manifestation in urban residence patterns was conceived as one of the most urgent social problems. The Settlement Movement, which began in response to the urban working class ghettos in the UK and the USA and radiated out transnationally, aimed to overcome the gap between the social classes and to strengthen the agency of poor people, not through charity but through providing them with education. The concept of settlement houses rapidly diffused around the world to cities with inner-city, working-class ghettos, for example, to Toronto and Berlin. In order to understand how knowledge is transnationalized, the chapter starts with the assumption that knowledge is produced by social actors and subsequently becomes embedded in a broader context of meaning. The chapter particularly focuses on the social construction of migration as a major means to promote the settlement idea in Canada. The cross-border construction and exposure of social problems (Best 2001) is an important element in satisfying the demands of marginalized groups or victims of discrimination, exclusion, and violence. The chapter by Ma. Lourdes Veneracion-Rallonza goes beyond this to show how such demands are now being codified in international law and reveals the role played in this process by transnational advocacy networks. Her study on transnational feminist networks (TFNs), as newly emerging groups of nonstate actors, shows how women with a common agenda from three or more countries create political change beyond national boundaries in a transnational public space. The paper focuses on one such TFN, the Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice, and their efforts at the International Criminal Court to achieve the codification of rape as a war crime, a crime against humanity, and a crime constitutive of genocide. The study exemplifies collective agency through organizations in which the women share collective identities, consciousness, and experiences. An interesting contrast comes in the form of Wolfram Schaffar’s study examining the dynamics of the emerging Thai healthcare system as an exemplary trajectory of transnational welfare development in the developing world. Usually, health policy and the development of welfare systems are regarded as a national-level phenomenon, with the main actors being the national bureaucracy, unions, and other national players in the field of social policy. The development of the Thai healthcare system, however, is an example of an ambitious health program that emerged out of a transnational conflict. What made the struggle transnational was the fact that the access campaign for HIV-positive patients to gain access to affordable Antiretroviral drugs was conducted not only in legal arenas such as the Central Intellectual Property and International Trade Court in Thailand, or in political arenas such the WTO, but also in direct confrontation with the major pharmaceutical corporations in various arenas of global policy making. It thus qualifies as a multilevel transnational strategy. Wendy Smith’s chapter focuses on the phenomenon of Asian new religious movements (NRMs) which are attracting converts globally. After

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joining, their members participate in a unique and comprehensive cultural system which covers most aspects of their daily social lives: spiritual beliefs and codes of conduct, rituals, daily routines, diet, dress and speech styles, living arrangements, and patterns of relationships. Whereas often based on premodern Asian values and practices, these organizational cultures of the NRM are accepted by converts from a wide sweep of cultures from every continent, without modification and despite significant cultural distance from their cultures of upbringing. The paper examines how these NRMs transform the agency of individual converts in their home societies and in a transnational context, despite the often extreme cultural frictions emerging from the process of conversion. This paper uses ethnographic field data from two Asian NRMs, Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University and Sukyo Mahikari, originating from India and Japan respectively, to explore the way in which religious organizations transcend national borders and establish themselves as transnational cultural entities, making national cultural systems of secondary importance to their members. As such, they provide a transnational social network, which functions as a base for some members such as women or low-caste, minority, economically disadvantaged, or lowstatus actors in their home societies to challenge and escape the status quo. Thus, they could be described as social movements (Beckford 2000). These and other NRMs also use their spiritual values in a secular context to try to influence national and international policy makers for the greater good of humanity. 5

TRANSNATIONAL SOCIAL SUPPORT AND ASSISTING AGENCY

The third section, on transnational social support, focuses on institutions of social support which strengthen people’s agency in the fields of education, social work, social policy, and development cooperation. These institutions are either initiated by the nation-state or operate in the context of the nation-state. Accordingly, the professions and disciplines dealing with social support processes have mainly concentrated on designing their professional work on the basis of the nation-state. This does not mean that education studies, social work, or social policy have not developed an international outlook. What is examined here is the criticism, leveled at the social sciences, for example, in the piece on methodological nationalism by Wimmer und Glick Schiller (2002), that the professions have come to the tacit assumption that the nation-state is both the natural frame of reference for their work and reflects their actions, meaning that internationality could only come about through systematic comparison. Considering this limited view, our transnational agency approach bears in mind two points of criticism in particular. Firstly, this methodological nationalism negates the very transnational processes of exchange which these

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professions and related scientific disciplines have brought about and continue to affect. Moreover, social work (Hegar 2008), social policy (Rodgers 1998), and education studies (Popkewitz 2013) can only be understood if they are seen as transnational endeavors in their respective historical contexts and, above all, their mutual influence and convergence must be taken into account, as neo-institutionalist studies demonstrate (Krücken and Drori 2010). Secondly, and more significantly for our line of argument, these professions themselves have long overlooked the fact that transnational processes were becoming an everyday occurrence as they focused on their own institutional programs rather than looking at their clientele’s lifeworlds and agency. However, social protection can only be understood as part of the interlinked system of everyday support and professional help (see Whittaker 1983). In the context of the transnationalization of social support processes (Chambon, Schröer, and Schweppe 2012), this nationally limited point of view proves to be particularly problematic as it means that professionals overlook important social support practices, so their interventions proceed in the wrong direction. Citizen status remains one of the central factors in political and social participation within a nation-state. Above all, however, for the nationally organized welfare system, citizenship is still the most important prerequisite for the granting of certain benefits. Yet in recent years, studies on transnational citizenship (Ong 1999) have shown that a transformation is taking place, if sometimes very slowly and not affecting all social fields to the same extent, as demonstrated by the example of education. This is initially discussed in the chapter by Eberhard Raithelhuber, who examines the intersection of democracy, citizenship, and education and how related social changes might affect our common understanding of these concepts. Based on a revised understanding of citizenship in the emerging field of transnational studies, he demonstrates how this understanding allows a critique of ongoing policies and discourses about citizenship education, which has once more become a major concern within “Western” nationstates and supranational organizations such as the European Union. This educationalist perspective adds to current notions of “citizenship” and “citizenship education”, with the aim of enhancing our strategies for creating and sustaining lifestyles which allow people to act as democratic citizens within transnational contexts. The chapter by Naomi Lightman puts these general thoughts in concrete terms in the form of a pilot study in public and private secondary schools in Toronto, Canada. In recent years, Toronto has become a hub for both highly skilled and impoverished transnational families and youth who seek the benefits and prestige of a Western education, while still maintaining ongoing ties to their place(s) of origin for professional advancement and personal support. The education system has simultaneously experienced growth in private schooling programs that target wealthy international students and families, as well as minimal increases in public school assistance

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for immigrant and refugee families. Her analysis of qualitative interviews with educators focuses on how students’ transnational connections affect teaching practices and experiences in selected Toronto schools. She particularly emphasizes the fact that teachers at high schools in Toronto face their students’ transnational ties and practices on a daily basis. However, socioeconomic factors make a huge difference: whereas privileged students at private schools have frequently developed a postnational identity and position themselves in a global market for education and employment, poorer students with transnational ties frequently identify closely with their place of origin and sometimes even develop strong nationalist feelings. These differences show the importance of a precise analysis of the social worlds in which transnational actors position themselves, each world with its own socioeconomic and cultural conditions, norms and values, reference points and aims. In recent decades, studies in the field of development cooperation, in particular, have drawn attention to the importance of the heterogeneities and hierarchies of these social worlds. Pathbreaking studies such as that by Richard Rottenburg (2009) show how complex the interactions are between the many actors in this field. Nadin Tettschlag’s case study examines a program against social exclusion in Latin America operated by a German development NGO in collaboration with partner organizations located in various Latin American countries. It elaborates on the tensions caused by institutional power imbalances (e.g. for economic reasons) on the one hand, and the professional and organizational identities and autonomy of the participant organizations on the other. These contradictory elements in development cooperation challenge the agency of the NGOs and the whole program. However, Tettschlag works out strategies to maintain cooperative relationships while at the same time fulfilling obligations to funding organizations. One crucial element of this is the establishment of a transnational social work community which emphasizes common ideas, values, and identities. Finally, the last chapter by Keebet von Benda-Beckmann takes up the topic of migration and asks what happens when informal social security networks reach far beyond the borders of nation-states. Migrants’ access to formal social security mechanisms changes once they cross borders, and this is complicated by the fact that they typically move within transnational legal environments which are characterized by a plurality of legal institutions, comprising laws from the country of origin as well as from the host country. Furthermore, local customary and religious laws from different sources influence these legal spaces. In every system of law, one can find different understandings of the concepts of need and duty to care. Due to this plurality, these understandings are subject to a dynamic process of change. Benda-Beckmann’s chapter uses examples from Indonesia and the Netherlands to show that migrants’ innovative transnational networks of social security, operating in the context of the transnational legal spaces which they inhabit, could both enhance and restrict their agency.

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CONCLUSION

This book encapsulates various transitions currently taking place in studies of transnationalism. It extends the pervasive, early focus on transnationality in the context of migration studies, summed up comprehensively in the volume by Vertovec, Transnationalism (2009), with a commitment to escape the former preoccupation with the nation-state, so-called methodological nationalism (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002), by concentrating on agency in transnational social worlds. In this way, it respects the emerging trend to take a view of transnationalism “from below” (Smith and Guarnizo 1999), but also emphasizes the complex and manifold interconnections of various actors operating within or between different “scales”, community, local, national, regional, global, as delineated by Tsing (2000) in her sublime metaphor of the global situation as a creek that is constantly changing its path and volume due to the myriad practices that are shaping and transforming boundaries. The volume exemplifies the catalytic quality of the transnational lens for generating the dramatic new directions taken in some disciplines recently. Whereas international business and management studies have had a wellestablished transnational view due to the rise of foreign investment in the postwar era, other disciplines have been invigorated by this fresh perspective: for instance, this can be observed in social work (see the newly established journal Transnational Social Review) with the growing focus on the importance of international aid organizations and their transnational collaboration between partner organizations from various nation-states, with varying economic resources, and power imbalances; in religious studies, focusing on individual converts who exert their agency by participating in a transnational religious culture without leaving home, and, thus, extending the research on transnational religious phenomena beyond the context of diaspora; in gender studies, in the fringed transnational social spaces, with transnationalism’s sweeping impact on family relationships, employment opportunities, and gender roles; in history, with a shift beyond subalternism to the impact of transnational knowledge flows on the formation of social welfare institutions across the industrialized world; in human rights, with the necessary focus toward the role of international regulatory bodies in attempting to curtail the excesses of war outside the rules of engagement; in social movement theory, which must necessarily now focus beyond the nation-state in issues of environmental protection and pandemics, such as HIV-AIDS; in education studies, where the concept of citizenship has to be fundamentally altered in order to accommodate to the transnationalization of large parts of the population and where transnational students challenge the conventional practices of teaching professionals; finally, in legal studies, where social security has to be reconceptualized against the background of the emergence of new transnational legal spaces arising from the situation of migrants who are bridging national territories as well as local customary and religious laws.

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Part I

Transnational Migration

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Between Empowerment and Exploitation Migrant Women’s Transnational Practices on the Northern Mexican Border Elisabeth Tuider

“Um, every day she sends me messages or I send her a message. Um, so, I talk to her on the phone on Mondays. Then for sure. Sometimes on Wednesdays. And so, if I still have enough money left, then also on Friday. And if there is not much money left, I send her a message [SMS], almost always. Now I’ve found a possibility. . . . A colleague of mine has, um, an Internet connection. Well, so, now we are going to be in contact via internet.” (Sonia, biographical interview, Cíudad Juárez, March 2008)

These words are used by Sonia Martinez Ortiz,1 living in Ciudad Juárez, to describe the ways in which she is keeping alive the contact to her daughter Carina, who is living more than 1000 km away in Durango, Mexico. Sonia is thus demonstrating her engagement in “mothering from a distance” (Salazar Parreñas 2001). Ciudad Juárez is one of the centers of the Mexican maquiladora (or maquila) industry.2 Since the Mexican state established its free export zones along the northern Mexican border with the United States in the 1960s, these have become important poles of attraction for international and national migrations. Whether from the point of view of ‘emigration,’ ‘immigration,’ or from the angle of ‘transit’/‘passing through,’ Mexico has become one of the most important contemporary spaces for migration. The Mexican border areas are among the most crossed and frequented in the world, especially the northern border into the United States (see Maihold 2011; Massey and Durand 2010; Rubio 2009). Aside from the 650,000 annual ‘legal’ border crossings by Mexican citizens and 150,000 by migrants coming from Central America, the total number of illegalized border crossings can only be estimated.3 Massey and Durand (2010) characterize the migration movements from Mexico to the United States as the most persistent flow of labor migration in the world at present. Today, 98 percent of all emigrated Mexicans live in the United States, a quarter of all Mexican adults have either visited the United States or lived there, and 60 percent of the Mexican population have relatives in the United States.

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About 11 million Mexicans (approximately 11 percent of the Mexican population) lived in the United States in the middle of the 2000s. The so-called ‘Chicanos’ represent by far the largest national group among the immigrants in the United States; 8.7 percent of the US-American population (approximately 25 million people) nowadays are of Mexican descent. Various transnational social and familial, as well as economic and labor, networks have developed due to current migration flows and building on the historical connection of Mexico to its neighboring countries in the north and south.4 Economic factors like the remesas (financial remittances) and the ‘social remittances’ (Levitt 2007) play crucial roles in the constitution of transnational spaces and are impacting both the transmigrants5 and those people and families staying. A transnational life arrangement, however, is not a given result of the experience of migration, but is a matter of construction and therefore needs to be actively produced or ‘achieved.’ Transnationality thus describes social activities “which are regularly formed and are an integral part of life for the individual” (Pries 2008, 226). The lifeworld, as described by Schütz and Luckmann (2003), becomes a transnational lifeworld via the routines of everyday practice, which takes place within transnational social spaces and therefore generates these transnational social spaces as well. This chapter illustrates these transnational practices and uses biographical interviews with women who live constantly or temporarily in the northern Mexican border region and work in one of the maquiladoras. The interviews are drawn from a field study on the Mexican border with 14 students from the Universities of Münster and Hildesheim, which was carried out in March 2008 (see Tuider, Wienold, and Bewernitz 2009), and several research trips to the Mexican border regions in 2010 and 2012. The chapter follows two lines of enquiry: One, how do women form and transform their (transnational) family relationships across the distance between work and community of residence? Two, what are the effects of large-scale employment in maquiladora workplaces on the position of women in Mexican society and in the border society? More specifically, does the work in the maquiladora offer opportunities of empowerment to Mexican women or are these female migrants and maquila workers considered the ‘subaltern of Mexico’ (in the sense of Spivaks subaltern, see 1988)? Based on selected case examples, I will discuss the transformations in family organization, gender relations, and motherhood in the context of the (trans)migrations taking place in the Mexican border region. In doing so, I will reflect upon two contemporary phenomena which have been recently discussed within the social sciences, i.e. ‘transnational motherhood’ and ‘transnational families.’ In this chapter, I propose to show how the transnational life arrangements at the Mexico-US border range between exploitation (in the maquiladora) and empowerment (due to the maquila work). I mainly focus on acting subjects in transmigration processes and their ‘doing’ of transnational life. I will argue that maquila workers at the Mexican border do not immediately

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gain agency through migration or by taking up maquila work, but that these changes open up some room for maneuvering which is an important prerequisite for their agency. 1

TRANSMIGRATION AND TRANSNATIONAL PRACTICES

Research on the growing migration flows coming from the ‘global south’6 and the further transnationalization of these migrations have stimulated new perspectives in both gender and migration studies. Mobility and migration have not only an economic dimension, but also a social one, which has been highlighted in the debates focusing on transmigration (Basch, Glick Schiller, and Szanton Blanc 1994; Faist 2000; Pries 2008). In contrast to the highly criticized “methodological nationalism” (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002) within classical migration studies and its implicit bias towards a dualistic, linear, and monodimensional approach to migration, the discussions in transnational studies focus on the complexity of migrations and therefore also on the diverse social relations and practices which emerge both within the region of origin and in the region of destination. While migration studies initially concentrated almost exclusively on unidirectional migrations from Mexico to the United States, in the last 20 to 30 years, both the migratory movements within Latin America and from South and Central America to the United States have become more differentiated and clearly display a transnational structure. Therefore, Kron (2010) states that a ‘transnational turn’ took place in migration studies in and about the Americas. Among other contributions, this transnational turn helped to illuminate how international migration—especially of women— was often preceded by internal migration from the countryside towards the city (Lozano 2003). Additionally, the seasonal commuting of migrants also needs attention within discussions of global migration movements, e.g. commuting between the factories of the global economy along the US border and the agrarian regions of origin in Central and South America, and the labor migration from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador towards the coffee and fruit fincas (large farms) in southern Mexico. In the context of the transnationalization of migration studies, international migrants now became visible as engendered and active agents and subjects of processes of transnationalization (see Levitt and Khagram 2007). In his empirical studies since the 1990s, focusing on the migration between the Mexican state of Puebla and the metropolitan area of New York, Pries analyzes the transnationalization of migration. He indicated that “in connection to globalization and in light of the specific conditions of the relations between Mexico and the United States, the massive labor migration between both countries has led to the development of a new type of labor migration, transmigration, and the emergence of pluri-local

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transnational social spaces” (Pries 2000, 57). Transnational social spaces refer to the myriad social practices taking place across borders, as well as to the “transnational interwoven relationships and social spaces” (Pries 2008, 47), which reach beyond two or more states.7 For instance, pioneering studies on transmigration (Glick Schiller, Basch, and Szanton Blanc 1992; Grasmuck and Pessar 1991) focus not only on the circulation of goods, money, and people, but also on the flow of ideas, symbols, and cultural practices, thus taking into account the transnational practices of everyday life. In the context of transnationalization, border- and culture-crossing interactions become routinized in daily routines and interactions (Mau 2007). That means that the transnational organization of life cannot be reduced to an idea ‘from above’ or ‘from below,’ but that transnational practices constitute themselves according to the respective social class or habitus (Bourdieu 1979). Pluri-local transnational every-day worlds are already a common reality—for the much travelling salesman with his circle of friends dispersed around the world, just as for the Ecuadorian family, whose relatives are dispersed over different locations, but nevertheless organise an intensive weekly exchange of goods, money and information, as a part of their every-day lifeworld (Pries 2008, 239). In her work, Besserer (2004) identified locality and the creation of political, educational, and economic systems, as well as new aspects of cultural (and religious) life to be decisive dimensions of lifeworld transnationalization. In their everyday actions, transmigrants are connecting, forming, and shaping identities, belongings, networks, and, above all, families and parenthood. [T]he idea of a close connection between parents, children and grandchildren living far apart has required particular ways of working out the sense of intimacy and togetherness. (. . . .) A sense of togetherness is reproduced through correspondence, greetings and presents carried by visitors. It is anchored in photographs and objects that become talismans of home and belonging (Vuerela 2002, 76). Notably, the phenomenon of transnationalization of care and families (Bryceson and Vuorela 2002; Hondagneu-Sotelo 2001; Parella 2003; Salazar Parreñas 2001) has gained more prominence since the 1990s. Bryceson and Vuorela (2002, 3) define the transnational families as “families that live some or most of the time separated from each other, yet hold together and create something that can be seen as a feeling of collective welfare and unity, namely ‘familyhood,’ even across national borders.” Diasporic studies, (Brah 1998 and Cohen 1997) in particular, have shown the construction of families and how family members enact their parts in the dispersed family. The everyday practices and rituals of families, as well as the idea of belonging and a sense of togetherness are maintained by

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these families despite migration and geographic dispersion. In her studies focusing on Latin American female migrants in Los Angeles whose children stayed in their countries of origin, Hondagneu-Sotelo (1997) shows that mothers remain responsible not only for the emotional needs, but also for other needs of their children in spite of the geographical distance. In doing so, transnational mothers disrupt the ‘traditional’ notion of ‘motherhood’ of Western countries, and in particular of Germany,8 which assumes that physical and psychological proximity, or physical presence and emotional participation, are interdependent and interwoven. The one conditions the other or cannot be imagined as (being) detached from the other. In order to bridge the spatial and temporal distance, women who have migrated far from their families create alternative child-rearing models through the use of mobile phones and the Internet. These transnational practices allow them to communicate with their children every day across distances of hundreds of kilometers, as I will demonstrate below. Apart from the analysis of the structural conditions of migration, its motives and the specific aspect of gender in migrations, the latest debates at the intersection of migration and gender studies raise the question of the emancipative and empowering content of (trans)migrations. Thus, what kind of effects and consequences do (trans)migrations have on the already existing ordering of gender relations? Does an ‘emancipation’ of women occur in the aftermath of the feminization of global migrations (Ehrenreich and Hochschild 2003)? Does the ‘patriarchal model get into crisis’ (Parella 2008, 2) or is transnationalization implicitly or explicitly a ‘masculine project’ (Mau 2007, 278)? 2

THE MAQUILA IS CALLING YOU—THE MEXICAN-AMERICAN BORDERLAND

Since the 1960s, the border region of northern Mexico has been a focus of the international division of labor, when the industrialization programs of the border region and the free trade agreements between ‘the north and the south’ were established. The foundations for the first maquiladoras were laid in 1965 in the context of the Programa de la Industrialización Fronteriza (PIF) at the northern Mexican border. The program aimed at stimulating this border region that had been identified as being ‘economically weak,’9 and thus gave a green light for the further implementing of the neoliberal economic system. In addition, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Canada, the United States, and Mexico came into force on January 1, 1994, and entailed the central idea of gradually reducing all tariff and trade barriers between the three countries. Therefore the so-called ‘assembly process manufacturing industries,’ the maquiladoras, became even more prominent (see Sandoval Palacios (2007) on labor migration between the USA and Latin America). In this way, Mexican maquiladoras are a prime example of the new international division of labor. So-called

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twin plants within the twin cities of Ciudad Juárez/El Paso, Tijuana/San Diego, or Matamoros/Brownswille perform on the American and Mexican side, the respective processes based on a division of labor of supply and assembly in the electrical, textile, and automobile industries. Due to the industrialization of the northern region of Mexico since the 1960s, enormous urban and industrial growth was stimulated through the institutionalization of the maquila industries. Maquiladoras were always considered to be centers of attraction for migrations from Mexico, particularly from the northern and central states, and from other countries of Central and South America. As an effect of these migrations, for example, the population in the border town Ciudad Juárez more than doubled between 1980 and 2005 to 1,313,000 people. The border region of northern Mexico and the maquila labor that could be found there particularly encouraged women to migrate (see Tuider, Wienold, and Bewernitz 2009; Zamorano Villareal 2004, 2009). For many women, working in a maquila offered the possibility of escape from the informal sector and/or from reproductive demands. Today about 60 percent of the maquila laborers on the northern border of Mexico are women. The percentage of women versus men employed in maquiladoras is on average 70–90 percent worldwide (Wick 1998).10 Maquila work is heavily dominated by women because corporate enterprises propagate an image of work that stylizes women as the ‘ideal labor force.’ For example, they highlight young women’s ‘nimble fingers’ for monotonous manufacturing components (see Fernández-Kelly 1980; Wick 1998). “The processing of these products is carried out primarily by manual labor without any machines. Predominantly these women perform monotonous and tiring tasks, e.g. the pinning together of switches and plugs” (Zimmering 2006, 152). For this reason, Ciudad Juárez also appears in the feminist and international solidarity literature as the example for exploitative work conditions in the global market economy. Among others, the Canada-based Maquila Solidarity Network denounces the (nonremunerated) overtime, the missing health and work insurance, the impossibility of requesting a vacation, as well as the relatively poor pay in relation to the payment of North American workers and also in relation to the payment for the same work across the border. In the ‘Clean Clothes’ campaign, the production of Adidas/Reebok items in the free export zones of the maquilas is criticized, and the exploitative and sexist work requirements are described in the following way: The workers—mainly women—worked in a free trade zone which is fenced in by barbed wire and is being watched over by armed guards carrying weapons. The temperature in the factory reached up to 37° Celsius. The workers were insulted and humiliated. The drinkable water of the factory was contaminated with faecal bacteria, which could trigger diarrhoea, intestinal diseases and infections. Six workers were dismissed

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because they dared to warn their colleagues that the water of the factory had been contaminated. Security cameras monitored every step of the workers within the factory. Overtime was obligatory, despite this being illegal. The salary—72 or 92 dollar-cents per hour—covers only a quarter of the basic necessities of a family. Each person who dared to mention the word “union” was being threatened with dismissal. (Ad Hoc News 2011) Women are also preferred for the maquila work because they work patiently and are adaptive and cheap laborers. This means that political or union organizing is to be feared much less from (young) women than from men. To this day, there has not been any union representation in Ciudad Juárez (Ackermann and Bewernitz 2009). Mayer (2004, 14) calls the working conditions in the maquila ‘modern slavery’: The gradually advancing measures of flexibilisation in the maquilaindustry more and more try to undermine the existing labour law or to suspend it completely, and the government is not aware of any other alternative for the creation of workplaces than to bring in even more maquilas into the country, just to exploit even more humans under inhuman ways. Not without good reason this is worth calling modern slavery in the 21st century, to which million women (and men) in different countries are being exposed. Additionally, the media presented a picture of a city that is shaped by mafia-like drug cartels, the arms trade, and the daily excess of violence as well as the systematic killing of women, the feminicidios. The “subaltern woman” (Spivak 1988) appears in these portrayals as multiply exploited, abused, and murdered, and not as an active and powerful subject. 3

THE ORTÍZ FAMILY: EVERYDAY LIFE IN THE BORDERLAND

As an example of south-north labor migration, Sonia Martinez Ortíz came to Ciudad Juárez to work in a maquiladora, similar to her mother, Rosa, and her sisters before her. Sonia is the sixth of Doña Rosa’s children, born and raised in the countryside of Durango, one of the traditional migration regions of Mexico. At the beginning of the 2000s, Sonia went for the first time to Ciudad Juárez, where her parents and three of her sisters were already living. In her narration, she describes the reasons for coming to the northern border as follows: Well, we came here, the reason why we came here is, because the family is here. My mum, my dad emigrated . . . heaven knows, I guess it was about

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Elisabeth Tuider 13 years ago? Because of economic problems. Life is better, um . . . well, more work. They came here. I stayed there, married, with one daughter.

For the female members of the Ortiz family, Ciudad Juárez offered above all the opportunity to work and thus the prospect of ‘a better life.’ Sonia’s mother, Rosa Gonzálo Ortíz, is a 64-year-old woman who comes from the countryside in Durango, 1200 kilometres from Ciudad Juarez. She has 13 children with her husband, Sonia’s father. When the family got into debt (in the beginning of the 1990s) and because of experiencing marital violence, Rosa’s eldest daughter started the family migration to Ciudad Juárez, going to work in a maquila. A couple of years later, Doña Rosa and her five youngest children migrated to Ciudad Juárez, too, and all six of them began to work in a maquila. Nowadays, half of Rosa’s children, mostly her daughters, live in her immediate vicinity in Ciudad Juárez, work in a maquila, and have children and grandchildren there. Another group of Doña Rosa’s children, mainly the boys, live in Durango, and they have family, work, and property there. Two of Rosa’s grandsons live and work in Phoenix, United States. No matter where they happen to be, Rosa remains closely in touch with all of her family members: every two months she travels to Durango, among other things for the births of her grandchildren and the birthday celebrations of her children or to buy and sell land. Her visa for the United States is valid for ten years and enables her to pay regular visits there, too. However, Rosa does not want to live in the United States. She has chosen Ciudad Juárez as her place to live, because it is located exactly halfway between Durango and Phoenix and offers her opportunities in both directions. Rosa’s lifestyle with her permanent movement between several places of residence, and the way she shapes her life to take place in several social places, can be considered as transmigration. Due to migration, the family community no longer refers to one common place of residence. Instead, family relationships can be spread across several, geographically widely scattered, places. When Sonia finally broke ties with her husband, her mother, Doña Rosa, helped her to migrate again from Durango to Ciudad Juárez. Her little daughter Nora accompanied her. Since then she lives in Ciudad Juárez on the sofa bed in her sister’s and her family’s combined living room-kitchen with her youngest daughter. Sonia’s 18-year-old daughter Carina stayed in Durango, living there with Sonia’s best friend and the friend’s daughter. How is Sonia behaving as a mother to her daughter from a distance? How is she creating an emotional relationship over the distance? In other words, how is “emotional transnationality” (Wolf 2002) being produced in the everyday practices of daily life? Migration processes involving women are often easier, or made more possible, in a setting of extended family relationships and networks, the

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redes de cuidado (networks of care). In such settings, the grandmothers in particular help out with taking care of the children (Nobles 2006; Parella 2007; Wagner 2005), but also other relatives, neighbors, or friends could look after the children and the household of the migrated woman. The handing over of reproductive-care work has been discussed in the literature under the term “global care chains,” introduced by Hochschild (2000), under which the feminization and ethnicization of care work act in combination. With this ‘globalization of motherhood,’ Hochschild problematizes the worldwide unequal distribution of both material and emotional resources. Both the women who migrate and those who stay behind remain captive to a particular patriarchal logic, because the care work is only shifted from one female to another (see also Schröer and Tuider 2011). This is also the case for Sonia, because Carina, Sonia’s eldest daughter, remained in Durango, living with Sonia’s best girlfriend and the friend’s daughter. She attended upper school with the help of a scholarship, and now plans to study medicine. Sonia has repeatedly tried to bring her to Ciudad Juárez, without success. Carina prefers to live in Durango. Last year Sonia saw her daughter Carina three times: at Christmas, Easter, and on Carina’s birthday when she undertook the twenty-two hour bus ride to Durango. Despite this limited physical presence, Sonia continues to maintain an emotional, involved, and active motherhood in relation to her oldest daughter by means of regular telephone calls and through mobile phone messages. They are in frequent contact and decisions, for example, about Carina’s education, are discussed together along with the everyday events in Durango.11 In doing so, Sonia is not only a provider of finance for her daughter, but she is also present in an emotional and caregiving capacity. The practices of motherhood at a distance are described by Sonia in her autobiographical account as follows: Okay, when something goes wrong, my friend sends me a message. ‘This happened, that, that, that.’ Um, ‘Don’t tell her that I told you’ ((laughs)) And then I am already calling there, ‘Tell me, what happened? Do you have anything you would like to tell me?’—‘Hm, something happened. You already know that, why (. . .) are you asking me!’ ((laughs)) ‘Well, because I want you to tell me.’ Or sometimes she calls me herself. Or I call her and she says, ‘And this and that happened, and my aunt was angry.’ Well. And, so, then I tell her off. And she knows that when I am peeved I am peeved. And apart from the fact that it bothers me I don’t speak with her anymore. And that hurts her more than anything else. It hurts her that I don’t even speak with her. (Sonia, autobiographical interview, Ciudad Juárez, March 2008) Sonia and Carina are ‘successful’ in being present in each other’s lives and in maintaining an emotional and caring mother-daughter relationship.

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Thus, the new communication technologies help Sonia to organize the socalled “motherhood at a distance” (Salazar Parreñas 2005). Today, family networks can be nurtured over vast distances and across national borders not only through photos and letters, but also through electronic means (Solé and Parella 2005). “By ‘being there,’ mothers attempt to achieve a semblance of intimate family life across borders” (Salazar Parreñas 2005, 334). Parella (2008) stresses that new possibilities for shaping the family may emerge today, because new technological advances mean that social family relationships may not only be maintained across vast distances and periods of time, but may also be nurtured through frequent and regular communication, for example, via Skype and webcams. In practical terms, this means that, for example, the ritual Sunday lunch may be positioned in front of the computer and the meal broadcast on Skype to faraway family members who can have a dialogue with their loved ones and also broadcast their own location. Mutual household decisions or discussions involving the raising of children or the investment of remittances may be made through Skype teleconferences or cell phones. Thus intimacy can be shared regardless of the different geographic locations and different time zones the individual family members reside in (Tagmano 2003; Wilding 2006). This form of transnational motherhood carried out using telecommunication services has recently been conceptualized by Lutz and Palenga-Möllenbeck (2011, 20) under the heading ‘Skype-mothering.’ In some areas of selfemployment, e.g. in a corner store, flat rates and Wi-Fi enable family members of different countries and continents to stay connected to each other almost the whole day. Due to mutual transnational activities and everyday routines, simultaneity in the life of a transnational family is produced. At the same time, the shared idea of family and the narrative of belonging, the ‘imagined family’ (Yeoh, Huang, and Lam 2005), are regarded as social transnational practices.12 In this context, we see that ‘family’ is not to be understood as a natural entity of people living in one household. Nor do all family members have to be present in one household. Rather, family is a socially constructed community in which members relate to each other. The production and maintenance of family ties requires all family members involved to actively carry out the task of constructing and performing ‘the family’ in an ongoing process. Because the family is actively created and performed at the everyday level in this way, we can speak of ‘doing family’ as a transnational praxis. Therefore, not every family whose members are dispersed across different countries makes a transnational family, but a transnational family produces itself through the social practices and sometimes also the intentional strategies of members over geographical and social spaces as a transnational family. Yet, does the transnationalization of lifeworlds always represent a process of empowerment, especially for female migrants? What is the relation between exploitation in the international system of labor division and the attainment of agency?

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EXPLOITED OR EMPOWERED?

Sonia’s narration can be summarized as a story of empowerment. Due to the migration and because of the maquila work, her life changed for the better, just as the common stories and imaginings about migration would indicate. However, instead of getting caught in the trap of a purely reductionist picture, in which the migration of women per se is being equated with empowerment, it should be emphasized that Sonia’s life did not change only due to the increase in her access to economic resources, because an income from the maquila does not automatically mean an increase in arrangements in one’s personal life. In Sonia’s case, the increase in the availability of courses of action for her existed as a consequence of her migration, her work in the maquila at the northern border of Mexico, and, most importantly, due to her family support network. In the interview, she continuously negotiates these options under the topic of ‘staying or returning’ (for herself and her younger daughter from Ciudad Juárez to Durango), as well as ‘leaving there or joining in’ (for her older daughter, from Durango to Ciudad Juárez). It is precisely the geographical distance from her older daughter Carina that makes her search for and find new practices in her organization of motherhood from a distance. In contrast, the solidarity literature criticizes the conditions and effects of the free market and its culture-free view of economic activities as a capitalist system of exploitation, here taking the form of the maquiladora, and, above all, it emphasizes the disastrous working conditions of the laborers. Moreover, in the context of critical debates concerning globalization, it has been emphasized that ‘internationalization’ refers to markets and trading conditions, and the products and services that are being exchanged across borders, but this does not correspond to globalization in relation to human rights, ecological norms, or employment rights. Whereas the female maquila laborers are often essentialized in the debates of solidarity movements as being ‘poor, exploited, and passive’ in the maquiladora (Zimmering 2006), a perspective of empowerment appears in the women’s narrations. As the following accounts by maquila laborers will show, the personal income and, particularly, the ability to make decisions concerning the expenditure of their own personal wages enables the women to feel a certain degree of achievement and agency. Rocío, who works in the maquila industry in the border town Matamoros, stresses the importance of the possibility to work, and she gives an appraisal of this work from her point of view as well as from that of others: I really like my work, I always thought that work allows people to increase in size and lends them dignity. Here in Matamoros only those do not work, who don’t want to or who don’t like to. (Rocío, quoted in Quintero and Dragustinovis 2006, 47)

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Rocío uses the word ‘dignity’ (dignidad), which she felt she had acquired through having an employment contract. Dignidad has a special connotation in the context of Latin America, as it is discursively applied by the Zapatista movement and indigenous movements to raise awareness about their impending eradication as viable sociocultural groups through aggression, disease, and invisibilization in the aftermath of colonization and nation-building. It is a key theme in context of the persistent marginalization of the pueblos originarios (indigenous communities) in post-revolutionary Mexico. Work in the maquiladora is being described as a continuing postcolonial relationship of exploitation. It is therefore noticeable that Rocío does not join in the (international) canon of maquila critiques, despite her being aware of these issues they emphasize. Instead, as a laborer in a maquila, this work lends her dignity. Dignidad, in the way used by Rocío in the interview, refers therefore to the achievement of a degree of agency due to the maquila work. Rocío describes herself as an active player, who (consciously) decided to do this work, but who potentially could decide against it at another point in time. Similarly, Sonia also refers in her biographical narrative to her decision to migrate and her appreciation of the opportunity of maquila work. In one interview passage, she compares her previous work in Durango with the maquila work in Ciudad Juárez and sums up that the latter is more satisfactory, because she receives slightly more ‘freedom’ (libertad). I mean, all the benefits they give you here, the maquilas, they do not give you there. Well, I had to do two jobs to manage. I worked Monday to Monday, all the days a week. And, well, at least you noticed that you earn the same like here. Here I work Monday to Friday. That gives me time off three days, and I earn what I have earned in one week. And I have savings, I have a car, special shifts, two meals, that I had not there. Well, the money gives you a little bit more freedom here than there. And, yes, that’s why, that was the reason why we came here. (Sonia, biographical interview, Cíudad Juárez, March 2008) Sonia, as well as her mother and her sisters who all work (or worked) in a maquila, consider their employment in the maquiladora as enjoyable and satisfactory, as do many other women workers there, too. It gives her an income of her own and a certain degree of standing, ‘freedom,’ and dignity. This work has improved their living conditions and those of their children. Even if they are shifting from one maquila to another, they feel that their life is improving through this work. In concrete terms, they speak about earning (more) money, about regular meals, and the possibility to buy clothes at the weekly secondhand market. However, Sonia not only has an income of her own, but she is also able to ‘invest’ in the education of her children, as well as buy a car and a parcel of land in the neighborhood of her sisters. In the biographical interviews, the maquila workers also mention that with the

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maquila work, they could overcome marital violence, that the maquila work strengthens their self-confidence and gives them a position from which they can negotiate with their husbands. This shows that the feminist concept of ‘work equals empowerment’ applies only partially. Instead, empowerment should be defined as a process of change (Kabeer 1999), which opens up the possibility to make a choice between different forms of being and acting. Kabeer’s (1999) definition of empowerment13 is a fruitful resource for our reflection on the maquila work of the northern Mexican border, because the focus there lies not only on the attainment of economic resources, but also on the associated possibility of a better scope for action. This room for maneuver relates to decisions about how to spend one’s own income; to one’s career advancement, e.g. becoming a supervisor (if educationally qualified) in a maquila; to claiming the sometimes available rights to retirement and/or health insurance; and, in Sonia’s case, to the way she organizes motherhood. Whether the work in a maquila leads to empowerment or not depends on the very concrete life circumstances of the individual woman. Taking up an employment in the maquiladora-industry consequently does on no account occur on emancipatory grounds, but primarily by economic necessities. The participation in the labor market however does not only mean an achievement of a relatively economic independence, oftentimes an expansion of the scope of action on individual levels can be carried out as well. (Trzeciak 2009, 166–167) This attainment of agency, however, can be fragile, which again becomes visible in the example of motherhood, because difficulties with maquila work can arise when women are mothers and when they have to take care of their children in addition to having to perform strenuous shift work. In principle it was very difficult to work, because my children were very small when I came here. I had to leave them alone for half of the day, because my [older] children [. . .] were in school14. (Alfreda, quoted in Quintero and Dragustinov 2006, 52) In the absence of public or private child care, it is quite common to leave small children alone while working in the maquila. It is also common for older children to parent their younger sisters and brothers. However, once again it is ‘los redes de cuidado,’ the networks of caring that are most important. For example, by means of familial or neighborly relations, shift work is coordinated (by Sonia and her sisters and her brother-in-law) in such a way that child care is managed within the family or the neighborhood. The (transnational) networks of caring not only play an important role at the place of origin where the children are left, but networks of caring also play an important role at the place where the maquila is located.

36 5

Elisabeth Tuider CONCLUSION

While living, working, loving, and caring, more and more people are crossing national borders and organizing their lives, families, and motherhood practices ‘both here and there.’ This commuting style of life and the multiple senses of belonging are made easier and are being promoted by the acceleration of different means of mobility and communication. This has contributed to the increasing number of women who move between the area of waged labor and the location of their residence, staying at each place for a range of different intervals of time. Empirical transmigration research and gender studies have engaged with this phenomenon in detail in the last few years. Transnational lifestyles are now being discussed, considering gender relations both as a resource and as an obstacle, which can be seen in the discussions focusing on the transnational family and transnational motherhood.15 By offering access to income for more Mexican and Latin American women in the maquila, this feminization of work offers the possibility for women to change their previous gendered living arrangements (Sassen 1998). As women gain economic independence, they can also gain further control over the household budget, as well as over familial and personal decisions. Due to the women’s new functions as caregivers and breadwinners as a result of their migration, the intrafamilial distribution of power may become modified to some extent. At any rate, migration is a turning point, because it can change the balance of power within the family and challenge the traditional patriarchal and heterosexual gender model. It is possible to distinguish between two scenarios (Solé, Parella, and Cavalcanti 2007). The husband’s and/or the father’s migration complies with the gender ascription to males as the breadwinners and providers for the family. At the same time, a husband’s migration can free the wife, who continues to live in the region, from traditional tasks and functions, because she is the person who now manages the remesas. The wife’s independence and self-affirmation may grow in this process. In the case of sexualized violence within the family, the husband’s migration is perceived as a release (Solé, Parella, and Cavalcanti 2007). When the wife (and mother) initiates the migration process, and in doing so becomes the breadwinner, this can trigger a process of empowerment on her part, whereas the husband’s traditional roles can be called into question. However, whether women, their children, and transnational family networks become strengthened in their agency due to the experience of migration, and thus the intrafamilial balance of power changes in their favor, or whether they subordinate their aspirations of autonomy and of room for maneuver to the dominant social norms and perceptions of traditional family life, depends also on who makes family, in which way, or who does not make family. From the point of view of academic researchers, the assessment of the degree of ‘empowerment’ depends also on the question of who is conceptualizing the

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term ‘family’ and what is conceptualized under that term in its national and regional context of origin. Three limitations need to be considered in the discussion about transnational families and the modification of existing gender orders and gender relationships. First, transnational families are not considered as such just because one or more family members are staying in different regions of the world; rather, transnational familial ties are in a continuous state of construction, with the production and maintenance of family centered social relationships and the provision of care, relying heavily on electronic media. Second, the transnationalization of the family does not necessarily change the normativity of the family as it is found in national frameworks (Pries, 2008). ‘Family’ is an ideologically charged concept and potentially includes also transnational families within its normative image. Whereas transmigration research emphasizes the autonomy and the agency of migrants, a certain control can be located in the context of the transnationalization of the family, which particularly constricts women in their agency. Third, areabased studies (Apitzsch 2009; Pries 2008) stress the dependency of family arrangements on the socioeconomic and sociocultural framework. The transformations of gendered power relations and gender orders generated by (trans)migrations of women also seem to be influenced by the normative regional and local ideas of family. The transnational family is thus not a very different ‘other’ of family, just as female transmigrants are not a very different ‘other’ of women. Rather, transmigration processes and transnational families emerge as critically influenced by gender issues. But the different forms of transnational families, their context specificity and their respective effects upon gender relations, still need to be investigated in greater depth. So far, the existing data focusing on ‘transnational motherhood’ show that in the transmigration context, a simultaneous attainment of the empowerment of women and a refeminization of their activities and relationships become traceable. Similarly, in the present example it is also highlighted that Sonia acts simultaneously as a Mexican woman, a migrant, a single mother, and as a maquila laborer. As a cheap worker in a maquila, she is being used to stabilize the international exploitative division of labor; however, she is also experiencing a certain form of empowerment due to her work and having slightly more freedom in her daily life. As a member of the mestizo society, Sonia profits from certain advantages as a nonindigenous woman, as well as from being from a traditional migration region in Mexico and thus using the already established (transnational) networks. If we engage with the migrants’ experiences and listen to their voices, we avoid considering them too simplistically as only ‘victims,’ ‘exploited’ or ‘oppressed.’ Rather, it is precisely the biographical perspective that enables us to differentiate the ‘or’ (exploited or empowered) from an ‘as well as’ (exploited and empowered).

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NOTES 1. All names of research participants are pseudonyms. 2. The free trade zones, or export processing zones, or free export zones, or what in Mexico are called maquiladoras, are designated areas focusing mainly on the production of consumer goods, in which the imported primary products are assembled and then exported again. 3. Maihold (2011) describes the current situation of 55,000 Mexicans and approximately 140,000 migrants from Central America who are searching for ‘illegalized’ ways to enter the United States annually. Due to US border operations such as ‘Gatekeeper’ or ‘Safeguard,’ aimed at blocking illegal immigration over the US-Mexico border, and not least as a consequence of 9/11, the conditions for illegal border crossings have become worse and the migrants’ vulnerability has increased significantly since the mid-1990s (see Rubio 2009). 4. For discussions about the northern border, see Anzaldúa (2008) and Berndt (2004); for the southern border, see Braig/Baur (2005), Gabbert (2005), and González Cornejo (2009). 5. Transmigration is described as a process of oscillation between different geographical, national, and cultural spaces. Transmigrants create and form their life—more or less—simultaneously at different places, and in their social practices they create new pluri-local social spaces, a kind of transnational space. 6. The migrations within the countries of the ‘global south’ also increased due, among other things, to flight and displacement. Similarly increasing were internal migration and migration towards the ‘global cities’ or towards the respective borders, which often seemed to be a female dominated phenomenon. However, an analysis of these movements seems to be missing from migration studies which focus on international migrations. 7. In this regard, the debates on transmigration range between perceptions of ‘transnationalisation for and by everyone’ and the notion of ‘transnationalisation for the elite.’ Whereas the former can be understood in the comprehensive notion of ‘we are all migrants’ of Stuart Hall (1989), the latter can be seen in light of Zygmunt Bauman’s work (1998: 45) when he calls into question the notion of free mobility in space and the advantages arising from it, and asks if these can be obtained also by those who do not belong to the non-precarioused. 8. See Schütze (1988) and Vinken (2001) for a discussion of the German myth of motherhood. Badinter (1984, 2011) provides a historical perspective on motherly love in Central Europe and on the current incompatibility of motherhood and a career. 9. On the international level, institutions focusing on developmental policies like the World Bank, UNCTAD, or UNIDO promoted the development of free export zones as supportive measures for the economies of ‘developing countries.’ The expected creation of workplaces, an increase in foreign investment, as well as technology transfer were supposed to stimulate national economies and economic development was envisaged (Fernández-Kelly 1980; Preuß 1985). In the aftermath of the 1965 border industrialization programs in Mexico, a developmental phase of dependent industrialization took place under the heading of ‘export-oriented economy instead of migration.’ This put an end to the former import-subsidized industrialization of the Mexican state. 10. Three phases can be distinguished with regard to women’s employment during the four decades of maquiladoras. De la O (2007) describes a feminization of labor in the first decade of the 1970s, a defeminization from the mid-980s onward, and a refeminization since the beginning of the 1990s. The decline of

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11. 12.

13.

14. 15.

39

the percentage of women from the mid-1980s (Alscher, 2001) was related to the change of the focus of production to the electronic industry, which is more associated with ‘masculinity,’ and also to the Mexican crisis of the peso in 1982. Education is a central element in the leading to the creation of transnational families and (hence a key focus in) their investigation (see Apitzsch and Siouti 2008; Fürstenau 2004; Phoenix 2009). Reflecting upon the intergenerational relations and the different perspectives of children, mothers, and grandmothers, Salazar Parreñas (2005) and Phoenix (2009) commented on the idealized picture of the family in this interpretation. Although initially aligned with the goal of worldwide equality in the context of race, class, and gender, the concept of empowerment has been heavily criticized in the aftermath of the 1990s as a one-dimensional and Euro-centric strategy within development policies. Critics argue that the concept was based on a very particular notion of a ‘self-determined life’ in which, in fact, women of the so-called ‘Third World’ would be recolonized and robbed of their capacity to determine and shape their own lives. When children attend school in Mexico, this means that they attend school full time. This is the reason why Alfreda cannot count on the help of her older children to care for their younger siblings. Theoretical discussions have shown that global concepts—such as the feminist connective ‘we-women’—are only appropriate to a limited extent, because they cannot include historical specificities and cultural contexts. The life situations of women in general and female transmigrants in particular differ along lines of belonging to a certain class, religion, or age group, and their strategies for coping differ from case to case.

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3

Integration and Agency African Refugee Women and a Playgroup in Melbourne, Australia Kari Gibson, Katie Vasey, and Lenore Manderson

1

INTRODUCTION

On a warm November evening in 2007, a police van on a routine patrol, in Melbourne’s inner north, was hit by a rock as it passed a public housing estate. The estate, several high-rise blocks of apartments, is home to a largely migrant community of about 5,000 people, many of them African refugees. The police did a U-turn and entered the grounds, where they approached an 18-year-old Eritrean, Mubarek Mussa . . . what happened next depends on whom you ask. Police say Mussa became “abusive” when questioned, so they arrested him. Another African teenager then “attacked” them, so they arrested him too. And when hordes of residents flooded out of the flats and surrounded police—a threatening crowd that swelled within minutes to more than 100, many trying to free the boys—the officers called for back-up. Soon more than 15 units had arrived, sirens blaring. Capsicum spray hung thick in the air. Women cried and screamed. The local Africans say Mussa, an apprentice chef, was wrongly accused of throwing the rock. He was then “harassed,” thrown to the ground, “kicked.” Mussa’s young relative protested, so he was “bashed” too. The crowd was nothing like a hundred, they say; most were women and children, but the police officers panicked, and the reinforcements they called only inflamed the conflict (Warne-Smith 2009). Echoing political discourse in Europe and the United States about the threat of growing immigrant minorities and their putative failure to integrate (see Phillips 2010), there is increasingly vocal concern in Australia about the inability of immigrants, especially Africans, to integrate into Australian society. In 2007, just six weeks after the aforementioned “riot” occurred, and following a series of crimes involving Somali and Sudanese youth, the then Minister for Immigration, Kevin Andrews, announced that Australia was cutting its humanitarian intake from Africa because the Sudanese community in particular was said to be experiencing significant settlement problems and failing to integrate successfully into Australian society (Farouque, Petrie, and Miletic 2007). This decision was made amid rising antagonism between police and young African people living primarily in

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Melbourne’s inner north1 and a surge in negative local media coverage concerning the African community and crime. The image portrayed, reinforced by fears surrounding Islamic extremism and ‘home grown terrorism’, is of African refugees unable to fit into our society (Dhanji 2009). The ensuing public debate regarding the capacity and intent of foreigners to integrate has given rise to the notion of ‘integration potential’ as a basic criteria for resettlement of refugees (Dhanji 2009), with implications for how immigrant families and their adherence to transnational cultural norms are perceived and responded to by the public and the state. This leads to a question much debated in immigration policy and program circles, including in both the state and non-state sector and among academics, as to whether the apparent lack of integration is a result of migrants’ deliberate self-exclusion from mainstream society, or a consequence of post-settlement factors beyond their control. This debate is not unique to Australia. Anti-Muslim sentiment, especially towards the wearing of the Islamic veil by Muslim women, has become a source of tension in Western European countries (Saroglou et al. 2009; Strabac and Listhaug 2008). At the time of this writing, France has moved to impose legal restrictions on Muslim women who wear Afghan-style burqas or other full-face veils, on the grounds that it offends women’s dignity and symbolizes oppression by men. The restrictions come in response to resentment in France over the growing visibility of Muslims, seen as promoting self-exclusion, challenging European traditions, and threatening the ‘French way of life’ (Cody 2010; Meer and Modood 2009). These debates are taking place in the midst of the growing rise across Western Europe of radical right political parties that emphasize anti-immigrant viewpoints in their political programs and propaganda (Rydgren 2008; Billiet and de Witte 2008; Skenderovic 2007). Such debates about social integration influence how the values and cultural norms upheld by immigrant and minority ethnic families are interpreted (Grillo 2008). Adherence to culturally prescribed norms and practices, including norms pertaining to familial roles and parenting that oftentimes differ markedly from Western practices, can bring comfort and assurance to immigrant families (Bhopal 1998; Liamputtong 2001). However, the principles and practices that underpin certain immigrant families may be seen to threaten or counter nationalist values and/or the neoliberal worldview (Grillo 2008). For example, Muslim families are sometimes represented as harboring unhealthy gender attitudes and generational relations (Hagelund 2008). African families can face additional marginalization arising from their portrayal as authoritarian and oppressive (Ballard 2008). These cultural assumptions and the fear that these undesirable familial norms will be transmitted to future generations makes parenting a politically charged task, and results in increased attention and monitoring of parenting practices by the state. In this chapter, we explore how a small group of African women from refugee backgrounds respond to the challenges of integration in Australia

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through utilizing and adapting a localized community-based playgroup initiative, designed to educate and engage refugee mothers and ensure their children have access to educative play and pathways to additional support. Through using the playgroup forum to enact transnational norms of parenting and to generate social capital in unanticipated ways, these women are able to gain agency over the space and their lives more broadly. 2

THE AUSTRALIAN CONTEXT: MULTICULTURALISM AND INTEGRATION

Present-day Australia represents itself as a tolerant and inclusive society defined by cultural diversity (DFAT 2008), although its approach to immigration was long informed by an objective of cultural homogeny. Immigration was restricted on the basis of race by the Immigration Restriction Act 1901, commonly known as the ‘White Australia’ policy, which effectively banned legal migration from Africa and Asia for fifty years (New South Wales Migration Heritage Centre n.d.). Following a near invasion by Japan in World War II, the government prioritized populating Australia through birth and migration to prohibit future invasion (New South Wales Migration Heritage Centre n.d.). Over the next 25 years the ‘White Australia Policy’ was progressively dismantled, although the expectation remained that migrants would shed their cultural identities and native languages to promote rapid absorption into the host population (DFAT 2008). Only in 1973 did Australia officially accept multiculturalism. Since its inception, the notion of multiculturalism in Australia has often been contested, most notably in recent times in response to an increasingly xenophobic sociopolitical atmosphere, which intensified in the aftermath of the destruction of the World Trade Towers and the War on Terror (Quesada, Hart, and Bourgois 2011), the global increase in the number of asylum seekers in the late 1990s, and as a result of associating forced migrants with security risks. Simultaneously, in the mid-2000s, opposition to black African immigration began to be voiced in the public arena (Jakubowicz 2010). Over the last several decades, Australia’s immigration environment has changed significantly with the increasing diversity of intake and changing patterns of growth and ageing within already established migrant communities. Australia’s migration intake has mainly focused on skilled migrants and to a lesser extent, family migration, but Australia also accepts 13,750 people annually under the Humanitarian Program. This includes both offshore places (that is, applications are processed overseas) and onshore places (refugees are accepted following assessment for refugee status in Australia). Since the early 1990s, refugees from Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Eritrea have arrived primarily via the offshore program, either as refugees or through the Special Humanitarian Program for persons who have immediate family who have already been granted protection in Australia and are supported by

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an Australian or New Zealand proposer (DIAC 2010a). In 1995–96 alone, 3,000 refugees came to Australia and settled in Victoria (Dhanji 2009), where the research which we present here was conducted. Data collected from the 2006 census (most recent data available) identified 6,946 Victorian residents born in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, and Djibouti, and an additional 6,203 Victorian residents born in Sudan (Bereded-Samuel 2008). Most of these immigrants are relatively young and this group is a rapidly growing population, due to expanding families and continuing migration. The majority of African women who have come to Australia since the 1990s have arrived as refugees, under the offshore component of the Humanitarian Program. A significant number are ‘women at risk’, a subclass of refugee defined as women who are outside their home country and in danger of persecution on account of living without the protection of a male relative (DIAC 2008). Subsequently, many African women migrate without a partner or other adult family members and must assume sole responsibility for raising children in a new environment (Manderson et al. 1998). Most immigrants experience challenges as they rebuild their lives in a new country, especially where there are marked linguistic, cultural, material, and economic differences between migrant and host communities (Vasey and Manderson 2010). These challenges may be compounded for new mothers due to social isolation resulting from the physical and social demands of pregnancy, childbirth, and childrearing. Language dispossession, low socioeconomic status, and lack of familiarity with the operation of health, welfare, and other service systems, including housing assistance, access to credit, and information about education and skills accreditation, all serve to isolate newly arrived migrants in particular from mainstream society (Haasen et al. 2008; Rousseau et al. 2008). This is reflected in their social disadvantage and a poorer standard of living (Shaw 2001). Migrants who are forced to migrate due to persecution—the requisite for humanitarian entrants—have little or no agency in relation to their flight or initial place of resettlement. They are situated in an unfamiliar country in a location not of their choosing, and do not necessarily have any existing ties with other settlers. The establishment of social ties with compatriots is dependent upon a migrant’s own volition and efforts and can be affected by exacerbation of intraethnic divisions in the new country (Dossa 2009). For the majority of refugees from Africa, their clothing style alone, but also their assumed religion (Islam, although a significant proportion of Ethiopians especially are Christian), language, and skin color, all mark them as profoundly different from the majority. Whereas migrants seemingly have the freedom and agency to engage in whatever private practices serve them to retain transnational connections or forge new ones, in reality, any perceptible practices that differ from dominant norms may be interpreted as an unwillingness or inability to integrate, and thus elicit condemnation from the host society. Discrimination in employment, education, health, justice, and social participation is part of everyday

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life for many immigrants who have settled in refugee-receiving states such as Australia and the US and Europe (LaRRC 2009), further impeding migrants potential for social inclusion and consequent integration. During the first six months of settlement in Australia, integration is facilitated by the provision of settlement services provided by the federal, state, and local governments. These include case coordination, information, and referrals; on-arrival reception and assistance; accommodation services; and short-term torture and trauma counselling services (DIAC 2008). Migrants and refugees are also offered a maximum of 510 hours of free English language tuition (AMES 2010). Whereas all humanitarian entrants are eligible for assistance, the degree of assistance they receive varies depending upon their visa category (DIAC 2011; Taylor and Stanovic 2004). Following the six-month period, humanitarian entrants are referred to general settlement services provided through migrant resource centers, migrant service agencies, and organizations under the Settlement Grants Program (DIAC 2010b). These include the Translating and Interpreting Service (TIS), health allowances such as Medicare and Health Care Cards, social security benefits and employment support, material aid and emergency relief, and state-funded public housing (Taylor and Stanovic 2004). Additional settlement services are provided by local community groups, faith-based organizations, and local, state, and national nongovernment organizations. Some of these are funded in part by the Australian government or the for-profit sector, with banks playing a leading role (Pittaway and Muli 2009). 3

METHODS AND STUDY PARTICIPANTS

The ethnographic research reported in this chapter is focused on a community– based African women’s playgroup based at a public housing estate in western Melbourne, Victoria, which is the initiative of a predominantly governmentfunded child and family service organization. The research was conducted between February 2009 and October 2009 by the first author. Data collected included ten in-depth interviews with Somali mothers as well as Somali and Anglo-Australian staff members of the child and family service organization, and was supplemented by field notes, casual and informal conversations, and participant observation which occurred over approximately six months. Supplementary data derive from studies conducted by the second and third authors with immigrant women, including studies with Turkish, Middle East, Sahel African, and Iraqi women immigrants (Allotey, Manderson, and Reidpath, 2003; Inglis and Manderson 1984; Manderson and Allotey 2003; Manderson and Inglis 1984, 1985; Manderson and Vasey 2009; McMichael and Manderson 2004; Vasey 2007; Vasey and Manderson 2008, 2012).

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All study participants were involved in playgroups or had been in the past, although the nature of their involvement varied. Two staff members were program coordinators responsible for the creation and administration of playgroups. They were both Anglo Australian and had been involved with the implementing organization for one and six years respectively. The other two staff members were employed to facilitate the Somali women’s playgroup and were members of the Somali-Australian community. These women were mothers of seven and four children respectively and lived with their husbands in the same suburban area. Both were sponsored by family to come to Australia 13 and 16 years prior, were well educated, and had extended family living nearby. The six mothers interviewed had left Somalia as refugees, but their backgrounds and circumstances of resettlement were diverse: only one woman had been resettled in Australia initially, while the other five had first been resettled elsewhere (New Zealand or the Netherlands) before moving to Melbourne for marriage or work opportunities. All women were practicing Muslims and lived in public housing in the western suburbs of Melbourne. They had been in Australia between three and nine years, three women had family members with them in Australia, and five were engaged in parttime employment. The women were aged between 30 and 37 years and had between two and seven children. All women had been married, three more than once. At the time of interview, four women lived as the sole adult in their home, while the other two lived with their husbands. Participant observation of playgroups, playgroup excursions, and endof-term celebrations was used to derive contextual information (Kawulich 2005) and served to increase rapport with the mothers and staff in attendance (Jacobsen and Landau 2003). Pseudonyms are used throughout this chapter to protect the anonymity of participants. 4

THE SETTING

The study participants reside in a public housing estate built in the 1960s. The Victorian government offers public housing, social (also called community) housing, and some types of support for private renters depending on their financial status. Public housing in Australia includes two categories: early housing, for people experiencing or at risk of recurring homelessness or who have a disability or special housing needs; and wait turn, for persons on low incomes. Applicants cannot choose what suburb they live in, but can apply for up to three waiting list areas. Wait times for public housing are extensive due to rapidly rising demand and undersupply (DHS 2009); the most recent estimates for people on a wait turn list, not entitled to early housing, is 20 years (DHS with LM, pers.comm., 27 January 2012). Social housing relates to housing from not-for-profit registered housing agencies

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that provide rental housing for people on low incomes. For both types of housing, tenants are charged at between 25 and 30 percent of combined household income, pending eligibility and income type (DHS 2012). Many people, however, pay more than this. Refugees in Australia are often reliant on public or social housing due to a shortfall in rental housing supply, which has created increased competition for private rental housing, particularly at the low-cost end of the market (New Hope 2007). In 2008, there was a shortfall of 493,000 affordable and available dwellings in Australia for people in the lowest economic quartile (DHS 2009). Refugees are disadvantaged in this competitive rental market due to a lack of English proficiency, no Australian rental or employment history to support their applications to lease, large family size, lack of transport, limited social support, reliance on Centrelink (state welfare) incomes, and discrimination (New Hope 2007). Consequently, many newly arrived refugees must endure overcrowded housing, with two or more households sometimes sharing a house, and people may experience inadequate housing conditions for prolonged periods (New Hope 2007). In relation to the public housing estate occupied by the study participants, as project worker Sue remarked: There’s just no housing. It would be nice if they could be located a bit better or closer together but there’s just no housing. Obviously it’s really difficult when people get located around here. Obviously it’s really hard. This particular estate is a concrete complex of four high-rise buildings, each with 18 floors. Each floor of these high-rise buildings includes, on average, 2 three-bedroom apartments and 8 two-bedroom apartments, each with their own bathroom and kitchen. In addition to these high-rise blocks, there are 12 low-rise buildings that include between 16 and 30 apartments, with a mix of one, two, or three bedrooms. Many of the apartments are crowded, both because African family size is often relatively large, and because occasionally more than one family will be resident. The total population of the estate is unknown due to difficulties in gathering accurate data, although estimates suggest as many as 4000 people live in these apartments. More than half of all residents are under 25 years old. The estate has been the first place of residence for successive waves of immigrants to Australia—Italians, Greeks, Turkish, Vietnamese, and, since the early 1990s, people from the Horn of Africa. At time of writing, approximately 55 percent of residents are born overseas, predominantly in Vietnam, Somalia, and Ethiopia, and over 80 percent speak a language other than English at home. Almost 50 percent of residents identify as Muslim, predominantly comprising Somali and Ethiopian residents, and 20 percent identify as Buddhist, chiefly Vietnamese residents. Other apartments are occupied by low-income Anglo Australians families and citizens on welfare who are attracted by the low rental costs. Census

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data indicates that the median household income of estate residents is one third that of the wider community. The SEIFA (Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas) index of disadvantage ranks the suburb the fifth most disadvantaged of Melbourne’s 338 suburbs (ABS 2006). The proportion of people who are separated or divorced is triple that of the broader Victorian community, and the number of single parent families makes up 50 percent of all family groups. The buildings are poorly maintained. As an example, in the height of summer 2008, when temperatures exceeded 40 degrees, the lifts in the building broke, leaving families on the top floors to climb down 18 floors to leave their non-air-conditioned apartments. The grounds surrounding the buildings are unsafe, as the car park is situated between the buildings. An unfenced playground stands between the high-rise apartment blocks and adjoins two car parks, making it unsafe for children to play unless closely supervised. Project worker Christine remarked, “the playground is open so kids can run from swings to the road, or into the car park. They do clean it up but there’s been syringes found in the child play area.” The government commenced a Community Capacity Building project in the area in 2007, which is a collaboration between the local community, service agencies, local government, and state regional offices (DHS 2008a). The project was launched in response to issues raised by estate residents and an escalation of conflict between residents and police, including the incident described at the outset of this chapter. The ongoing project aims to improve the health and wellbeing of community residents by improving the coordination of service provision, the infrastructure, and the environment; however, this chapter presents the experiences of women as of 2009, prior to clear outcomes of the project. The recent settlement of Horn of African residents is reflected beyond the estate by an increasing number of African restaurants, cafés, and shops run by local families. These places are frequently attended by African men, as it is not seen as socially appropriate for women to gather there. Women instead tend to socialize while attending to children. In addition, a number of African community groups operate from the estate, led by men and women separately. Several programs are provided by local council in partnership with other service providers, including an occasional child care program that operates three days per week, a school holiday program for youth between 12 and 25 years of age, business start-up training for women, and a youth training and employment program which provides work experiences and training placements for 20 weeks for young residents. Other services in the area, run by nongovernment organizations, incorporate programs for African women, including a specific African Community Health Service which currently runs an initiative to address barriers to women’s participation in sports and recreational activities, and faith-based, nongovernment organizations responsible for social care and welfare support. Significantly, the faith-based community organizations are largely Christian, local branches of large nation-wide groups. Various Islamic welfare groups

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operate citywide, but these do not play a significant role in local settings such as the estate.

4.1

The Playgroup

Playgroup, the focus of the case study here documented, is one type of early childhood program that entails informal gatherings for parents and caregivers with children under school age, and is geared towards providing opportunities for children’s development and focus on interactive play (FaHCSIA 2009). Playgroups can support children’s social, emotional, cognitive and physical development, and contribute to children’s wellbeing (Mueller and Rich 2006; Whyte et al. 2007); increase parental awareness of the importance of play and facilitate the creation of social networks through which parent education occurs (Sneddon and Hayes 2003); and provide structured opportunities for the establishment of meaningful social contact and support (Sneddon and Hayes 2003; Whyte et al. 2007). The highest need identified in Australia for supported playgroups is among families from refugee and immigrant backgrounds (Plowman n.d.). For these families, in addition to the aforementioned benefits, playgroups are recognized as an important access point to the maze of family and welfare services available, as well as a way of assisting parents and carers to build supportive networks in the absence of those previously available to them in their countries of origin (Plowman n.d.). In other words, these playgroups are expected to generate social capital to support the instrumental and social needs of the participating families. For refugee families, supported playgroups can serve as protective environments for children at risk of secondary trauma. A case study of five refugee families who regularly attended a supported playgroup in Western Sydney (Jackson 2006) illustrates how playgroup can provide a supportive and predictable environment for children, leading to increased confidence and prosocial behavior, and can facilitate children’s transition to school. Additional benefits cited among participating parents included benefits resulting from parenting strategies modelled by facilitators, and reduced social isolation due to playgroup providing a safe forum to facilitating friendships among the parents who participate. Depending upon how they are delivered, playgroups hold the potential to encourage the perpetuation of transnational norms of parenting through enabling a forum for mothers of a particular cultural background to come together and mutually reinforce shared practices, or to challenge such norms by enforcing a climate of adherence to Australian norms and monitoring of parental behaviors. At the time of this research, the Somali women’s playgroup had been running for three years, from 2006 to 2009. At times it has been funded and at other times sustained through the enthusiasm of the playgroup facilitators and their willingness to volunteer their time. Facilitators are thus pivotal to the

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success of the playgroup, not only due to their enduring commitment in the absence of funding, but also as it is via their personal networks that families are invited to participate. The child and family service organization responsible for the playgroup deliberately sought facilitators who were from the Horn of Africa and respected by members of local Horn of African communities, in the belief that this would increase attendance. Facilitators were also sought on account of their familiarity with Australian norms and systems, in order to act as informants and role models to participants. The facilitators were given training on running a playgroup by Playgroups Victoria; additional training on storytelling, first aid, and parenting programs was optional. Twenty Horn of African families, predominantly Somali but also families from Ethiopia, Eritrea, and the Comoros Islands, gather each week for two hours on the ground floor of one of the buildings on the estate, in a shared community room with adjoining kitchen and bathroom. In the past, Turkish, Vietnamese, and Chinese families have also attended. Once the playgroup facilitators have brought play materials from a locked storage room across the walkway, children are free to run from one activity to another, drawing, bicycling, and playing with dolls, Play-Doh, and Lego. Mothers typically gather in groups to discuss daily happenings, although several are preoccupied with keeping their children in line. The facilitators are predominantly occupied with monitoring, interacting with, and disciplining the children. Twice during the two hours—once for morning tea and once to hear someone read an English-language storybook—the children are gathered together by the facilitators and parents, before dispersing again to their preferred activities. As the playgroup is run in a communal space, other estate residents often use the adjoining room during playgroup sessions. Typically several people loiter around the doorway or outside in the walkway. During one playgroup, a Vietnamese male resident began smoking in the doorway of the playgroup room entrance, upsetting several mothers in attendance. When one woman locked him out of the building, she was met with shouting as he beat against the window in anger. Notionally, playgroup incorporates both mothers and fathers. However, only one father has ever attended, and due to Somali cultural norms regarding the separation of women and men, his presence made many women feel uncomfortable and restricted on account of having to avoid eye contact with him. As a result, the women collectively looked after his children while he waited outside, looking in from a window. Twice during the school term, a guest speaker from a local service organization attends to speak on issues related to parenting and health, such as nutrition, developmental disorders, and the importance of play, reflecting tacit assumptions about African women’s parenting practices relative to those of other Australians. Mothers are encouraged to identify topics they would like information on so that these can be arranged by the project worker. However, they are not forthcoming with requests, and, in reality, the project worker usually decides who will be invited to provide information.

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A Place for Establishing Community

According to the coordinators, the playgroup is funded for three primary purposes: to skill the community by training and employing playgroup facilitators; to provide parenting education through modelling and guest speakers; and to provide early intervention through exposing children to educational play and ensuring children are enrolled in kindergarten and receiving appropriate services. The principles of parenting education were not explicitly defined by staff, although reference was made to research expounding the developmental benefits for the child of early play and parent-child relationships based on understanding and nurturance. The program coordinators are cognizant of additional benefits that playgroup provides for mothers’ networks and wellbeing, but the primary purpose is seen to be promoting educational play and increasing mother-child interaction for the benefit of the child. This prerogative differed somewhat from that of the majority of mothers who attended the playgroup. The foremost explanation for attendance among mothers was that playgroup offered a safe and reliable forum to socialize, share ideas, and build trust among one another, while children could play and learn to share with other children. When you stay home all the time you’ve got too much stress but when you come to playgroup you can talk to other people, different people, sharing your life (Fatuma, mother). We can all speak and talk and coffee (Issa, mother). Trust and solidarity among African women did not arise by virtue of a shared cultural heritage; it had to be created anew, which entailed substantial effort to overcome former social barriers based upon tribal divisions. At first I couldn’t trust nobody (Fatuma, mother). It was so difficult to make friends, I was so depressed. I end up with a social worker to come with me. I couldn’t meet friends. I found it very hard to get along with all the community (Luul, facilitator). Contemporary Somalia is socially divided along tribal lines that do not immediately dissipate post-settlement. Bahsan, a mother of five, recollected a time when she felt isolated and alone in Australia in the absence of other clan members: You know our people, everyone in tribe, tribe different tribe . . . In this country our people still believe tribe and state. If those people live here, they visit me. If you don’t have anyone? Nothing. I don’t have anyone. But now, some people, they don’t believe in tribe.

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Playgroup provided an entry point for women to begin to establish and access a new community founded upon new criteria for inclusion, namely, migrant status and African heritage. Many women described inclusion in this new community, interchangeably termed the ‘Somali’ or ‘African community’, as a turning point in their lives and paramount to overcoming emotional despair. The community enabled women to recreate a sense of familiarity and safety, as described by the playgroup facilitators, Mariam and Luul, in a society that otherwise felt exclusionary and, at times, discriminatory: I really love to be around wherever they [other Somali women] are because it feels like a safe environment . . . When you go out, it seems you know everybody and they know you (Mariam). I am enjoying being with same people like me, Muslim and black like me, because before I used to go another playgroup, all white. It was very hard to make friendship (Luul). See, here I am African, not Somali. I’m happy to be called African. It’s my skin—that’s why we’re brothers and sisters. All Africans. Sometimes I introduce myself as African not Somali. I can fit with all African people (Saniya, mother). The community was deemed especially important in circumstances of family breakdown, and was a source of practical support in relation to learning about available assistance from government institutions, public transport, the Internet, places to shop, and the best schools; each a requisite for agency. But at the same time, women also experienced some loss of agency as a consequence of belonging to a minority community that placed certain restrictions on women’s behaviors, which were enforced through community surveillance and gossip. Three mothers associated the Somali community with negative gossip, and fear of gossip played an important role in regulating mothers’ behaviors. The facilitators discussed at length how gossip led to women feeling ashamed if they were in an abusive relationship, depressed, or had a child who had left home or had a disability. To protect against exclusionary gossip, women often avoided leaving home or admitting to difficulties, which in turn prevented them from securing necessary assistance. According to Mariam, women wishing to enact parenting behaviors that diverged from those common in their community feared doing so because of gossip. While discussing the need for mothers to engage with their children and participate in activities that the child enjoyed, she reflected: If your child wants to go to a sports place, go with them, encourage them, have fun with them. If they see you, the other mothers, doing that, they’ll say, “Oh, she’s acting like that” [implying inappropriate

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Kari Gibson, Katie Vasey, and Lenore Manderson behavior]. But don’t give a shit, because you want to see your child’s improvement.

According to Mariam, gossip impedes women’s ability to acculturate their parenting behaviors and can result in disadvantage for mothers’ parenting experiences.

4.3

Loss, Isolation, and Connection

Creating a new sense of social inclusion was vital for women to overcome feelings of loss that arose from the process of migration. All of the women interviewed keenly felt the loss of social support from family in Somalia during childrearing. They recalled Somalia as a place where family would nurture both mother and child for several weeks following childbirth, in contrast to women’s experiences in Australia, where they felt alone and without familial support, particularly postpartum. I born my first baby in Somalia. My mum, she look after me, my sister, all my family . . . she look after the baby with the others. Now, it’s different. It’s very hard. At the beginning you need someone coming to help you. But you can’t find them here. No family. You can’t find them (Fatuma, mother). In women’s somewhat idealized memories (see also McMichael and Manderson 2004), the entire community in Somalia would share responsibility for children’s protection and discipline. Strong community networks and support contributed to mothers’ feelings of security and alleviated their anxiety. Fatuma, a mother of seven, recounted: In Somalia, when anyone sees your kids, they say, “What are you doing there? Go back to your mother.” Now, nobody can know. Kids go anywhere, movies, outside, drugs, whatever they want. And nobody can tell them, “Where’s your mum?” That’s the problem. No one knows the kids. In Somalia, everyone knows the kids. Now, you always have to know where the kids are, lock the door. It’s very scary, very scary. In contrast, when women spoke of being in Australia, they referred to a prevailing sense of isolation, which was only partly addressed through available resettlement services, assistance from social workers, and access to subsidized childcare. These services were pivotal to women’s experiences of support and ability to exercise agency. But they linked women only with welfare services, while connection to the wider society remained elusive. Women’s isolation was compounded by barriers that prevented them from securing employment, due to limited English and the nonrecognition of qualifications, the lack of transport and child care, child-rearing responsibilities,

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and discrimination. An example of discrimination was provided by Luul, who—on arrival at what had been her workplace for several months, wearing a head scarf for the first time—was told she was no longer “the right person for the job.” Women responded by using playgroup to deal with the immediate problem of isolation, as opposed to viewing playgroup as a way to meet the educational and developmental needs of their children. Women’s isolation in Australia, juxtaposed to their memories of social solidarity and shared parenting responsibilities in Somalia, led to women feeling scared in Australia, and their perception of Australia as unsafe precipitated changes to how parenting was conceived and enacted. As Fatuma described: When you’re playing outside [in Somalia] your mum doesn’t worry about anything. When you’re playing outside here, it’s different. You have to keep your eye always on your children. Anything can happen. Because you don’t know the people here. Mothers felt that there was less need to be close to their children in Somalia, whereas in Australia, women felt they had to be constantly vigilant of their children to protect them from bad influences endemic in the Australian environment. As Mariam described: [In Australia] you need to give attention to your child instead of thinking that the child is doing things by itself. But there [in Somalia] you have nieces, nephews, relatives; everybody was around so you don’t have to pay more attention. Here, it’s really about . . . becoming close with the child and having relationship. It’s different. Playgroup, in contrast, was a haven: a familiar, safe, and supportive environment where women were able to partially recreate familiar patterns of childrearing, and in that space they were known to one another and had, with time, established trust in one another. Horn of African women often feel under scrutiny and targeted by services on behalf of their children, who are perceived to be vulnerable to abuse (Allotey, Manderson, and Grover 2001). Two mothers in particular among the study sample expressed concern regarding government child protection services, which they believed undermined the mother’s rightful role as protector by preventing them from controlling or disciplining their children. In response, some parents drew on transnational connections and felt it appropriate to send their teenagers back to Somalia, where there were believed to be fewer environmental hazards such as drugs and where the community would help protect their children from harm. She not understand [reference to a government social worker]. She say this abuse. I not abuse my child, this is my child! I’m not crazy, I don’t

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Kari Gibson, Katie Vasey, and Lenore Manderson drink alcohol, don’t do hasish (drugs), I’m normal person. How could I abuse my child? (Ifrah) You have to change. Otherwise, if you are strict like where you came from, you’re going to lose your child (Mariam).

Women also drew upon transnational connections with family in order to deal with the loss of social support during childrearing, which proved invaluable for many women’s sense of support and wellbeing. Three women discussed sponsoring family and five women described returning to Somalia or visiting family members who had been resettled elsewhere in order to attain familial support. Ifrah, a mother of seven, returned to Somalia with her one-year-old daughter: Mum say, “You’re very tired.” And the people, my family, come into my house and everybody’s happy. I feel it. I cry. Because who look after me in Australia? Nobody’s looking after me. My sister, she take my daughter. I not see my daughter one month. My sister say, “Give her to me, I give her food and everything.” I give her to her.

4.4

Conflicting Agendas and Agency

Project workers and facilitators recognized that playgroup had evolved to become a forum for socialization. As project worker Christine identified: For some groups, the playgroup is seen like, two separate things. The mums come together and sit around and chat. The kids are off playing and often the facilitators are left child caring . . . Even that model would still have benefits, but it’s not what we’d like to see from playgroup, we’d like to see more interaction between mothers and children. Likewise Mariam and Luul, the African playgroup facilitators, saw value in encouraging women to change their parenting behaviors and interact more with their children. It’s not necessarily that the western way is better, is it, just that you have to do it . . . it’s not better but some things are good. We need to use it for ourselves you know. Not just follow exactly our culture our own things because we’re outside our own country. We have to change sometimes (Mariam). [Referring to African mothers and fathers] They don’t know how to approach the kids, don’t say “tell me if there’s something wrong” or if you have trouble. They don’t have that. They have lack of friendship. So they need to help that, to support that, the family. Some parents come here they don’t know how to do that. They mother a different way and

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their kids are thinking the western way, so it’s all chaos. They need to give [us] help for that. To achieve this change, the facilitators saw their role as providing constant monitoring and instruction to mothers to ensure they remained attentive to their children, in accordance with their perception of the intended purpose of playgroup, as set out by funding agencies; namely, to educate other African women about the need to change how they parent and the benefits available to them through doing so: If we go out we have to ensure they look after their kids. We have to make sure we tell them to look after their kids and they stay together. Sometimes we tell them . . . they’re doing something and they didn’t see the child went somewhere, so we have to call them and tell them (Mariam). If they [children at playgroup] need help, we help but always we tell parents to interact with their child, not us, to encourage them to play with their child, so that habit is connected to the home. When the child is at home he’s not alone sitting there playing by himself but the parents support their child. We have to tell them. Because we come from a different culture. But this is a good habit . . . so that child when he grow up, he will have had basic education from parent and playgroup, and the mother is excited when she sees she has a connection with her child and can play (Luul). Some parents they do the same exactly at back home but this is a western country. You have to do different, not just forget everything about your culture and how you raise kids, but you have to follow the western way too because that’s the way that you live (Luul).

4.5

Fulfilling Dual Purposes

Despite different perceptions of the primary purpose of playgroup, women were receptive to hearing from guest speakers about various services at playgroup, and the project workers and facilitators believed that mothers had become more interactive with their children over the course of their participation: “You learn many things from different people” (Bahson). Changes in the way women interacted with their children appeared to be due to the facilitators’ role modelling, sharing of advice, and persistent prompting of mothers to engage in their children’s play: I encourage them [mothers] to go to the schools by themselves, there’s even classes you can go with your child and learn how to read the books for your children . . . And I say come to the playgroup, even if your child is at school, come to the playgroup sometimes and listen to the stories we’re telling (Mariam).

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Playgroup served various other functions not anticipated by the program coordinators. Having evolved to incorporate mothers from various countries, playgroup became a forum for practicing English. Mariam also taught women how to use libraries and introduced several women to reading, skills critical for women’s agency and ability to integrate into wider Australian society. Playgroup was also a pathway to services. Playgroup facilitators were well positioned to identify families requiring additional or specialized support, and able to advise women on how to attain this: I find out a lot of mothers have disability child, but they don’t want to express it because other families, stupid families, sorry to say, they’re talking, saying, “she has disability child, blah, blah, blah. It’s real rubbish” . . . I found out about a lot of mothers, and I tell them there’s a lot of facilities here. Go there, get support. The government offers a lot of opportunities (Mariam). The playgroup also gave rise to mutual self-help between mothers. The attending mothers collectively developed a family day-care scheme in response to their own needs, which were previously unmet because other childcare services were inaccessible economically and geographically (see also Jellinek et al.’s 2002 work in squatter kampongs in Jakarta where women engage in mutual childcare so they can pursue income generating activities). The creation of such a scheme was enabled by one of the Somali playgroup facilitators, who was better versed in dealing with Australian systems of bureaucracy than the majority of attendees and was able to establish herself as a local family day-care operator. Through this position, she was able to provide other mothers with an affordable and trusted type of childcare as well as providing employment to some women as family day carers. Her decision to become a family day-care operator was a consequence of her witnessing the difficulties that African mothers faced finding employment due to their extensive familial obligations, limited English abilities, and discrimination in the workplace. Playgroup thus facilitated agency and became pivotal to facilitating women’s integration in ways beyond those originally intended or predicted. As one participant said, “Playgroup gives us the opportunity to really build up our life.” The evolution of playgroup illustrates how women actively adapted an available service to meet their ongoing collective needs, and demonstrates the need to provide localized initiatives that are sufficiently flexible to respond to the priorities of participants. Whereas there was some incongruence between the formal prerogatives of playgroup reinforced by coordinators and facilitators and those of the women attending, with strong and influential role models and a flexible method of implementation, the initiative enabled women to utilize the space to meet both objectives. Initially, women prioritized establishing a new sense of African community, which, in conjunction with support accessed through the maintenance of

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transnational networks, assisted women to overcome profound feelings of isolation. Playgroup was instrumental in providing a forum to develop trust and thus facilitated the forging of a collective identity and basis for social support. With time and the influence of role models, playgroup enabled women to make changes that furthered their ability to better manage, support, and educate their children and to work around obstacles limiting their agency in Australia. The social relationships and benefits afforded by playgroup served mothers to attain social capital and to gain control over the group, the space, and their lives. 5

CONCLUSIONS

At the national level, Australia prides itself on being a multicultural country where diversity is celebrated. Humanitarian entrants are provided with various formal settlement support services designed to facilitate their prompt integration into all facets of Australian society. However, tensions exist between predominant notions of an Anglo-dominated Australia and the arrival of African refugees. The recent debates in Australia and elsewhere concerning ‘integration potential’ rely on the premise that migrant cultural traits and values are unchanging (Grillo 2008). It is assumed that African refugees either cannot— by virtue of some intrinsic, inflexible norms—or else will not adapt, whereas little attention is paid to the effectiveness of services in supporting refugees to attain their own individual and collective priorities. A myriad of barriers exist that may deter or restrict refugees from promptly integrating into Australian society. However, as has been discussed in this chapter, such obstacles will be addressed as and when women prioritize their resolution, and notions of community and cultural ideals are continually evolving. Integration is a process requiring long-term and substantial investment on the part of the individual in conjunction with, and dependent upon, openness, adequate support, accessible services, and willingness within the host society. In this chapter, we have highlighted the importance of a localized community-based playgroup program with respect to the social inclusion and agency of African refugee women. This playgroup model was sufficiently flexible for women to adapt it to their evolving needs and, consequently, was successful in sustaining attendance. In accordance with women’s objectives, it became a tool for social integration, both in terms of the African community by providing an entry point to community and an inadvertent forum to practice familiar models of parenting, and in relation to the wider community through facilitating reading, English learning, employment, and adaptation of parenting techniques. The networks facilitated by playgroup did not replace or diminish the important of transnational networks, which continued to provide crucial assurance and support.

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However, playgroup was successful in supporting women’s integration and ability to negotiate multiple, fluid social worlds.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We would like to express our appreciation to the child and family service organization involved for enabling this research to take place, and to the women who shared their stories. In particular, we wish to thank Istanbul and Hadia for their generosity and kindness, and Penny from the relevant city council for her interest and information.

NOTE 1. Conflict between police and young African people in Melbourne’s inner north has been an ongoing concern since 2005, with 70 formal complaints against police being made to local legal centres in the area between 2005 and 2010 (Jackson, 2010).

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4

Return Migration as an Engine of Social Change? Reverse Diasporas’ Capital Investments at Home Heidi Dahles

1

INTRODUCTION

In many countries which experience major out-migration movements at some point in their history, returning migrants or refugees may have a role to play in processes of (economic) development, peacebuilding, and reconstruction. The long-standing engagement of diaspora communities in their countries of origin produces significant flows of financial and human capital, networks of social capital, knowledge and technology, and political support. Migration scholars, governments, nongovernmental organizations, and other multilateral agencies have only recently begun to think systematically about the actual and potential contributions of ‘returnees’ to social change in their countries of origin. The focus so far has been on remittance flows, and the dominant issue has been how to increase remittance flows and direct them towards ‘developmental’ uses. After all, remittance financial payments mostly come out of family and community involvement—flow directly into the hands of the poor. However, this direct way of financial support also raises doubts about the effectiveness of remittances in terms of realizing their developmental potential. The idea that remittances flow to private persons and households where they are used for consumptive instead of productive purposes has been rather persistent, but ignores the multiplier effects accruing from remittances invested in real estate and micro businesses (Maimbo and Ratha 2005). Researchers have come to assess the significance of diaspora for homecountries in ambivalent terms. Whereas remittances and philanthropic donation from diaspora to home-country are on the positive side of the balance sheet, diaspora is also seen as an engine of ‘brain drain,’ i.e. the loss of human capital that permanently affects the developmental potential of the home-country, a loss that cannot be balanced by remittances and donations (Agunias 2006; Maimbo and Ratha 2005; Naudé 2007; Newland 2004). The ‘classical’ brain drain versus remittances equation has come to be replaced by a much more differentiated and complex relationship between countries and their diasporas. The loss in the ability of the home-country to facilitate education and employment results in a sustained state of

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‘brain waste.’ Remittances can be strategically put to use by individuals, households, and agencies to reverse this trend and create conditions that attract diaspora to return—temporarily, permanently, or circularly—in order to contribute to development as professionals, experts, or aid workers and as business persons and entrepreneurs. In an attempt to come to terms with the complexity of diaspora mobility, Faist (2000) has pointed out that migratory mobility has to be understood in terms of an ‘immigrant transnationalism’ comprising a great diversity of movements between host-countries and homelands and generating and maintaining a continuous flow of humans, capital, and ideas. The relevance of such an analysis is made apparent in returnee entrepreneurs’ contributions to social change in their home-countries. In particular, entrepreneurship— with its inherent innovative potential—is expected to contribute significantly to economic growth, development, and social change (Naudé 2007). This is how ‘brain drain’ and ‘brain waste’ may turn into ‘brain gain’ and ‘brain trust’ (Agunias 2006). Business-entrepreneurial capital consisting of the built-up business assets, knowledge, skills, and expertise of diaspora members may be valuable for (re)building a thriving business community in the home-country and, at the same time, contribute to capacity building and create social value. With such business-entrepreneurial capital comes human and social capital providing access to networks, including (donor) institutions and private companies in diasporic host-countries that can contribute to development in the home-country. In order to fully assess the potential of returnees for development, I shall move beyond the concept of remittances, which usually implies money transfers and therefore pertains to financial capital only (Maimbo and Ratha 2005, 2). Instead, I will elaborate on the concept of remittances as forms of ‘capital’ at large that come within reach as a consequence of return movements. This is where I turn to the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1977, 1986), who designed a comprehensive theory of social practice which identifies a number of different forms of ‘capital’ that serve as both material and symbolic resources in human exchanges. The aim of this chapter at an empirical level is to identify, first, the resources—or ‘forms of capital’— that returnees bring back to their home-countries, and, second, the ways in which they generate economic and social change through local investments by means of entrepreneurial activity. At a conceptual level, this chapter aims at contributing to the debate about ‘immigrant transnationalism’ and in particular the ways in which diasporic agency, by way of entrepreneurship, generates patterns of transnational, instead of merely one-directional, mobility, including the ensuing benefits and challenges. After the next section which briefly discusses the strategies applied to obtain data, the chapter proceeds with a critical assessment of the key concepts of entrepreneurship and innovation, capital and capital investments, and return processes and return of innovation. These key concepts will feed into the subsequent literature review focusing on the ways in which different

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forms of capital are utilized by returnees starting and operating private enterprises in their home-country. The comparative discussion that concludes this chapter assesses the extent to which such capital investments can be viewed as social entrepreneurship that generates social change. 2

TOWARDS A THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE: RETURNEE CAPITAL INVESTMENTS AS SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP?

The theoretically advanced debate on the striking ‘success’ of ethnic1 Chinese businesses and the transnational networks they establish offers a few useful insights for an exploration into returnee entrepreneurship. Ethnic Chinese business networks have been described in terms of ‘network capitalism’ embedded in a multilayered web of personal and social relationships. Following the institutional approach, which revolves around the concept of embeddedness (Granovetter 2006), Hamilton (1996, 2000) shows that the organization of Chinese business firms is largely shaped by institutional structures which enhance ‘institutional thickness’ (see also Yeung and Olds 2000). Chinese business networks create ‘institutional thickness’ by embedding business in hierarchical bonds within Chinese families, a system of accumulated social capital through reciprocal ties known as guanxi (good connections), commercial associations and informal business groupings, hometown associations treasuring the link with their home-country, patron-client relationships with the authorities and local communities in their host-country, and by the quest for mutual benefits by which all parties gain through cooperation (see also Dahles 2004, 2005, 2008; Gold, Guthrie, and Wank 2002; Gomez 1999, 2002; Gomez, and Hsiao 2004; Yeung and Olds 2000). The lessons learned from the institutional approach pertain to the contextual and situational positioning of migrant or diasporic economic activities. If such activities are limited to profit making and if entrepreneurs are defined as “persons who are ingenious and creative in finding ways that add to their own wealth, power and prestige” (Baumol 1990, 987), one may question whether entrepreneurship is an appropriate instrument for development and modernization. In Baumol’s definition, entrepreneurship is always present in any community or country and may be channeled into activities that are not necessarily productive, as rent-seeking or crime can also add to personal wealth but affect society negatively (Baumol 1990; Naudé 2007). In other words, the significance of returnee entrepreneurs for the development of their home economies can only be assessed if the concept of entrepreneurship is conceptually extended beyond the level of personal profit to include issues of community, the production of social values, sensemaking and life orientations (O’Connor 2006; Fletcher and Watson 2006; Johannisson and Wigren 2006), participation in civil society (Hjort and Bjerke 2006), business principles guided by social responsibility (Alvord, Brown, and Letts 2004),

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alleviation of social problems (Alvord, Brown, and Letts 2004), and cultural and social change (Anderson, Honig, and Peredo 2006) that pushes the economy into new directions (Swedberg 2006). Entrepreneurship as an embedded concept (Granovetter 2006) produces, mobilizes, and employs cultural and social capital in order to innovate, and, thus, change society. Defined in terms of ‘innovator’ and ‘agent of social change’ (Steyaert and Hjorth 2006), the concept of entrepreneurship bridges the conceptual gap between the domain of economic performance and different forms of capital. Returning diaspora induce their—often heterogeneous and diverging—economic, political, and social agendas into home-country economies. They may play a crucial role in conflict resolution, peacekeeping, restoring or revitalizing the economy, establishing successful business start-ups, and engaging in civil society and community development by means of institution building. They may rise to power as business or community leaders capable of directing their home-country into a stable and prosperous future. In order to fully assess the potential of entrepreneurship for providing an injection of innovation and brokering social change, this concept has to be operationalized in terms of the concrete contributions that entrepreneurship can make to societies. For this purpose, I will differentiate between different forms of capital investments beyond the purely financial input. An attempt will be made to identify capital inputs that enable entrepreneurs to provide local community members with access to social networks, to engage in the production of social value, to participate in civil society and help others to follow suit, to act in a socially responsible manner, and to contribute to the alleviation of social problems. The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1977, 1986) designed a comprehensive theory of social practice which identifies a number of different forms of ‘capital’ that serve as both material and symbolic resources in human exchanges. His ‘theory of practice’ views society as an amalgam of partly overlapping and partly conflicting, but constantly changing fields. Each field is constituted by a particular set of practices and interests, institutions, and laws which define it as unique and delineate it from other fields. Individuals and organizations acting within a specific field develop a particular set of dispositions which provide access to particular resources or ‘capitals’ of more or less value in a given field. Bourdieu (1977) distinguishes between economic (wealth in the narrow sense), social (network relations, trust, and credentials), and cultural (certified knowledge and expertise acquired through formal education) capital. Whereas both social and cultural capital can be invested in order to accumulate economic capital, they can be derived from economic capital “only at the cost of a more or less great effort of transformation, which is needed to produce the type of power effective in the field in question” (Bourdieu 1986, 252). Social capital and cultural capital generate economic capital; economic capital does not buy social or cultural capital in a simple, direct way. Therefore, in order to enhance economic capital, it is of great importance to invest in cultural and social capital first. The concept of social capital—which

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Bourdieu defines in terms of durable network relations (1986, 248)—has found wide resonance among a large number of social scientists and has been elaborated both on the individual and collective levels. Social capital research has focused on membership in formal organizations where people obtain skills such as negotiation, compromise, reciprocity, and establishing contact with people of other groups. Focusing on the collective level, Putnam (2000) defines social capital as an attribute of social organizations that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit. Conversely, at the individual level, social capital accrues to personal investments which consist of the “potential resources inherent in an actor’s set of social ties” (Kilduff and Tsai 2003, 26). These resources may be established by membership in an age group, ethnic community, or community of professionals or business people. Although social capital can be exchanged for money, knowledge, jobs, or promotions (Bourdieu 1986, 253), it can be made operational only by securing the cooperation of other actors. Social capital is closely intertwined with the concept of social networks. Cultural capital, says Bourdieu (1986), is accumulated by means of education and comes in three different ‘states’: the embodied, the objectified, and the institutionalized state. Embodied forms of cultural capital are acquired in the process of socialization and consist of language proficiency or cultural competence. In its objectified state, cultural capital comes in the form of knowledge accumulated by means of formal learning or cultural goods expressing such knowledge, such as objects of art. Cultural capital in its institutionalized state is in the form of diplomas, certificates, or titles acquired by means of formal education. Applying Bourdieu’s concept of capital to returnee economies, one may distinguish capital investments by diaspora and returnees in terms of economic and ‘non-economic’ remittances. Levitt (2001) contributes the concept of ‘social remittances,’ which she defines as the “ideas, behaviors, identities, and social capital that flow from receiving- to sending-country communities” (54). Partly overlapping is Flores’ (2009) concept of ‘cultural remittances,’ which he describes in terms of an “ensemble of ideas, values, and expressive forms introduced into societies of origin by remigrants and their families as they return ‘home’ ” (4). These partly converging concepts share the view of remittance carriers as highly innovative agents of social change. Following the path-breaking work by Cerase (1974) who—upon distinguishing four modes of return—identifies one mode, the ‘return of innovation,’ as potential agent of social change, Flores views return migrants as capable of agency and creativity bringing back “the ability and incentive to challenge and change the society to which he (sic) returns” (2009, 39). Therefore, the question has to be raised as to what extent migrant and diasporic returnees act as such agents of change in their home-countries. In what way does their temporary or permanent return contribute to economic development on the one hand, and social and cultural innovation on the other? In what way and directions do they change their home-country beyond support in purely economic-financial ways, i.e. beyond the payment of remittances?

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In the next section, I will review current literature on migrant and diasporic entrepreneurs as providers of the diverse forms of capital. A distinction will be made between the economic, social, and cultural capital they inject into their home-country on the one hand, and the economic, social, and cultural changes that occur upon the injection of society with such capital. 3

A BRIEF REFLECTION ON STRATEGIES OF LITERATURE SEARCH

This chapter is based on a comparative review of current literature on returnee capital investments in countries with large diaspora populations that have come to establish “a kind of reverse or return diaspora within the homeland society itself” (Flores 2009, 3). The database has been established through university library (Picarta and Web of Science) and Google Scholar search and snowball sampling, by browsing the bibliographies of recent publications on these themes. As migration and diaspora research is a dynamic field building on a long tradition and enjoying an increasing popularity within diverse academic disciplines and among policy makers in governments and multilateral organizations, there is an impressive volume of literature available. Moreover, the number of publications relevant for this review is increasing constantly and rapidly. Therefore, this review does not claim to be representative of the total body of literature and has to be regarded as work in progress. The concept of returnee pertains to both migrants and diaspora returning to their home-country upon living in a foreign country for various reasons. Both categories may either maintain or forsake their basis in the host-country and return either temporarily or permanently to their home-country. They may also keep up a “transnational lifestyle” (Faist 2000) featuring circular patterns of return and departure (Agunias 2006; Chapman and Prothero 1983/4; and dual or multiple citizenship to facilitate this mobility (e.g., Poethig (2006) on Cambodian returnees). The bulk of worldwide migration movements happens for economic reasons (Castles and Miller 2003), engendering either labor or trade diasporas (Cohen 1997). More than migration, the concept of diaspora evokes images of displaced communities which have been dislocated from their native homeland. Other synonyms are deportation, living in exile, or being a refugee, which are characteristics of the so-called victim diasporas (Cohen 1997). In addition, the concept of diaspora also implies the ongoing yearning for the homeland, the maintenance of emotional ties, and the wish to return one day (on a permanent basis). Whereas the number of victim diasporas seems to increase due to more armed conflict within nation-states (examples are manifold and include Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka; Iranian, Iraki, Palestinian, Kurdish, Somali, Eritrean, Cambodian, Vietnamese, and Guatemalan refugees; and groups from any other conflict area in this world), there is also a myriad of ‘new’ diasporas emerging as a local response to globalization. Described by Portes (1996) and Van Hear

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(1998) in terms of ‘transnational communities’ with fuzzy patterns of mobility, multiple loyalties, and translocal social arrangements (Flores 2009; Sheffer 1986; Shuval 2000; Vertovec and Cohen 1999), these ‘new’ diasporas capitalize on access to different nation-states established by earlier migration and on their vast cultural competence, which enables them to benefit from opportunities offered in the global market (Ostergaard-Nielson 2003). There is a considerable amount of literature addressing diaspora and migrant entrepreneurship on the one hand, and the returnee economy and reverse diaspora (accruing from remigration or reverse migration) on the other. The former concepts—and similar concepts such as ethnic business networks and transnational entrepreneurship—refer to a huge body of literature addressing migrants’ entrepreneurial activities in and between hostcountries. Diasporic economic involvement with home-countries is not adequately captured by these concepts. The bulk of publications on the ‘ethnic’ or ‘overseas’ Chinese or the ‘Chinese diaspora’ constitute an important part of this literature (see below), as does the literature on ‘transnationalism from below,’ which emphasizes the success of migrant entrepreneurship in host-countries (Smith and Guarnizo 1998). In order to find literature on the reverse dimension of transnationalism, one has to employ concepts such as ‘remigration,’ ‘returnee economy,’ ‘reverse diaspora,’ and ‘reverse migration.’ Only these terms refer unambiguously to (economic) activities and interests of returning migrants or refugees in their home-county. These concepts have been used as search terms in the bibliographical research that is at the basis of this chapter. 4

RETURNEE ECONOMIES: A LITERATURE REVIEW

4.1 Economic Versus Social and Cultural Capital Acquisition and Investments Since the 1960s, the literature on return migration has been focusing on the economic impact of temporary, permanent, and circular migration on widely differing countries, most of which are situated in the developing world, while a number of studies also address European countries such as Italy, Albania, Portugal, and Ireland that have been major emigration countries throughout the 20th century (Agunias 2006; Cerase 1974; Colton 1993; Gmelch 1980; Massey and Espinoza 1997; McCormick and Wahba 2001; Thomas-Hope 1999). Whereas the occurrence of environmental disasters and armed conflict generates studies of migration and remigration all over the world, the bulk of the current literature concentrates on key countries in East and South Asia, i.e. China, Taiwan and India (Agunias 2006). Most of these studies found that ‘entrepreneurship’ has increased among return migrants, suggesting that migrants become more entrepreneurial through the migration experience (Agunias 2006). There is no consensus, however, on how this enhanced entrepreneurial spirit has come about.

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Basically, these impact studies argue from two diverging perspectives on how migration and the ‘diasporic’ experience enable return migrants to provide an entrepreneurial contribution. The first perspective focuses exclusively on economic capital and reasons that remittances and accumulated savings brought back from host-countries overcome liquidity constraints and hence enable individual migrants and their families to either revitalize existing enterprises or set up new ones upon their return (Iredale and Fei Guo 2001). The second perspective acknowledges that returnees bring back social and cultural capital which may engender changing living standards and life orientations and may significantly alter the economic prospects of a community and eventually lead to social transformations. There is overwhelming evidence that new skills and working experience acquired in a more advanced commercial and technical environment—rather than just the level of accumulated savings—enhances the entrepreneurial potential of migrants on return to their home-country (see McCormick and Wahba 2001 for an overview of relevant literature). An excellent example of high-skilled returnees being warmly welcomed back is that of remigrants to mainland China. In the 1990s, the Chinese government started to provide attractive conditions for Chinese returnee entrepreneurs to settle in China, including adequate scientific, technological, and business environments that provide rewarding opportunities (Zweig, Chung, and Vanhonacker 2005a; Zweig et al. 2005b). The assets of Chinese returnee entrepreneurs consist of a variety of forms of capital that enhance their value to the home-country. The most sought-after capital is technology new for China. Such technology is usually not owned by the returnees but by their former employer in the host-country, and they may have simply copied it. Secondly, they bring home social capital; they help local Chinese professionals and entrepreneurs to go overseas, facilitate international cooperative projects, bring foreign visitors to science parks, and set up networks while living abroad which they plug into to promote their business. Thirdly, they provide cultural capital: they translate foreign materials, bring in foreign books and information, and design and teach training courses and academic programs. And finally, they bring management styles, business or organizational strategies, and entrepreneurial skills which change Chinese business culture. As Zweig and colleagues (2005b) found, returnee entrepreneurs, while less versed in the informal Chinese business culture and more reliant on close government relations, are more enterprising in establishing a variety of business relationships, relying less on family and relatives and more on partners with whom they have no personal relationships. These findings lead Zweig and colleagues (2005b) to conclude that mainland Chinese returnees eventually transform Chinese business culture and make it more adaptable to the global economy. Conversely, the evidence also shows that economic capital accumulated abroad is more important to low-skilled and illiterate return migrants than to the better educated. Less-educated migrants and those who work

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in low-skilled jobs in host-countries are unable to learn skills that can be utilized for business start-ups in their home-country, as has been shown by McCormick and Wahba (2001) for illiterate Egyptian returnees, by Mahmood (1995) for low-educated Bangladeshi returnees, by Agunias (2006) for Filipino migrants of whom 70–80% are unable to save enough money for their eventual return, and by Ilahi (1999) for Pakistani returnees. Instead, less-educated migrants accumulate savings—economic capital—in the hostcountry which they usually invest in self-employment or micro and small business start-ups upon their return. The dependence of the low skilled on economic capital illustrates Bourdieu’s claim that economic capital cannot be converted into social and/or cultural capital in a simple straightforward way. This dependence also raises doubts about the contribution to development accomplished by such investments in self-employment and small businesses. Economists usually point out that return is an expression of failed migration, showing that aims have not been reached (Zweig, Chung, and Vanhonacker 2005a). Push factors affect low-skilled migrants in particular, and those who see their expectations of a career in the host-country curtailed. Therefore, it is argued that—because successful migrants have a career abroad and remain there—returnees are not among the best talents that a country has to offer. Upon return, they start a business for lack of other opportunities and without the necessary knowledge and experience and, hence, with a high failure rate (Agunias 2006; Zweig et al. 2005b). It has been observed that returnee entrepreneurship contributes to the establishment of survivalist firms (in contrast to high-potential growth firms) and so-called necessity entrepreneurship (in contrast to opportunity entrepreneurship), i.e. the informal sector and firms aimed at maintaining lifestyles (Naudé 2007). In the case of Albania, for example, it has been shown that new microenterprises or existing micro-family businesses maintained by remittances and savings of returnees form a way of subsistence, not a strategy to get rich or develop the Albanian economy (Nicholson 2001).

4.2 Institutional Embedding of Capital Acquisition and Investment As a number of researchers point out, the success or failure of returnee entrepreneurship is not only a matter of returnees possessing the appropriate resources, but also of institutional factors, in particular, the migration and return policies in the host- and home-countries. Success or failure as an engine of return migration is regarded as a vital issue pertaining to the developmental potential of returnees. Higushi (n.d.) argues that even well-educated Iranian migrants to Japan are unable to accumulate social and cultural capital because of the low-skilled factory work they are employed in and because of Japanese immigration laws limiting their period of stay. Germany, having contracted thousands of ‘guest workers’ from Turkey since the 1960s, has failed to provide any useful training for this group to enable them to acquire new

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skills; the same applies to Thailand, the Gulf States (with regard to migrant workers from Southeast Asia), or the US (with regard to migrant workers from the Central Americas) (Agunias 2006). Conversely, it is also true that home-countries which are not prepared for the return of their diasporas and fail to develop return policies, produce unemployment and underemployment among their returnees (see Agunias (2006) for the Indian state of Kerala and Mahmood (1995) for Bangladesh). As Naudé (2007) has pointed out, only if governments succeed in creating the conditions for returnee enterprises to grow in such a way that they offer employment, can returnee entrepreneurship contribute to development. Unless the average firm size is increased and, at the same time, the decline of the number of micro and small businesses is accelerated, returnee entrepreneurship will remain a source of mere survival. The critical role that home-country governments play in facilitating not only the return of skilled migrants but also of their business start-ups as a part of the return process, is aptly illustrated by the Indian case. The Indian government encourages the return of high-skilled ICT specialists by offering attractive conditions for business start-ups and for employment in companies and educational institutions, in order to tap into the knowledge and skills of these people to advance India’s industries and level of education (Newland 2004). This strategy is supported by layoffs of Indian knowledge workers in other parts of the world due to economic fluctuations, which generates a pool of circular migrants that feeds back into Indian society. Although their return is often generated by failure, Indian returnees are injecting a wide range of cultural capital into their home-country’s economy, including certified managerial, marketing, and technical expertise. Moreover, these returnees also offer social capital in the form of transnational network linkages. The employment of Indian information-technology professionals in the US computer industry has resulted in the buildup of linkages between US and Indian high-tech firms. At the same time, both returnees and local entrepreneurs enter into collaboration and networking relations and begin to establish a technical and/or professional community which extends across the boundaries of large multinational and small- and medium-sized enterprises and across international borders. This suggests that, although globally connected, Indian returnee businesses have become sufficiently grounded and localized that they can be regarded as an expression of ‘institutional thickness,’ signaling a measure of embeddedness in Indian society (Parthasarathy and Aoyama 2006). Even more than the Indian government, the Taiwanese state represents an example of good practice when it comes to building a sound institutional environment for reverse migration. In the 1990s, Taiwanese emigrants started to return to their homeland, encouraged by supportive government measures such as travel subsidies, attractive employments opportunities, business investment assistance, and recruitment programs. In addition to a welcoming policy at home, the government capitalized on the social capital of both its diaspora and returnees. The government established a database that tracked skilled migrants and matched them with job opportunities in

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Taiwan; systematically invited scientists, professionals, and highly skilled technicians back to Taiwan to teach and to network with Taiwanese counterparts, officials, and investors (establishing ‘brain trust’); sponsored national development conferences to bring many overseas Taiwanese, at the government’s expense, to participate and contribute to the formation of multinational networks oriented towards building Taiwan’s business and technological advantages (Chang 1992; Iredale and Fei Guo 2001; Newland 2004). In short, the Taiwanese government has courted its diaspora as a comprehensive source of social and cultural capital that has been strategically employed to support the development of homegrown knowledgebased industries.

4.3 Opportunities and Threats of Returnee Capital Investments The long-standing engagement of diaspora communities in their countries and communities of origin produces significant flows of economic capital, networks of social capital, knowledge and technology, and cultural capital in the form of education and certified skills. Increasing numbers of returnees enhance this engagement even more. The cases of India, Taiwan, and China are examples of good practices in how home-country policies can tap into the often huge capital resources provided by diaspora. These governments offer incentives to returning diaspora that are conducive to entrepreneurship and investments, such as tax holidays, attractive housing, or a supportive business environment such as in business park settings (Chang 1992; Hsu 2002; Ma 2002; Zweig, Chung, and Vanhonacker 2005a; Zweig et al. 2005b). The line of reasoning that these governments apply is that returnees’ capital investments beyond remittances fuel innovations in their home-country and contribute to an entrepreneurial climate. Their social capital investments may create liaisons with institutions and private companies in returnees’ host-countries that can contribute to development in their home-countries. The Indian information-technology sector obtained access to US companies via Indian returnees bringing those contacts back to India (Saxenian 2002). Cultural capital investments tap in on the (certified) knowledge, skills, and expertise available among members of diaspora communities. Well-educated returnees come with diplomas issued by prestigious foreign institutes of higher education and may broker access to these institutes for talented people in their home-country. One may argue that these forms of capital investments accrue to entrepreneurial capital consisting of the built-up business assets, and that the experience of diaspora members proves extremely valuable to (re)building a thriving business community in the home-country. Life in diaspora implies far-reaching changes in the migrants’ lifestyles: occupational diversity and exposure to new value systems may result in reluctance to take up their previous lives once they return. New occupations developed in diaspora may yield greater returns than previous economic activities

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(Kibreab 1999). Entrepreneurship may be among these new occupations. The assumption that the majority of the returnees would want to return to their previous occupations and lifestyles disregards the considerable degree of social and economic transformation the refugees experience while living under diasporic conditions (Kibreab 1999). The occurrence of small-scale entrepreneurship among diaspora has also been documented among Guatemalan refugees living in Mexico across the border. Even though they suffered great hardships, they ventured into small business activities as their existence in Mexico improved, compared to their lives in Guatemala. Upon return, women in particular started small home-based shops that allowed them to combine the gender-based household work with earning a little additional money (Stølen n.d.). In other words, life in diaspora often generates agency by necessity. Upon return, this agency may constitute a competitive advantage and be turned into successful business or institutional entrepreneurship. A wide array of case studies shows that returnees provide resources that allow them to jump-start local entrepreneurship and join the elite in their respective communities (Portes, Haller, and L. E. Guarnizo 2002; Saxenian 2002). As has been observed by Kibreab (1999), the well-off and higherskilled returnees in particular engage in diverse forms of entrepreneurship. This category of returnee often sees excellent business opportunities and envisions large profits by bringing information and technology back home. Having access to networks which improve their market position and possessing cultural capital in terms of language proficiency and negotiating skills in foreign business environments means returnees are a powerful force for economic integration in regional and global networks (Yamakawa, Peng, and Deeds 2008). In the long term, they may contribute to modernizing their home-country’s economy through upgrading the quality of domestic and export production (Ma 2002; Murphy 2000). To what extent they also represent a force in terms of social change will be discussed in the next section. However, there are also obstacles and restrictions involved with the availability of diasporic and/or returnee capital, and there are lacunas in our understanding of the impact that the above described capital input has in terms of social change. Return migration of skilled professionals and business people can play a major role in transforming economy and society; but it does not lead or drive change. After all, diaspora consists of private people or private organizations and it is not their first and foremost objective to develop their home-countries. Their motivation is vested in their families, ancestral obligations, and the expectations to find attractive conditions for professional life and business and to make a profit when investing money. As such, (reverse) diaspora by themselves cannot be counted upon as a firm basis for development. If change is under way, then people take a chance (Iredale and Fei Guo 2001). There has to be a certain measure of development first before returnees come to accelerate it. As has been shown in Taiwan, for example, the critical condition for making optimal use of the skills offered by highly educated migrants has been a healthy economy. However,

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there is no clear evidence provided for the claim made by several authors (Chang 1992; Iredale and Fei Guo 2001) that these returnee migrants also had an impact on the gradual democratization of Taiwan. Whereas returnees’ economic impact and social and cultural capital investments can be substantiated, their role in social change is much more difficult to assess. As has been observed by a number of authors, the narrative of innovation of returnees may clash head on with vested interests, conservative value systems, and a great deal of suspicion towards the ‘home-comers’ in the homecountry (Bovenkerk 1974; Flores 2009; Gmelch 1980). Studying the first wave of return migrants from the US to Italy as early as the 1970s, Cerase (1974) pointed out that only a few returnees qualified for the label ‘return of innovation’ and that those innovators soon experienced great difficulties of implementing their entrepreneurial projects due to opposition in their home communities. Those who succeeded in setting up new ventures were sucked into the system of protection and corruption, whereas those who refused to obey the local rules of the game went bankrupt. A more recent example is provided by Hughes (2004) on Cambodian returnees from the US who reentered Cambodia with the mission of democratizing and rebuilding the country in collaboration with external agencies. These returnees have come to establish a separate class, a new transnational elite of mobile people holding dual citizenship (Poethig 2006), who felt superior in their understanding of a post-conflict Cambodian society. As a consequence, Cambodia’s reverse diaspora is encountering more and more opposition from those who had stayed behind and lived through civil war. As these examples illustrate, a coincidence of views between diasporas and their communities of origin cannot be taken for granted. Conversely, diasporas are no homogeneous groups. A diaspora may be located in different host-countries and may consist of groups of people who belong to different social classes, ethnic affiliations, or political parties, which may generate divergent aims for their returns to the home-country. 5

CONCLUSIONS

Returning diaspora bring along their often complex, opaque, and ambivalent economic and political agendas. They may play a crucial role in processes of peacebuilding and democratization in their home-country, or they may rise to power as politicians or administrators capable of leading their home-country into a stable and prosperous future. However, their economic activities may focus on personal profit and accelerate the depletion of natural resources and enhance social injustice. Moreover, if conflict is imminent, diaspora may play a part in fueling disagreement and nourishing political unrest. Returning diaspora may play a leading role in economic transformation. In the cases of India, Taiwan, and mainland China, for example, there is growing integration in patterns of cross-regional collaboration between

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division of the same firm and in two-way flows of technology, capital, knowhow, and information between the home-county and the diverse host-countries of the return migrants. The emerging networks cannot be understood purely as market transactions linking independent firms based on ‘mutual interest.’ Instead, the economic ties are dependent upon a shared culture that fosters openness and cooperation between producers in geographically distant regions. Taiwan’s late-industrializing firms could not only benefit from the institutional embeddedness in state society, but also from transnational embeddedness into the overseas Chinese community. The Taiwan case, as much as the Indian and mainland Chinese cases, shows that shared language and culture do support entrepreneurs in obtaining different forms of capital. But, in contrast to ethnic enclave economies, successful returnee economies are based on professional networks that are both constructed and continually monitored, not on inherited or deep-rooted affective ties. Eventually, the embeddedness in transnational ties is also expected to affect the political culture of the home-countries as may be illustrated by the eventual transformation of the developmental Taiwanese state and by pressures towards reforms of the authoritarian system of mainland China. However, returning diaspora does not structurally carry the seed of social transformation. In his pathbreaking work on Italian returnees from the US, Cerase (1974) identifies one mode of return, the ‘return of innovation,’ as a potential agent of social change. In this mode, return migrants prove themselves capable of agency and creativity that can challenge and change the society to which they return. However, not all returnee entrepreneurship is beneficial to their home-country in terms of development and social change. Cerase (1974) also points out that this ‘return of innovation’ is often annihilated by the ‘power of community,’ which either absorbs entrepreneurial returnees into the prevailing system, neutralizing their potential for change, or exudes them. Cerase’s argument anticipates the caveat issued by Portes and Sensenbrenner (1993) two decades later, pointing out that diasporic social capital may hamper institutional and social change if invested within a context defined by bounded solidarity and enforceable trust. Social capital may either become absorbed into existing power relations and thereby strengthening them, or rejected and hence leading to the disembedding, even displacement, of its bearers. Portes and Sensenbrenner (1993) argue that such ‘bounded solidarity’ may also exert leveling pressures on successful individuals to redistribute wealth instead of reinvesting it in economic ventures. In that case, social capital diminishes the potential for social change. The conclusion from the above literature review is a marked ambivalence of returnees’ involvements in effecting social change (Portes, Haller, and Guarnizo 2002). Future research has to address the transnational conditions both in the hostand home-countries that either turn returnees’ agency into an engine of social change or a resource eagerly absorbed by the established order through the ‘power of community.’

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NOTE 1. I follow the consensus reached among ethnic Chinese scholars about using the term ‘ethnic Chinese’ instead of ‘Chinese diaspora’ or ‘overseas Chinese.’ For a discussion, see Nonini and Ong (1997), Ong (1999), or Suryadinata (1997).

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Flores, J. 2009. The Diaspora Strikes Back. Caribeño Tales of Learning and Turning. New York: Routledge. Gmelch, G. 1980. Return migration. Annual Review of Anthropology 9:135–159. Gold, T., D. Guthrie, and D. Wank, eds. 2002. Social Connections in China. Institutions, Culture, and the Changing Nature of Guanxi. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. Gomez, E. T. 1999. Chinese Business in Malaysia: Accumulation, Accommodation and Ascendance. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press. Gomez, E. T., ed. 2002. Political Business in East Asia. Routledge Politics in Asia series. London: Routledge. Gomez, E. T., and H.-H. M. Hsiao. 2004. Introduction: Chinese business research in Southeast Asia. In Chinese Business in South-East Asia. Contesting Cultural Explanations, Researching Entrepreneurship, edited by. E. T. Gomez, and H.-H. M. Hsiao. Pp. 1–37. London: Routledge. Granovetter, M. (2003), “The economic sociology of firms and entrepreneurs”. In Entrepreneurship. The Social Science View, edited by R. Swedberg. Pp. 244–275. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Hamilton G. G., ed. 1996. Asian Business Networks. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Hamilton, G. G. 2000. Reciprocity and control: the organization of Chinese familyowned conglomerates. In Globalization of Chinese Business Firms, edited by H. W.-Ch. Yeung and K. Olds. Pp. 55–74. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan Press. Higuchi, N. (n.d.). Remittances, investments and social mobility among Bangladeshi and Iranian returnees From Japan. Unpublished paper. Hjorth, D., and B. Bjerke. 2006. Public entrepreneurship: moving from social/ consumer to public/citizen. In Entrepreneurship as Social Change. A Third Movements in Entrepreneurship Book, edited by C. Steyaert and D. Hjort. Pp. 97–120. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Hughes, C. 2004. Democracy, culture and the politics of gate-keeping in Cambodia. The transnation goes home. In State/Nation/Transnation. Perspectives on Transnationalism in the Asia-Pacific, edited by B. S. A. Yeoh and K. Willis. Pp. 197–217. London: Routledge. Hsu J.-Y. 2002. New firm formation and technical upgrading in Taiwan’s hightechnology SMEs: the Hsinchu-Silicon Valley connection. In Petty Capitalists: Flexibility in a Global Economy, edited by A. Smart and J. Smart. Pp. 145–166. New York: State Univ. of New York Press. Ilahi, N. 1999. Return migration and occupational change. Review of Development Economics 3:170–186. Iredale R., and F. Guo. 2001. The Transforming Role of Skilled and Business Returnees: Taiwan, China and Bangladesh. Centre for Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies (CAPSTRNS). Wollongong: University of Wollongong, Australia. Johannisson, B., and C. Wigren. 2006. The dynamics of community identity making in an industrial district: The spirit of Gnosjö revisited. In Entrepreneurship as Social Change. A Third Movements in Entrepreneurship Book, edited by C. Steyaert, and D. Hjort. Pp. 188–209. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Kibreab, G. 1999. The consequences of non-participatory planning: lessons from a livestock provision project to returnees in Eritrea. Journal of Refugee Studies 12(2):135–160. Kilduff, M., and W. Tsai. 2003. Social Networks and Organizations. London: Sage. Levitt, P. 1998. Social remittances: Migration-driven local-level forms of cultural diffusion. International Migration Review 32(4):926–948. Levitt, P. 2001. The Transnational Villagers. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. Ma, Z. 2002. Social-capital mobilization and income returns to entrepreneurship: The case of return migration in rural China. Environment and Planning A 34(10):1763–1784.

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Mahmood, P.A. 1995. Emigration dynamics in Bangladesh. International Migration xxxiii(3/4):699–726. Maimbo, S. M., and D. Ratha, eds. 2005. Remittances. Development Impact and Future Prospects. Washington: The World Bank. Massey, D., and K. Espinosa 1997. What’s driving Mexico-US Migration? A theoretical, empirical, and policy analysis. The American Journal of Sociology 102(4):939–1000. McCormick, B., and J. Wahba. 2001. Overseas work experience, savings and entrepreneurship amongst return migrants to LDCS. Scottish Journal of Political Economy 48(2):164–178. Murphy, R. 2000. Return migration, entrepreneurship and local state corporatism in rural China: The experience of two counties in south Jiangxi. Journal of Contemporary China. 9(24):231–247. Naudé, W. 2007. Peace, Prosperity, and Pro-Growth Entrepreneurship. Discussion paper no. 2007/02, United Nations University-WIDER. Newland, K. 2004. Beyond Remittances: The Role of Diaspora in Poverty Reduction in their Countries of Origin. A Scoping Study by the Migration Policy Institute for the Department of International Development. Washington, D.C.: Migration Policy Institute. Nicholson, B. 2001. From migrant to micro entrepreneur: do-it-yourself development in Albania. South-East Europe Review 3:39–42. O’Connor, E. 2006. Location and relocation, visions and revisions: opportunities for social entrepreneurship. In Entrepreneurship as Social Change. A Third Movements in Entrepreneurship Book, edited by C. Steyaert, and D. Hjort. Pp. 78–96. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Ong, A. 1999. Flexible Citizenship. The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham & London: Dukes Univ. Press. Ong, A., and D. Nonini. 1997. Ungrounded Empires. The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Transnationalism. London: Routledge. Ostergaard-Nielson, E., ed. 2003. International Migration and Sending Countries: Perceptions, Policies and Transnational Relations. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Parthasarathy, B., and Y. Aoyama. 2006. From software services to R&D services: Local entrepreneurship in the software industry in Bangalore, India. Environment and Planning A 38:1269–1285. Poethig, K. 2006. Sitting between two chairs: Cambodia’s dual citizenship debate. In Expressions of Cambodia. The politics of tradition, identity, and change, edited by L. C-P. Ollier and T. Winter. Pp. 73–85. London: Routledge. Portes, A. 1996. Global villagers: The rise of transnational communities. The American Prospect 7(25):1–8. Portes, A., and J. Sensenbrenner 1993. Embeddedness and immigration: notes on the social determinants of economic action. The American Journal of Sociology 98(6):1320–1350. Portes, A., W. Haller, and L. E. Guarnizo. 2002. Transnational entrepreneurs: an alternative form of immigrant economic adaptation. American Sociological Review 67(2):278–298. Putnam, R. D. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon and Schuster. Saxenian, A. 2002. Local and Global Networks of Immigrants in Silicon Valley. San Francisco: Public Policy Institute of California. Sheffer, G., ed. 1986. Modern Diasporas in International Politics. London/Sydney: Croom Helm. Shuval, T. 2000. Diaspora migration: Definitional ambiguities and a theoretical paradigm. International Migration Quarterly Review 38(5):41–55.

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Smith, M.P. & L. E. Guarnizo (eds) (1998) Transnationalism from Below. New Brunswick: Transaction. Steyaert, C., and D. Hjort, eds. 2006. Entrepreneurship as Social Change. A Third Movements in Entrepreneurship Book. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Stølen, K. A. n.d. Constructing the Future: Experiences of Guatemalan Returnees. Digital Library of the Inter-American Initiative on Social Capital, Ethics and Development of the Inter-American Development Bank. www.iadb.org/ethics, accessed March 9, 2008. Suryadinata, L. 1997. Ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia: overseas Chinese, Chinese overseas or Southeast Asians? In Ethnic Chinese as Southeast Asians, edited by L. Suryadinata. Pp. 1–25. Singapore: ISEAS. Swedberg, R. 2006. Social entrepreneurship: the view of the young Schumpeter. In Entrepreneurship as Social Change. A Third Movements in Entrepreneurship Book, edited by C. Steyaert and D. Hjort. Pp. 21–34. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Thomas-Hope, E. 1999. Return migration to Jamaica and its development potential. International Migration 37(1):183–203. Vertovec, S., and R. Cohen, eds. 1999. Migration, Diasporas and Transnationalism. Cheltenham/Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. Van Hear, N. 1998. New Diasporas: the Mass Exodus, Dispersal and Regrouping of Migrant Communities. Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press. Yamakawa, Y., M. W. Peng, and D. L. Deeds. 2008. What drives new ventures to internationalize from emerging to developed economies? Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice 32:59–82. Yeung, H. W.-Ch., and K. Olds, eds. 2000. Globalization of Chinese Business Firms. Pp. 1–30. Houndmills: Macmillan Press. Zweig, D., S. F. Chung, and W. Vanhonacker. 2005a. Rewards of Technology: Explaining China’s Reverse Migration. Paper presented at the conference “People on the Move—The Transnational Flow of Chinese Human Capital,” The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, October 20–22. Zweig, D., W. Vanhonacker, S. F. Fung, and S. Rosen. 2005b. Reverse Migration and Regional Integration: Entrepreneurs and Scientists in the PRC. Paper prepared for the conference “Remaking Economic Strenhgths in East Asia: Dealing with the Repercussions of Increased Interdependence,” Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, April 8–9.

Part II

Transnational Movements

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5

The Translation of Knowledge Across the Atlantic Constructions of the ‘Immigration Problem’ in the Settlement Movement Stefan Köngeter

1

THE SETTLEMENT MOVEMENT IN SOCIAL WORK AND ITS TRANSNATIONAL HISTORY

What makes the Settlement Movement interesting to social work from a present perspective is not just that it is a milestone in the history of social work and has played a crucial role in the development of such diverse fields of action as youth work, adult education, community work, and work with migrants. It is also significant because the settlement model is one of the first conceptual approaches in social work to have been discussed and implemented on an international scale. The movement played a major role in people’s understanding of life in the city areas where the poorest social classes lived, and helped develop new methods of providing support. The assumption at the heart of the movement was that it is not enough to help the poor individually and selectively. Instead, the middle classes were expected to open up to the living conditions of those living in such poor areas, get to know them, and live with them there together as neighbors. It was thought that both sides, rich and poor, would profit from this kind of approach aimed at promoting social cohesion, if it would be possible to establish settlements of educated people in poor quarters. As described by Picht (1913), the poor benefited from the settlement’s middle-class ‘Residents’1 in that they were able to join in with the clubs and educational activities there, whereas the rich were educated ‘morally’ in that they learned about the lives of the poor, which, it was hoped, would help overcome the divide between rich and poor. The first settlement, at Toynbee Hall,2 was founded in 1884 in Whitechapel, a particularly poor area of London, by Samuel and Henrietta Barnett. The couple had already lived there for some time, with Samuel Barnett working as an Anglican priest. Both were in close contact with various welfare organizations (such as the Charity Organization Society) and Oxbridge academics interested in social reform. After a lecture by Samuel Barnett at Oxford University, they decided to establish a settlement of young academics in Whitechapel. The architecture of Toynbee Hall contrasted strongly with the poor neighborhood; the building resembled a typical college in Oxford

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or Cambridge. “Barnett wanted his settlement to be clearly demarcated from the buildings of the surrounding slum, emphasizing cultural differences and serving as a refuge from the unseemly realities of the outside world. His exalted respect for Oxford found expression in the architectural form he chose, just as it influenced his selection of residents” (Abel 1979, 616). Toynbee Hall accommodated up to 22 young male university graduates who stayed there for several months or even years. The working class clientele visited Toynbee Hall only for club meetings, evening classes, or cultural events. At the time, Toynbee Hall sparked widespread interest among many involved in social policy in different national contexts, mainly in the United States, and became a blueprint for numerous other settlements founded in almost every city in the industrialized world. The reason for the project’s success was that the settlements drew large numbers of well-educated, reform-seeking middle-class women and men looking for new answers to the social issues which, at the end of the nineteenth century, were reaching serious, sometimes dramatic proportions as a result of increasing industrialization and urbanization. As a result of the international development of the Settlement Movement, numerous archives and plenty of historical materials can be found demonstrating that various border-crossing activities took place (visits, extended stays, reports, letters, theoretical treatises, etc.) which disseminated both the movement’s philosophical background and the practical methods and experiences of those working at each settlement (Köngeter 2012). Although these records are widely known, historians have until now mainly concentrated on reconstructing the history of settlements within national borders, in Britain and the United States, where the first, most well-known settlements were founded (Barbuto 1999; Carson 1990; Davis 1967; Meacham 1987; Trolander 1987). These analyses show that the settlement houses in the United States, such as Hull House in Chicago or South End House in Boston, differed from the university settlements in Britain in many respects. There were broad variations in the settlement houses’ programs for their neighbors, the regulations for residency, the architectural styles and building facilities, and the perception of social problems, not only between but also within countries. Although there are descriptions of links, visits, and reports between the various actors on either side of the Atlantic, the depictions generally emphasize the national differences between the settlements without analyzing their transnational activities and aspects in greater detail. This nationally restrictive perspective not only hides the heterogeneity which is slowly being understood to have existed among settlements within one country (Crocker 1992, for the USA), it also ignores the practices by which the settlement idea was adapted, transformed, or newly created when it travelled to another city or country. This aspect is investigated in this chapter by using the sociological variant of the term ‘translation’ (e.g. Latour 1986), which emphasizes the ‘collective act of creation’ (Czarniawska 2008, 88) when ideas and knowledge travels across the boundaries of social worlds.

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This analysis of the transnational practices within the Settlement Movement has two objectives. Firstly, it offers a nuanced view of the transnational development of the Settlement Movement and its knowledge production in general. Secondly, it will shed new light on local, regional, and national variations within the Settlement Movement, as transnational analysis always involves investigating at the local level, that is, focusing on the practices by means of which various representatives of the Settlement Movement attempted to establish the idea and its methods in their different social, political, and cultural contexts. This chapter focuses on two aspects of the Settlement Movement. The first focus is on the Canadian Settlement Movement, which has received hardly any attention as yet, especially in an international context. The Canadian settlement advocates adopted approaches and concepts from the Settlement Movements in both Britain and the United States, implementing them in the Canadian context (Irving, Parsons, and Bellamy 1995). This perspective from Canada exemplifies ‘the outskirts’ of the Settlement Movement and thus provides a better view of the above phenomena of adaptation, transformation, or creation, as from such a point of view it is clearer how the settlement approach was ‘mediated’ within local and national contexts. The second focus is on a particular aspect of translating the idea of settlements: I confine my analysis to the importance that was given by the Settlement Movement actors to the meaning of mass labor migration to Canada and the United States at the end of the nineteenth and the start of the twentieth century and how this had an impact on the translation of the Settlement Movement there. This plays an important role in the historiography of social work in general and the Settlement Movement in particular, in that until now it has always been assumed that it was mainly the North American settlements which were influenced by this migration, and that their development was only to be understood in the light of this social determinant. By contrast, I would like to show here that labor migration was one of the central conditions for the emergence and spread of the settlement idea in both Europe and North America. The central focus here is on the years from 1880 to 1914. I use the example of the Canadian settlements to explore the thesis that migration, as a social problem, first had to be constructed as a concept in order to legitimate and finally to establish the settlement approach in this national context. The hypothesis is that the prevalence of the North American settlements was not a reaction to and result of these migratory movements; instead, the settlements were one of the factors behind the construction of the notion of migration as a social problem worthy of social concern. On the basis of a brief theoretical positioning regarding border-crossing knowledge production in social work, I shall first go over how the Settlement Movement was translated into the Canadian context, then focus on the significance of the ‘immigrant problem’ when it came to implementing the settlement approach in Canada before summing up some of the key structural features of that translation process.

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One of the key questions in research on the Settlement Movement has always been why the approach mainly became established in North America and England, but not—at least not to the same extent—in Continental Europe (Gräser 2009). At the height of the Settlement Movement at the start of the twentieth century, George H. Mead argued in his essay “The Social Settlement: Its Basis and Function” that settlements could only gain ground in true democracies: “Neither France, with its layers of society, its social castes, nor Germany, with its fundamental assumption that the control of society must take place from above through highly trained bureaus, have offered favorable soil for the growth of settlements” (Mead 1907–1908, 109). A typical assumption of this analysis is that national contexts more or less determine all domestic social life. This understanding of the nation-state is reminiscent of the ‘methodological nationalism’ which Wimmer and Glick Schiller (2002) see at play in the history of the social sciences as a whole. ‘Methodological nationalism’ deals with the assumption that nation-states are the natural unit and the boundary for social life. Although I do not share Wimmer and Glick Schiller’s radical diagnosis that more or less all major sociological theories and empirical studies suffer from this nationally restricted view, I do argue that a change of perspective is necessary in social work similar to the one taking place in Transnational Studies (Köngeter 2009). In this case, a specific theoretical perspective can be used which differs from that of Transnational Studies when it comes to migration research. Transnational Studies is based on the assumption that there is a need to investigate the continuous border-crossing connections and practices which are shaped, although not determined, by national contexts (Vertovec 2009). There is a focus on border crossings of people and also of ideas, objects, or economic capital. One problem with this definition, however, is that the national context is to a certain extent still seen as invariable: it may not have a determining influence, but it still has an influence. Firstly, this does not do sufficient justice to the fact that nation-states are, ultimately, also social constructions which are reproduced or transformed by the repeated actions of actors (Köngeter 2012). Moreover, it is important that nation-states are seen as a bundle of institutions which relate to and reinforce one another. Sassen (2008), for example, analyses the link between the three central institutions of territory, authority, and rights as ‘assemblages,’ showing that these institutions have been formalized and integrated to different extents across space and time. This work links in with Sassen’s approach in that it does not see the nation-state (with its institutions) as an established fact which frames or even determines the knowledge production process. Instead, national contexts are understood as specific historical and geographical assemblages

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linked to knowledge production processes. By these knowledge production processes, national assemblages are interpreted in different ways and can thus be transformed. Knowledge production processes of this kind are defined as transnational when they create a relationship between two or more nation-states (in the form of a multilayered process) and are among the factors affecting the reproduction and transformation of those nationstates. The central point of this perspective is that nation-states are not seen as static constructions but are understood as the result of social practices through which they are constantly recreated and transformed as ‘imagined communities’ (Anderson 1983) and assemblages of institutions. A theoretical perspective on transnational knowledge structured in this way shifts the nation-state from its position as an independent variable into that of a dependent variable, turning it from an explanans into an explanandum. Knowledge is not national per se but takes on a national quality as a result of social practices. For this reason, in social work, and in this case settlement work, knowledge is not understood from the outset as having national connotations or being nationally determined; indeed, the discussion is no longer about any one specific Settlement Movement, such as the British or the American movement. And visits to settlements from other countries, or reports and letters about such settlements, are not in themselves transnational practices. They only become transnational when border-crossing and the connection to a certain nation-state are brought up as a subject. When knowledge crosses borders in this way, it involves translation processes (Callon 1986). In other words, knowledge from new social contexts is placed in relation to an existing pool of knowledge; during this process, however, the border-crossing knowledge does not remain unchanged. Czarniawska (2008, 88) begins with the premise that when ‘travelling ideas’ meet ‘ideas in residence,’ ‘frictions’ are created. These frictions are viewed as an ‘energizing clash,’ setting off processes which can be seen as ‘translation’ in the sense of a collective act of the recreation of meaning. In this respect, transnational knowledge production does not just mean that actors from different countries produce knowledge together, as is the case with, for example, a transnational movement such as the Occupy Movement. Instead, this term additionally emphasizes the translation of knowledge about settlements from the United States into the Canadian context (Köngeter 2012). Knowledge (both in the sense of the ‘travelling ideas’ and the ‘ideas in residence’) does not remain the same but is reproduced in a new form as a result of border-crossing through an ‘energizing clash.’ 3 THE TRANSNATIONAL TRANSLATION OF THE SETTLEMENT MOVEMENT IN CANADA The Settlement Movement and its ideas and concepts were established in Canada relatively late from an international point of view. This is surprising,

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because many Canadians maintained very close political, cultural, and academic links to Britain, where the first settlement was founded as early as 1884, and also because the settlement approach spread very quickly through all the major cities in the neighboring United States starting in 1889. In Canada, Toronto was one of the key starting points for the movement. The first settlement in Toronto was Evangelia House, a religious house founded by Sara Libby Carson in 1902. Although Evangelia was the first settlement, the institutions which were to be the driving force behind the Settlement Movement in Toronto were the later established University Settlement (1910), Central Neighbourhood House (1911), and St. Christopher House (1912), as well as the Memorial Institute (1912) (Irving et al., 1995). For an investigation into transnational knowledge production, the history of the Presbyterian settlement, St. Christopher House, proves especially interesting for three reasons. Firstly, the support of the Presbyterian Church, which founded this settlement and four others in Canada, lent further weight to the Settlement Movement, as it set an example for other churches in Canada, and its members included some highly influential Canadian politicians and social reformists, such as William L. MacKenzie King, later a longserving prime minister. Secondly, St. Christopher House acted explicitly as a model and training center for the other Presbyterian settlement houses and workers in Canada. Thirdly, the Presbyterian advocates of the settlement approach drew upon various approaches from the Settlement Movement in Britain and the United States. Thus, not only the Presbyterian reception of the settlement approach, but also the history of the settlement’s founding are impressive examples of the translation process involved in this kind of transnational dissemination of knowledge.

3.1

The Beginnings in England

The historiography of the Settlement Movement (Davis 1967; Meacham 1987; Woodroofe 1962) has shown that one of the movement’s central starting points was British social segregation, an issue which had always been considered problematic and whose effects were mainly felt in London, the industrial heart of the country, in the form of strictly separated city districts. This led to descriptions of the living conditions of the working class which sometimes took on a dramatic character focusing on neglected children or a series of murders by Jack the Ripper (Keating 1973). Around England’s tradition-steeped universities of Cambridge and Oxford, initiatives sprang up to make their resources available to the poor. At the same time, there was a sharp increase in interest in life in these poor districts. Known as slums, the areas were discovered by various members of the middle class (Ross 2007), trying to gain a deeper understanding of how poor people lived their lives, some through occasionally sensation-seeking observations, but others through a serious interest in getting to know the slum’s inhabitants (Davis 1967).

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These different ideas and initiatives culminated in the founding of the first settlement, Toynbee Hall. One of the founding documents of the Settlement Movement, a speech by Samuel Barnett given to a group of young men at St. John’s College, Oxford, in 1883, sets out clearly the link between social criticism and the social work typical of the Settlement Movement: Many have been the schemes of reform I have known, but, out of eleven years’ experience, I would say that none touches the root of the evil which does not bring helper and helped into friendly relations. (. . .) Not until the habits of the rich are changed, and they are again content to breathe the same air and walk the same streets as the poor, will East London be “saved.” Meantime a Settlement of University men will do a little to remove the inequalities of life, as the settlers share their best with the poor and learn through feeling how they live. (Barnett and Barnett 1915, 104) This quote brings up some of the key notions which significantly shaped the settlement approach. First of all, attention should be drawn to the term ‘friendly relations,’ used to describe the aim of causing a fundamental change in the relationship between rich and poor. The rich and poor were no longer to see themselves or interact as the helper and the helped (as was structurally the case in individual almsgiving) or as enemies, when the rich felt threatened by the poor, but were intended to connect at the same level, as neighbors. Second, the settlement approach was explicitly not aimed only at the poor and their deprived living situation, but was designed to change the attitudes of the rich. The inclusion of middle-class Oxbridge students, in particular, was intended to promote reconciliation between the poor and the rich, and to overcome class differences. Third, the passage indicates that although there was a Christian motivation behind the settlement idea, the form it took in the end was secular and thus did not aim to convert the poor to a Christian lifestyle but to fight inequality between the poor and the rich. Finally, the quote implicitly suggests that an important change was taking place in the gendered division of labor which had been taken for granted in the nineteenth century. Although until then social work had largely been in the hands of women, it was male students from Oxford and Cambridge who were expected to reside in the settlements. This approach, of creating awareness of social issues among Britain’s future elite, was linked to the goal of catalyzing a reform in social relations.

3.2 First Protestant Translations of the Settlement Approach in Canada The members of the Presbyterian Church were one of the first groups in Canada to engage intensively with the Settlement Movement. The first description of the idea of settlement work in Canada came early on, in 1889,

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from James A. Macdonald, an influential Presbyterian minister and publicist. This was just five years after Toynbee Hall had opened in England. His report on Toynbee Hall and Whitechapel provides some initial information and interpretations of the settlement approach in Canada and indicates how the Presbyterian supporters of the Settlement Movement understood and interpreted that approach. Macdonald was also a member of the Social Gospel movement. The social gospellers were Protestant Christians who no longer saw the social developments at the end of the nineteenth century (industrialization and urbanization) as a challenge for the individual. Instead, they believed that social concepts and institutions needed to be developed to combat these developments (Allen 1975). The ideas of this liberal group, which were motivated by religious missionary zeal, came, above all, from the idealism being taught in England, which had rapidly gained ground in the Canadian province of Ontario thanks to the close links which many clergy and academics there had to Britain (Fraser 1988). Macdonald’s report on London’s East End reproduces typical images of the slums of the kind which had been prevalent in London, especially since the mid-nineteenth century. At the start of his essay, he points out that it was almost impossible to distinguish between fact and fiction when it came to East London and its districts which, at the time, were a kind of mythologized landscape with overcrowded houses, prostitutes, and street violence, their reputation lastingly affected by the series of murders by Jack the Ripper (Ginn 2006; Ross 2007). Yet although he was aware of this mythological quality, he himself perpetuated it: During the past winter I spent several weeks in the great city, and took many a long journey, by day and by night, into its wilds, guided by the blazed trees, or following the footprints of those who had been there before. Sometimes I wandered into territories with which civilized world has made no treaty of peace. (Macdonald 1889, 18) Macdonald’s report combines popular motifs and typical social constructions about London’s East End: first he constructs an image of the wilds, made effective by contrasting terms such as ‘civilization’ or ‘peace,’ then there is a territorialization of those uncivilized areas as he describes his long journeys of exploration, and, finally, he puts himself in the role of an adventurer, even daring to enter such supposedly uncivilized territories at night. After reporting on his own experiences in East London, in the second part he goes into the foundation of Toynbee Hall, mainly restricting his description, however, to the philosophical roots of the Settlement Movement and only touching on the settlement’s work. In dwelling on the sharply territorially delimited wilds of East London at the start of his report and later in his description of the work done at Toynbee Hall, but continuing to gloss over the divide between the rich and poor and associated diverging social forces,

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Macdonald thus reduces Toynbee Hall to an educational establishment for the uncivilized poor. As a consequence, Macdonald’s report does not really spread the central messages of the Barnetts, who founded the settlement. Rather, he gives his Canadian readers the pleasantly thrilling feeling that East London is an uncivilized place full of uneducated, potentially dangerous people, but fortunately a long way away and having little in common with Canada, which, at the time, was largely rural and agricultural. At the end of his report, Macdonald brings up an aspect of the settlement approach which he initially found very confusing: he admits that at first he was puzzled by Toynbee Hall’s secularism. However, he explains, his visit brought home to him the fact that this reserved attitude towards missionary activities was justified, as the workers and poor people openly rejected the messages of the Church. Nevertheless, he believed that Toynbee Hall’s secular approach must have religious motives in some ways, as only the Christian faith could prevent a person from going mad in view of the extent of the poverty and sin in those districts. However he finishes with these doubting, almost despairing words: But it is sad, unspeakably sad, to think that we have so far lost the spirit of Christ that in order to win the outcast Magdalenes to a better life we must ever be silent concerning the deepest truths in our own souls. (Macdonald 1889, 24) Macdonald’s report reflects a pervasive skepticism in Protestant-dominated Canada, and above all in the Presbyterian Church, regarding the secular approaches used by the emerging social services, of which Toynbee Hall was an important example at the time. The report thus shows that it was not only because industrialization and urbanization started later in Canada, as Irving and colleagues (1995) assume, that Canada was a latecomer to the Settlement Movement, but it was also because the churches in Protestant Canada had until then mainly carried out their work in poor city areas at city missions. These social centers, with their missionary zeal, prefigured the translation of the settlement concept to the social and cultural context of Toronto. As this concept focused on the relationship between the rich and poor, and above all the ignorance of the middle class, this evoked the impression in Canada that settlements were more or less secular missions: establishments for poor people who had lost their religious ties. Accordingly, Canadian readers were not able to see the difference between them and the city missions which were so commonplace in Canada: Why should settlements be founded here when settlements (so they thought) did the same work but without having a Christian focus or being integrated into the Church? Macdonald’s report thus failed to make people aware of both the social problems resulting from industrialization and urbanization, and the need, advocated by the Barnetts, for changes in attitudes and approaches to poverty among the rich and the middle class.

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This translation of the Settlement Movement into the Canadian context changed little as a result of further reports. For instance, over the twenty years that followed, there were regular reports in Presbyterian newspapers about settlements such as Hull House, founded in 1889 in Chicago by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr. In his 1897 essay “The Story of Hull House,” William L. Mackenzie King initially spoke favorably of the settlement work there, but five years later at the Canadian Conference of Charities and Corrections, he came to the conclusion that there was no need to consider establishing settlements of this kind in Canada (Mackenzie King 1902). Other reports on the settlement approach follow a similar pattern in that they tackled the question of whether and to what extent the Church should become involved in this emerging field of social work, and what role Christian beliefs should play in this (Jordan, 1908; Knox, 1904; Melville, 1899; Symons, 1897). 4

THE IMPACT OF MIGRATION ON THE SETTLEMENT APPROACH

The historiography of the Settlement Movement distinguishes, as if this was the natural course of things, between the British tradition of settlements which materialized at Toynbee Hall, and their American counterparts, epitomized by Hull House in Chicago. Whereas Toynbee Hall mainly dealt with the divide between the rich and poor, Hull House was said to work on the ethnic differences resulting from the many waves of migration into American cities, as was the case in Chicago (see for instance, Davis 1967, 16). There is an implicit assumption here that the national context (Britain/ USA) must causally determine, or at least affect the development of, the respective trends in the Settlement Movement. However, this point of view, which verges on methodological nationalism (Wimmer and Glick Schiller, 2002), ignores both the variations within the Settlement Movement in the United States (Crocker 1992) and the active construction work carried out by the actors in each specific location of the Settlement Movement. Moreover, examining the widespread waves of migration which took place in the nineteenth century disputes the claim that only the United States had to deal with migrants. Importantly, this hypothesis ignores the fact that industrialization and urbanization (the two key problems which catalyzed the development of the settlement approach) involved huge influxes of migrants wherever they took place.3 Increasing industrialization with its extreme demand for labor, on the one hand, and the release of peasants from serfdom, putting them in an increasingly precarious economic position, on the other, caused large swathes of the population to move into the cities, a process which included cross-border, rural-urban migration even then. Britain led the Industrial Revolution and, at the turn of the century, London, with nine million inhabitants, was by far the largest urban agglomeration in the world. Droves of

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workers (especially the many freed serfs) poured in from Ireland and Continental Europe, with many Jewish immigrants coming from Russia, Poland, and Romania to escape anti-Semitic persecution (Sassen 1996). However, although these migratory movements received significant attention among contemporary social issues and they reinforced the social divide, ethnic and religious differences were far from being at the heart of the concept or the thoughts of the Settlement Movement. Samuel and Henrietta Barnett (1915) do not mention migration beyond the fact that Whitechapel was a district where Jewish migrants from Russia and Irish workers lived, and Werner Picht (1913) does not venture any further with this topic but to make a comment that about 100,000 Jews lived in London’s East End at the turn of the century. By contrast, the phenomenon of migration plays a different role at American settlements, as is clearly shown by the example of the Neighborhood Improvement panel at the National Conference of Charities and Corrections in 1904 (Gräser 2009). Graham Taylor, the founder of the Chicago Commons, one of the most well-known settlements in Chicago apart from Hull House, pointed out the national relevance and challenge of the large waves of immigrants: Nothing less than the re-discovery of the America that is to be, is demanded by the bewildering cosmopolitanism of large masses of our population. (. . .) To initiate a renaissance of neighborship, (. . .) has become as insistent as the instinct of self preservation. Anyone who doubts it has probably never experienced the shock given the neighborhood by an Irish wash falling into an Italian tomato catsup from a broken clothes line in a tenement court! (Taylor 1904, 487) Jane Addams and her co-residents at Hull House agreed with this diagnosis, meaning that Hull House and other settlements such as the Chicago Commons mentioned above were no longer understood as focusing on bringing together the rich and the poor. Instead they were to promote social reform to create (or recreate) national unity. As a progressive reformer, Addams saw this distinction between the ‘educated’ and the ‘poor’ as no longer appropriate to describe the social constellation of the kind then found in the United States, with its many immigrants: We do not like to acknowledge that Americans are divided into “two nations” as her prime minister once admitted of England.4 We are not willing, openly and professedly, to assume that American citizens are broken up into classes, even if we make that assumption the preface to a plea that the superior class has duties to the inferior. Our democracy is still our most precious possession, and we do well to resent any inroads upon it, even although they may be made in the name of philanthropy. (Addams 1899, 323)

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However, although Addams did not accept this problematic construction of a sharp class divide for the United States, this does not mean that Hull House saw socioeconomic problems only as cultural conflicts between the different groups of migrants, as claimed by Lissak (1989).5 Instead, Hull House picked up on the link between ethnocultural and socioeconomic differences, for example, by problematizing the fact that labor migrants involved in the sweating system had no time to gain an education and were thus highly dependent on a few employers from their own ethnic background (Kelley 1895). This contradicts Davis’ assumption that the large number of immigrants led the settlements in the United States to change the Toynbee Hall model. In fact it is the way in which the Settlement Movement protagonists constructed the immigrant problem which determined how the residents of Whitechapel in London (Toynbee Hall) or the 19th Ward in Chicago (Hull House) were perceived and how their living situations were interpreted.

4.1 The Construction of the Immigration Problem in Canada Canadians at the turn of the century closely observed the social developments in the large cities of the United States and the approaches taken by the welfare state to solve those problems, such as the Settlement Movement. The close connections between the social gospellers in the Protestant churches of the United States and Canada were of particular significance in this respect (Hareven 1969). However, the development of religious life in the United States was by no means a ‘shining example’ to Canadian observers. In a report on three settlements in Chicago, for example, Knox (1904) registered with concern over the fact that, in the large cities of the United States, the Church was withdrawing ever further from hotbeds of social deprivation (“have withdrawn from the hottest of the fight”) and making itself cosy in suburban districts with a middle-class population. At the time, Knox still believed that the Canadian churches, with their social engagement in the form of missions and brotherhoods, could do better than their southern neighbors. However, he and his fellow Presbyterian campaigners revised their opinion, as migration from Europe to North America increasingly became a problem in Canada also. Knox was a founding member of the Presbyterian Church’s Moral and Social Reform Board (M&SRB)6, commissioned in 1907 by the most powerful body in the Canadian Presbyterian Church, the General Assembly. The central task of this board was to study “the moral and social problems confronting our people in the different provinces” (Presbyterian Church in Canada 1907, 56). These problems included gambling, prostitution, corruption, Sabbath observance, and temperance. From the very start, the M&SRB attacked these issues on a broad front, using its close connections to the government in Ottawa to exert the influence of the Presbyterian Church at the federal level.

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Yet the settlement approach was not seen as a key solution, even at the outset of the committee’s work. As Knox’s argument above shows, the secular approach remained a thorn in the side of the Canadian social gospellers. They believed that the Church needed to face up to these new social challenges: to them, leaving such work to the settlements seemed the wrong path. They were, moreover, of the opinion that the social situation in Canada was (then) very different than that of London or US cities. But even in Canada, social change was increasingly a subject of debate, meaning that even the M&SRB was increasingly forced to deal with the ramifications of the Industrial Revolution and urbanization (known as ‘the problem of the city’). In a letter to the Secretary General of the Board, Rev. John G. Shearer, on 3 September 1909, Knox implicitly criticized the fragmented efforts made until then and proposed that they should play a greater role in downtown relief work. It took until 24 March 1910 for the M&SRB to discuss this criticism, as “The problem of the foreigners in our cities and the downtown conditions in general.” At this meeting, Knox once again painted a dismal picture of Canadian cities, their rapid growth and, above all, the overpopulation (‘congestion’) of the downtown areas by migrants of various nationalities. Eventually the board decided to form a working group to analyze the situation of Canadian cities in more detail and explore suitable ways of solving the problem. The results of these investigations then went into a report which was accepted by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada in 1911. This report started out with the dramatic words: There is a problem of the city. It is The Problem of the 20th Century. In the United States the problem has gone well-nigh beyond solution. In Canada it is just emerging as one of the most urgent of national questions. If the Church faces the problem now the city can be saved. If the City is saved the country will be saved. (Presbyterian Church in Canada 1911, 267) The report looked into the growth of New York and Chicago, then moved on to that of London, Paris, St. Petersburg, and Tokyo, concentrating on the idea that the “inflowing tide of European immigration (. . .) has resulted in unparallel congestion near the seat of industry, and extreme poverty with all the features of the slum—bad sanitation, high death rate, illiteracy, vice, crime, lawlessness” (Presbyterian Church in Canada 1911, 269). After a brief explanation of why Canadian towns should expect the same growth rates as those found in the United States, the authors studied the population growth taking place at the time in the four main Canadian cities of Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and Winnipeg. Between 1907 and 1911 in particular, growth rates were remarkable: during that period, the population of Toronto increased by 60 percent to 400,000 inhabitants, with

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‘Non-Anglo-Saxons’ said to number 45,000. Despite this number of NonAnglo-Saxons, which does not seem unmanageable by today’s standards, a provocative question was asked: What will be the character of these millions of Canadian city dwellers of the near future? Will it be pagan or Christian? Who will rule these great cities? Grogsellers, gamblers and grafters and their demoralized and enslaved victims? Or a free, enlightened, highly moral Christian electorate? . . . Will these cities resemble the New Jerusalem or be typical of hell? (Presbyterian Church in Canada 1911, 271) This series of rhetorical questions follows two strategies. On one hand, it is used to maintain a clear differentiation from their neighboring country, the United States, which was viewed with mistrust: the situation in Canadian cities was far from being as dramatic as it was south of the border. On the other hand, the questions are strategically designed to suggest worryingly that things could develop along similar lines in the two neighboring countries. The latest figures, now verifiable by social scientists, were used to draw a picture of dramatic developments. The authors of this report were able to draw upon the far-reaching social debate taking place at the time.7 In this way, the protagonists behind the M&SRB constructed a social problem as an issue of national survival, following a similar route to Graham Taylor in his speech above about settlement work with migrants in Chicago, although under different circumstances: the Presbyterian social gospellers from Canada did not see immigrants so much as groups with their own civilizing potential, but more as ‘dangerous foreigners’ (Avery 1979). Such immigrants may have been needed by the Canadian industry (e.g. labor-intensive railroad construction) to support the burgeoning economic development in that sector, but at the same time they were viewed from a sociopolitical point of view as disruptive. In Ontario, especially, with its Protestant Anglo-Saxon focus, Catholic migrants from southern Europe were seen as problem cases, as they were deemed impossible to assimilate (Avery 1979). The problem constructed by the members of the M&SRB was based on the levels of economic development which had given Canada an important role in the migratory movements described above. Advancing industrialization was setting huge numbers on the move, linking Europe and North America to form one massive transnational migratory arena (Avery 1979), although with a predetermined structure based on ethnic affiliations. Migratory networks formed, and within these certain ‘brokers’8 (both individuals and organizations) wielded great power, both over the migrants themselves and over the industrial sectors which relied on the supply of large numbers of migrants for their labor markets. The problem described by the Canadian Presbyterians was thus clearly distinct from the attitudes of Addams, a liberal progressive, and other protagonists of the Settlement Movement. Although they, too, believed in the

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prevalence of the American idea of ‘one out of many’ (E pluribus unum)9 and that America would be a nation-state shaped by Anglo-Saxon culture, they also recognized, along with the Chicago School (J. Dewey, W. I. Thomas), that the various ethnic groups were able to play a valuable part in the American ideal (Lissak 1989). Most Presbyterian settlement advocates were distrustful of this kind of progressive liberal idea. They adhered to the hypothesis, which was also widespread in the United States, that North America should preserve Anglo-Saxon political and cultural traditions and protect itself against other influences. It is precisely this which is the source of their sharply delimited problem construction: whether Canada and its cities were to be controlled by migrant heathens or Anglo-Saxon Christians. And this was the key to convincing the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada that new approaches were required in the field of city social work.

4.2

Establishment of the Settlement Approach in Canada

It was not until this newly created set of problems and the way they were constructed appeared that the settlement approach, previously viewed with interest but also with distrust, became acceptable to the majority in the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Until then, the Presbyterian Church (and its sister denominations, the Methodists and the Congregationalists) invested its energy in extending its missions to the impoverished downtown areas of large cities. The situation downtown, described in dramatic terms, eventually persuaded the Presbyterian General Assembly to take the ‘immigration problem’ (MacBeth 1907) in Canadian cities more seriously and no longer to trust in classic downtown missions alone. However, in the Presbyterian Church context in Canada, the settlement idea was modified in one crucial respect: “What is contemplated is a Church Settlement, not only to carry on the ordinary activities of a ‘settlement’, but also a positive, definite, aggressive, evangelical, evangelistic propaganda” (M&SRB, ‘Executive Minutes’, Nov. 16, 1910). In other words, the Board was deliberately distancing itself from the settlement approach used at Hull House in Chicago, which was explicitly conceived as a ‘social settlement’: The Social Settlement seeks to humanize and civilize; this is good, but it is not enough for our purposes. We must seek not merely to humanize and civilize but also definitely to Christianize. The Church must tackle this down-town problem as a Church. We are going into this work not merely inspired by a thin, sentimental humanism, but because we are Christian people who seek the advancement of Christ’s Kingdom and the saving of men’s lives. (M&SRB, ‘Executive Minutes’, Nov. 16, 1910) The construction of the ‘problem of the city’ and the ‘immigrant problem’ and the transformation of the settlement idea as ultimately expressed

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in the creation of the new term ‘church settlement,’ turned out to be central instruments in the settlement model which finally became established in Canada, in one of the country’s most important religious groups in 1911. It culminated in St. Christopher House being opened in 1912 in an area that is nowadays known as Kensington market, a Toronto district which, at the time, was mainly populated by Jewish migrants, as the first of what were to be five Presbyterian settlements in Canada. An American, Sara Libby Carson, was persuaded to become involved in implementing the idea of founding settlements throughout Canada.10 Along with the first Head Worker11 of the house, Helen Hart,12 she established St. Christopher House as a central actor in Toronto’s emerging social work environment, a field which developed rapidly from 1912 onwards. St. Christopher House became a training centre for all the Presbyterian settlements in Canada and eventually also for the University of Toronto’s School of Social Service (later, Faculty of Social Work), founded in 1914. However, even though St. Christopher House was a Presbyterian Church settlement until the 1930s, the settlement workers there did not pursue missionary strategies in a strict sense. On the contrary, the memoirs of the secondin-charge Head Worker, Ethel Dodds Parker, show that St. Christopher was under permanent pressure to exaggerate its Christian activities in its annual and monthly reports to retain the financial support of the Presbyterian Church. She writes: These reports went first to the Presbytery, and then to the Home Mission Board. At each stopping place, they were shortened by what ‘someone’ thought best to cut back. Also, if there were the slightest mention in our report of a minister’s visit or a Christmas service, these items were blown up out of all proportion to their significance. (Dodds Parker 1973, 35)13 5

THE TRANSNATIONAL TRANSLATION OF THE SETTLEMENT MOVEMENT—SUMMARY

The history of the development of the Settlement Movement in Canada in 1880 and 1914 shows that knowledge in social work does not cross national borders unchanged, as is suggested by the frequently and innocently used term ‘knowledge transfer’. Instead, by analyzing the involvement of the Presbyterian Church in the Settlement Movement in Canada, it can be seen that, during these border-crossing processes, knowledge underwent complex transformation processes. The knowledge about the Settlement Movement coming from overseas to Canada was a striking factor for those advocating reform in Canada to promote the establishment of settlement houses in Canada. By connecting the knowledge from abroad with the local knowledge of important social welfare activists in the Canadian cities, Presbyterian social gospellers facilitated the transnationalization of settlement work. The case described above exemplifies the importance of

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achieving suitable knowledge translations which enhanced the agency of settlement activists at the time.

5.1

Translation of Knowledge

These transformation processes can be understood as translation processes which cannot be evaluated using categories such as right/wrong or successful/ unsuccessful; instead, translation processes take place between socially, culturally, and religiously different social worlds (Strauss 1993), with multiple actors simultaneously involved in a collective act of creation (Czarniawska 2008). The history of the movement’s reception by the Canadian Presbyterian settlement actors is a good example of this. The delayed start to the Canadian Settlement Movement cannot be, or cannot only be, explained by the fact that industrialization and urbanization started later in Canada’s cities. It is also due to the different patterns of perception and interpretation of problematic social situations and the way they were dealt with by the Canadian Presbyterians, which led to their long hesitation before following the example of the settlement approaches from Britain and the United States. The analysis of the reception of the settlement approach by the Presbyterian Church shows that these transnational translations are characterized by a certain selectivity of the knowledge on settlement work. This creative character of the transnational knowledge production can only be recognized from a point of view which is not mired in methodological nationalism. Thus, the example of the Canadian Presbyterian reception of the settlement approach shows that the Settlement Movement’s lack of a religious character in its country of origin played a very significant role for the Canadian Presbyterians who eventually came to advocate it, as this long stood in the way of the Church becoming involved in this movement. Although settlement approaches from the United States, which can generally be described as more progressive and liberal (such as Jane Addams’s Hull House), were accepted, they were also sometimes used as a negative point of reference for developing their own settlement approach in Canada. At the same time, settlements of a religious nature and their representatives received a warm welcome once established in Toronto. The best example of this is the significant role played by the American supervisor, Sara Libby Carson, in the establishment of the Canadian settlements. A transnational analysis thus breaks with the tendency towards homogenization which is found in the existing historiography of the Settlement Movement (Crocker 1992), revealing the movement’s heterogeneity and the many examples of links of a selective nature between one country and another.

5.2

Constructing a Matching Problem and Solution

For social work especially, the analysis above shows that translating the link between the problem and the proposed solution seems to be crucially

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important. Translated knowledge is only capable of going transnational when the translators of knowledge convincingly construct both a relevant problem and a specific conceptual approach designed to solve that problem. One of the central reference points for the settlement approach’s eventual successful establishment in Canada was the problematization of the movements of migrant communities to North America. The differential significance of migration at Toynbee Hall in London, Hull House in Chicago, and St. Christopher House in Toronto show that not every kind of migration was discussed as ‘migration’ or formulated as a problem. Toynbee Hall was located in a district characterized by its Jewish residents’ experience of migration, but the settlement hardly picked up on the topic. Another example is the many British migrants to Canada who maintained close transnational connections to their homeland. They, too, were not seen in Canada as ‘migrants with close transnational links.’ On the contrary, Canada was understood as part of the dominating Anglo-Saxon world. It was only the migration of Europeans with different religious, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds which led to the construction of the ‘immigration problem,’ with the United States providing the crucial point of comparison. The Canadian Presbyterians’ detailed knowledge of developments in American cities, coupled with a wave of immigration that was increasingly being seen as a problem in Canada, made it possible to construct this as a ‘problem’ and to establish the settlement approach as a relevant solution within the Presbyterian Church.

5.3 The Paradoxical Imagined Concept of a National Context As we know, nation-states are ‘imagined communities’ (Anderson, 1983). This imagined concept is produced not only within a nation-state, but also through confrontation with and disassociation from others. To use James Cooley’s metaphor of the ‘looking-glass-self,’ at the turn of the twentieth century, Canada defined itself both in terms of its ideological proximity to Britain and by setting itself apart from the United States. In this respect, national categories and structures play a crucial role in the transnationalization of knowledge. At the same time they add a socioemotional hue to the knowledge in question. The dramatic descriptions of social developments in the United States were highly persuasive as Canada saw itself as being in a similar situation, as an immigration country, but at the same time wanted to distinguish itself ideologically and politically from its southern neighbor. The topic of migration was especially suitable for this purpose, as it made people reconsider their own national identity. The ‘immigration problem,’ embedded in the wider ‘problem of the city,’ was strategically constructed by the Presbyterian advocates of the settlement approach in such a way that

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the issue seemed to be about the survival of Anglo-Saxon civilisation in Canada. The Presbyterian advocates of the settlements saw the approach as an opportunity to achieve their two central aims of Canadianizing and Christianizing the migrants. On the other hand, the Presbyterian social gospellers imagined Canada to be a Protestant nation-state where they themselves, in association with the other Protestant churches, were understood to be in the role of protectors and supporters. The Presbyterians social gospellers thus used their transnationally generated knowledge about the settlements to establish their own approach in Canada, while at the same time using it as an important instrument to maintain Canada as an imagined community. Thus, paradoxically, their transnational knowledge about the Settlement Movement was used, by the process of establishing settlements in Canada, to promote the imagined concept of a Canadian community.

NOTES 1. The term ‘Residents’ describes those who spent time working and living in the settlements. Settlement Houses did not, however, provide accommodations for the poor or homeless. 2. Named after Arnold Toynbee, an English economic historian and a friend of the Barnetts, who was committed to improving the living conditions of the poor and who lived for a short time in the Whitechapel settlement. 3. These waves of migration were still largely unregulated, as it was still almost impossible to supervise national territories in the way they are today (Sassen, 1996). 4. This is a reference to the novel of that name by Benjamin Disraeli (British Prime Minister in 1868 and from 1874 to 1880), condemning the divide between rich and poor in Britain by using an image of ‘two nations’. 5. This can be seen, for example, from the Hull House Maps and Papers (Residents of Hull House, 1895), collected by Florence Kelley. Kelley not only drew maps featuring residents’ nationalities, but also recorded their incomes in charts. 6. Only men were on the Moral and Social Reform Board. These board members had a major influence on decisions in the Presbyterian Church. However, the Presbyterian settlements were later mostly run by women. 7. At the time there was intense discussion on the issue of immigration from Asia to western Canada, and this discussion extended to the Presbyterians, as illustrated in an essay by Rev. MacBeth, another member of the M&SRB, from 1907. In this essay, entitled “The Immigration Problem,” he categorically states, of the Asian migrants: “Generally speaking it must be clear to everyone who studies history as a matter of divine ordering that it has never been part of the providential plan to allow a higher civilization to be overrun by a lower, unless the higher through misuse of privilege and opportunity forfeited its right of control. This has been the direct teaching of the centuries from the beginning. (. . .) We must hold this country for our own race on the ground that we possess a better type of civilization than the Orient and we must see that we keep this civilization of ours on a high level”. (MacBeth 1907, 375) 8. In social network analysis, ‘brokers’ are understood as ‘nodes’ that link two areas of the network which are otherwise not connected.

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9. ‘E pluribus unum’ is a phrase on the seal of the United States. This motto depicts the emergence of the United States as a single nation state out of many states, people, races, etc. 10. Carson underwent training in the Settlement Movement at Christadora House (New York, USA), one of the settlements which had already appeared in a report by ‘The Presbyterian’ in 1899 which placed positive emphasis on its Christian roots (Melville 1899). At the end of the nineteenth century, she was already in close contact with the YWCA in Toronto (James 2001), and in 1902, she founded her own settlement in Toronto, Evangelia House. 11. This was the official name of the role at the time. This position is nowadays called Executive Director. 12. Helen Hart was the then 21-year-old daughter of Dr. Hastings Hart, a pioneer in child and youth welfare in the United States. 13. Unpublished manuscript, Baldwin Room, Toronto Reference Library.

SOURCES AND REFERENCES 1.

Unprinted Sources

Toronto Reference Library, Baldwin Room: Ethel Dodds Parker. Fonds S202. United Church Archives, Toronto: Presbyterian Church in Canada—Board Of Social Service and Evangelism. Fonds Number 124.

2.

Printed Sources

Abel, E. K. 1979. Toynbee Hall. 1894–1914. Social Service Review 53(4):606–632. Addams, J. 1899. A function of the social settlement. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 13(3):33–55. Barnett, H. 1915. The beginnings of Toynbee Hall. In Practicable socialism. New Series, edited by S. A. Barnett and H. Barnett. Pp. 107–122. London: Longmans. Barnett, S. A., and H. Barnett. 1915. Practicable Socialism. New Series. 3rd ed. London: Longmans. Davis, A. F. 1967. Spearheads for reform: the social settlements and the progressive movement, 1890–1914. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. Jordan, L. H. 1908. Institutional churches and social settlements. The Presbyterian (Toronto) IX(Feb. 27):262–264. Kelley, F. 1895. The sweating-system. In Hull-House Maps and Papers: A Presentation of Nationalities and Wages in a Congested District of Chicago together with Comments and Essays on Problems Growing Out of the Social Condition, edited by Residents of Hull House. Pp. 27–48. Boston: Thomas Y Crowell. Knox, W. J. 1904. Settlement work in Chicago. The Presbyterian (Toronto) V(new series)(6):139–141. MacBeth, R. G. 1907. The Immigration Problem. The Presbyterian (Toronto) VIII(New Series)(Nov. 14.):575. Macdonald, J. A. 1889. East London and the Universities’ Settlement. Knox College Monthly 8:17–24. Mackenzie King, W. L. 1902. Social settlements in crowded centres. In Canadian Conference of Charities and Corrections, edited by Canadian Conference of Charities and Corrections. Pp. 15–18. Toronto: Hill Printing. Mead, G. H. 1907–1908. The social settlement: its basis and function. University of Chicago Record 12:108–110.

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Melville, K. 1899. An Eastside settlement. The Westminster: A Paper for the Home 5:429–430. Picht, W 1913. Toynbee Hall und die englische Settlement-Bewegung: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der sozialen Bewegung in England. Tübingen: Mohr. Presbyterian Church in Canada, General Assembly, ed. 1907. The Acts and Proceedings of the Thirty-Third General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Toronto: Murray Publishing. Presbyterian Church in Canada, General Assembly, ed. 1911. The Acts and Proceedings of the Thirty-Seventh General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Toronto: Murray Publishing. Residents of Hull House. 1895. Hull-House Maps and Papers: A Presentation of Nationalities and Wages in a Congested District of Chicago together with Comments and Essays on Problems Growing Out of the Social Condition. Boston: Thomas Y. Crowell. Symons, H. 1897. Social settlements. The Westminster: A Paper for the Home 3:20–21. Taylor, G. 1904. Developments in Municipal Activities Tending to Neighborhood Improvement. Proceedings of the National Conference on Charities and Corrections 1904:486–495.

3. Literature After 1930 Allen, R. 1975. The Social Gospel in Canada. Ottawa: National Museums of Canada. Anderson, B. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso Ed. Avery, D. 1979. “Dangerous Foreigners.” European Immigrant Workers and Labour Radicalism in Canada, 1896–1932, Canadian Social History Series. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. Barbuto, D. M. 1999. American Settlement Houses and Progressive Social Reform: An Encyclopedia of The American Settlement Movement. Phoenix, Ariz.: Oryx Press. Callon, M. 1986. Some elements of a sociology of translation: domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St Brieuc Bay. In Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge, edited by J. Law. Pp. 196–223. London: Routledge. Carson, M. J. 1990. Settlement Folk: Social Thought and the American Settlement Movement, 1885–1930. Chicago, Ill.: Univ. of Chicago Press. Crocker, R. H. 1992. Social Work and Social Order: The Settlement Movement in Two Industrial Cities, 1889–1930. Urbana [u.a.]: Univ. of Illinois Press. Czarniawska, B. 2008. A Theory of Organizing. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. Fraser, B. J. 1988. Social Uplifters: Presbyterian Progressives and the Social Gospel in Canada, 1875–1915. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier Press. Ginn, G. 2006. Answering the ‘bitter cry’: urban description and social reform in the late-Victorian east end. The London Journal: A Review of Metropolitan Society 31(2):179–200. Gräser, M. 2009. Wohlfahrtsgesellschaft und Wohlfahrtsstaat: bürgerliche Sozialreform und Welfare State Building in den USA und in Deutschland, 1880–1940. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Hareven, T. K. 1969. An ambiguous alliance: some aspects of American influences on Canadian social welfare. Histoire Sociale / Social History 2(3):82–98. Irving, A., H. Parsons, and D. Bellamy. 1995. Neighbours: Three Social Settlements in Downtown Toronto. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press. James, C. L. 2001. Reforming reform: Toronto’s settlement house movement, 1900–20. The Canadian Historical Review 82(1):55–90.

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Keating, P. J. 1973. Fact and fiction in the East End. In The Victorian City: Images and Realities, edited by H. J. Dyos and M. Wolff. Pp. 585–602. London: Routledge & Paul. Köngeter, S. 2009. Der methodologische Nationalismus der Sozialen Arbeit in Deutschland. Zeitschrift für Sozialpädagogik 7(4):340–359. Köngeter, S. 2012. Paradoxes of transnational production of knowledge in social work. In Transnational Social Support, edited by A. S. Chambon, W. Schröer, and C. Schweppe. Pp. 187–210. London: Routledge. Latour, B. 1986. The powers of association. In Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge?, edited by J. Law. Pp. 264–280. London: Routlege & Kegan Paul. Lissak, R. S. 1989. Pluralism & Progressives: Hull House and the New Immigrants, 1890–1919. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press. Meacham, S. 1987. Toynbee Hall and Social Reform 1880–1914: The Search for Community. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. Ross, E. 2007. Slum Travelers: Ladies and London Poverty, 1860–1920. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. Sassen, S. 1996. Migranten, Siedler, Flüchtlinge. Von der Massenauswanderung zur Festung Europa. Orig.-Ausg. ed, Fischer. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verl. Sassen, S. 2008. Das Paradox des Nationalen: Territorium, Autorität und Rechte im globalen Zeitalter, Edition Zweite Moderne. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Strauss, A. L. 1993. Continual Permutations of Action. New York: Walter de Gruyter. Trolander, J. A. 1987. Professionalism and Social Change. From the Settlement House Movement to Neighborhood Centers. New York, N.Y.: Columbia Univ. Press. Vertovec, S. 2009. Transnationalism. London: Routledge. Wimmer, A., and N. Glick Schiller. 2002. Methodological nationalism and beyond: nation-state building, migration and the social sciences. Global Networks 2(4):301–334. Woodroofe, K. 1962. From Charity to Social Work in England and the United States. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

6

Reconstructing the Narrative of Transnational Feminist Agency The Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice in the International Criminal Court1 Ma. Lourdes Veneracion-Rallonza

1

CONCEPTUAL GROUNDING

Constructivist international relations can be credited for the emergence of the idea of understanding international political life through the analysis of political discourses, practices, institutions, and social arrangements as well as the identities, ideas, and interests of various actors. From within this developing theoretical frame came the recognition of the involvement and impact of non-state actors such as global social movements, nongovernment organizations, and transnational advocacy coalitions and networks on international policy outcomes. In fact, the phrase ‘third United Nations’ has been used to describe a core of nongovernment organizations and individuals involved in various United Nations (UN) decision-making activities (Emmerij, Jolly, and Weiss 2005), in international conversations, and in processes of international norm creation by providing alternative voices and visioning for world politics (Florini 2000). Such a claim is backed by a growing number of scholarly works that illustrate how international nongovernmental organizations and transnational social movements have become a new force in world politics can affect international norms and practices (Boli and Thomas 1999; Florini 2000; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Lipschutz 1992; Risse-Kappen 1995; Smith, Chatfield, and Pagnucco 1997; Stiles 1998;), how vast groups of non-state actors organize and mobilize themselves transnationally (e.g. della Porta, Hanspeter, and Rucht 1999; Guidry et al. 2000), and how activists were involved in the crafting of international treaties (e.g. Price 1997). Within this evolving scholarly tradition, intellectual curiosity about transnational feminist networks (TFNs) has also emerged. As defined by Moghadam (2005, 4), TFNs “are structures organized above the national level that unite women from three or more countries around a common agenda.” Because they are part of the family of collective action entities seeking political change beyond the boundaries of

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nation-states, TFNs are significant actors in the construction of a transnational public space. In this regard, they constitute, animate, and participate in global networks to mobilize pressure outside states; join in intergovernmental and multilateral spheres of activity; and incite actions within states, regions, and global governance institutions to heighten the awareness and participation from the people (Moghadam 2005). However, what distinguishes them from other advocacy networks would be their attribute as principled actors bound by a common goal to improve women’s lives, which requires them to “challenge and engage with the state and global forces alike” (Moghadam 2005, 195). This is because most TFNs are composed of women who embody collective identity,2 consciousness, and experiences (Moghadam 2005) and who are cognizant of the salience of “ ‘empowerment through self-organization’ ” (Lycklama et al. 1998, 30). These women form a sense of solidarity that frames their interaction, cooperation, and mutual support for each other. In the same vein, because TFN constituents are informed by feminist perspectives and conscious of the need to view issues through a gender lens, they construct and use their own lexicon3 for explaining women’s varied contexts, concerns, and aspirations (Moghadam 2000, 62). As a network form, therefore, TFNs are organized in such a way that “they are consistent with feminist goals of democratic, inclusive, participatory, decentralized, and non-hierarchical structures and processes” (Moghadam 2005, 17) underpinned by feminist standpoint, personal narratives, expertise, and credentials. Taken together, these characteristics exemplify the so-called ‘feminist process’ identified in various women’s organizations (Moghadam 2005, 95). In the project of constructing alternative discourses and norms, TFNs may also be seen to serve as specific norm entrepreneurs that are guided by ‘gender-centric’ or ‘feminist-oriented’ principles and beliefs. Originally described by Mueller (1993), norm entrepreneurs are said to impact on international political life when they are able to push their ideas in international negotiation fora (Ikenberry 1993) or are able to make state actors (including their own governments) accept international agreements that may not necessarily be part of the original state interest (Sikkink 1993). Because norm entrepreneurship seeks to affect the realities of international political life based on certain beliefs, it naturally converges with transnational advocacy work. Such convergence happens for the simple reason that norm entrepreneurship needs an organizational platform (Flockhart 2006, 104) on which it can advance its normative projects. In other words, the notions of norm entrepreneurship and transnational networks are complementary. Additionally, when taken together, these concepts highlight the phenomenon of transnational agency where actors take it upon themselves to construct alternative realities based on their own perception on how the world ‘ought to be.’ They may begin with a critique of the global status quo, build on or challenge hegemonic discourses, connect with other ‘likeminded’ actors, and participate in (or create) appropriate spaces to advance

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their ideals. As norm entrepreneurs, TFNs exemplify this form of collective agency in the transnational realm. This chapter is about the transnational agency of the Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice (hereinafter Women’s Caucus) in the International Criminal Court (ICC). Save for some mention of the significant contributions in advocating and negotiating gender provisions in the ICC (e.g. Barkan 2002; Bedont and Martinez 1999; Charlesworth 1999; Chapell 2003; Copelon 2000; Goldstone 1997; Steains 1999), not much has been written on the specific involvement of the Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice in the ICC. As a TFN, the Women’s Caucus is depicted as a global network of individuals and organizations committed to the establishment of a gender-sensitive ICC. As norm entrepreneurs, they are relevant actors in advancing gender perspectives in the Court’s statute, particularly with regard to the codification of wartime rape as a war crime, crime against humanity, and crime constitutive of genocide. 2 CONTEXTUALIZATION: CONSTRUCTING AN INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT The construction of the so-called universal atrocities regime (Rudolf 2001) was by no means an overnight development. Some scholars claim that its conceptual roots can be traced back to ancient times (Bassiouni 1999; Beigbeder 1999; Bos 1999; Jamison 1995; Schabas 2001), whereas others argue that the idea came during the creation of ad hoc tribunals in the thirteenth century Holy Roman Empire (Arnaut 2003; Bowers 2001), the American Civil War in the eighteen sixties, and the Boer War in the eighteen eighties (Bowers 2001). Although these initiatives went down in history as examples of holding individuals accountable for war crimes that were more or less within national jurisdictions, efforts at establishing a permanent international criminal court were said to have begun with calls to mitigate the harshness of international wars. For example, after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to 1871, Gustav Moynier, the Swiss co-founder of the International Committee for the Relief of the Wounded (later known as the International Committee of the Red Cross, or ICRC), proposed the establishment of an international criminal court to bring to justice those who had violated the 1864 Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded Armies in the Field. After the First World War, a similar call to prosecute German war criminals was incorporated in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. In 1920, a draft proposal for an international criminal court was circulated within the League of Nations and the idea was picked up by three non-state organizations—the Association of Penal Law, International Law Association, and Inter-Parliamentary Union—that worked together to draft an international penal code (Bowers 2001). But with the League’s failure to avert the Second World War and to establish a permanent criminal court,

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the aftermath of the Second World War instead saw initiatives to establish institutions of ‘victors’ justice’ through the international tribunals of Nuremberg and Tokyo. After the Nuremberg Judgment came out, renewed interest for an international criminal court was expressed during international congresses held in Paris in 1946 and in 1949, and the International Law Commission attempted to draft the statute for such a court. Unfortunately, the initiative was abandoned largely because of the Cold War, which configured the direction of much of international politics, including the priorities of the UN. Toward the end of the Cold War, Arthur Robinson, then prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, resurrected the proposal for an international court to the UN General Assembly, largely to combat drug trafficking. The UN General Assembly, through a resolution adopting the report of the Sixth Committee, directed the International Law Commission to “address the question on establishing an international criminal court or other international criminal trial mechanism over persons alleged to have committed crimes” (Operative Clause 1, UN Doc. A/RES/44/39 1989). The creation of ad hoc tribunals such as the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in the early 1990s to prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity gave the contextual push to further work on the creation of the world’s first permanent court. In early 1995, the UN General Assembly formally established an Ad Hoc Committee on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court and by December of that year, the committee completed and turned over its work to the newly created Preparatory Committee on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court (hereinafter PrepCom). The PrepCom produced a draft consolidated text for an international criminal court in April 1998. On its last session,4 the PrepCom adopted the draft text of the statute and the draft final act5 for submission to the UN Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court to be held in Rome from June to July 1998. After the final deliberation of the Rome Statute, it was decided that the details of the Elements of Crime and the Rules of Procedure will be deliberated on by a separate Preparatory Commission. In all the deliberation and negotiation fora for the construction of a universal international criminal court, the participation of non-state actors was unprecedented. Although there were times in the past that non-state actors participated in the crafting of international law (e.g. ICRC participation in the drafting of the Geneva Conventions), the construction of the text for an international criminal court was the first instance where many nongovernment organizations systematically consolidated their efforts toward a particular treaty drafting project (Hall 2000). According to Glasius (2003), even though it was the action of states that brought the statute of an international criminal court into being, the outcome would not have been the same without the active involvement from civil society actors. For some

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scholars (e.g. Pace and Schense 2002; Sadat 2002), these civil society organizations represented the voices and interests of those who had previously been excluded in discourse politics at the international level and, more specifically, in the crafting of international law treaties. 3

THE WOMEN’S CAUCUS AS TFN

In 1995, just as the Ad Hoc Committee concluded its work, a small group of nongovernment organizations decided to come together to form a coalition and consolidate their initiatives for creating an international criminal court. This group, known as the Coalition for an International Criminal Court (hereinafter the NGO Coalition), was founded with only 25 members.6 During this time, most of the women activists and nongovernment organizations working for women’s human rights were in the midst of preparing for the 1995 Beijing World Conference on Women and thus were not involved in the initial groundwork of civil society participation in the construction of the permanent court (Facio 2004). As the PrepCom’s first and second sessions in 1995 and 1996 were convened, the NGO Coalition became concerned with the absence of the women’s movement in the process of the drafting of the court’s statutes. The Coalition secretariat then connected with some women activists living in the New York area who agreed that without the representation of women’s issues in the negotiation process, gender concerns would be completely absent in the statute and jurisprudence of the permanent court. However, most women nongovernment organizations were still immersed in the post-Beijing process and thus not fully aware of the project of constructing a permanent criminal court. According to Facio (2004), one of the founders and the first director of the Women’s Caucus, the Court was still unknown to most of the women activists and therefore, the support of the women’s movement for this particular political project was not yet readily available. Nonetheless, in February 1997, the women who would become the force behind the Women’s Caucus worked together with the NGO Coalition. In the weeks prior to the fourth PrepCom session, they sent out letters and e-mails to other women activists and networks around the world explaining the international criminal court and the project of creating a caucus of women to participate in the process. From this effort came the Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice in the International Criminal Court. By the August 1997 meeting of PrepCom, the Women’s Caucus had become more organized and had more individuals and organizations around the globe that identified with and supported the goals of the Caucus. These goals were: 1. “To ensure a worldwide participation of women’s human rights advocates in the negotiations of the International Criminal Court treaty to lobby for an effective and independent court;

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2. To take advantage of this opportunity to educate governments delegations and mainstream Human Rights non-government organizations on their commitments to women and the need to integrate a gender perspective into the United Nations; and 3. To use this historical event as a means for popular education on women’s human rights and raise public awareness of the horrific nature of crimes committed against women.”7 By 1998, the Women’s Caucus consisted of over three hundred organizations and individuals from different countries. Although it was still a loose network, the Caucus functioned like a communication web of connected focal points and arterial recipients of campaign alerts and lobbying materials that paved the way for faster information dissemination and quicker mobilization at the domestic level. Furthermore, prior to the Rome meeting, a worldwide consultation on the advocacy road map of the Women’s Caucus was completed, including the core principles guiding the work of the Caucus: (1) the statute should incorporate the full range of core crimes against women and recognize them as among the gravest violations; (2) there should be an explicit direction to prevent discrimination, including genderbased discrimination, in the application of law; (3) the Court should have the structural capacity—in terms of personnel and resources—to effectively and respectfully address the gendered dimension of prosecuting these crimes; (4) the Court should integrate the concerns of victims, including reparations to, protection and participation of survivors; (5) civil society, particularly survivors and NGOs, should have access to the Court; and (6) the independence, integrity, and credibility of the Court as an institution of universal justice should be ensured (Facio 2004). After the Diplomatic Conference and the signing of the Rome Statute in July 1998, the Women’s Caucus dropped the word ICC from its name and renamed itself simply as Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice. This move was meant to reflect their expanded (self-defined) mandate of linking their work on the statute of the Court with their broader project of monitoring the negotiations on the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination (CEDAW). For the Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice, both the Rome Statute and the Women’s Convention are significant mechanisms for women’s access to justice. Accordingly, in continuing their project to ensure the incorporation of gender perspectives in the ICC, the Women’s Caucus participated in the Preparatory Commission sessions on the drafting of the Elements of Crime and the Rules of Procedure. In March 2003, at around the time when the International Criminal Court had its inaugural session, the Women’s Caucus reinvented itself as the Women’s Initiative for Gender Justice. The

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transformation complemented their work from that of negotiations (when the Rome Statute was still being drafted) to that of operationalization (when the ICC’s commitment to gender justice was monitored by the Caucus). In summary, the Women’s Caucus evolved in the context of the conception of the ICC beginning with a handful of individual women activists based in New York who disseminated information about the creation of the Court during the early PrepCom sessions. From those beginnings, it grew into a transnational caucus immersed in lobbying governments domestically and state representatives internationally during the Rome meeting, and finally into an organization monitoring the gender commitments and work of the Court. Although not distinctively having a formal hierarchical structure, network members of the Women’s Caucus worked together on a shared agenda of ensuring the statute of the world’s first criminal court would be gender-sensitive in all aspects. According to a member of the Canadian delegation to the ICC during the Rome meeting, the involvement of the Women’s Caucus in the process of creating a permanent world court “presented a historic opportunity to bring into being a gender-sensitive international criminal justice institution which would provide justice for women caught in conflict situations.”

4

NORM ENTREPRENEURSHIP: OPPORTUNITIES, STRATEGIES, AND PRINCIPLES

In discussing the specific norm against wartime rape, it is important to understand that such a political project is linked with the Caucus evolution in the context of the development of the Court. From this vantage point, norm emergence is seen as an outcome of three factors: first, the political opportunity structure prevalent during that point in time; second, the strategies employed by the group in various negotiation fora of the ICC; and third, the ‘gender-centric’ principled belief of the Women’s Caucus which, in turn, framed the reconceptualization of wartime rape.

4.1

Political Opportunity Structures

By and large, the Women’s Caucus capitalized on institutionalized mechanisms that opened up the space for the participation of a growing, globalizing women’s movement in the international discursive arena. They drew their mandate from the UN CEDAW—a ‘hard’ law on women’s human rights with the force of a treaty—to ensure state compliance with women’s human rights norms as well as to demand that international organizations respect their obligation to ensure gender equality in the crafting of new policies and institutions. At the same time, they built on the gains achieved by the transnational women’s movement in the Vienna, Cairo, and

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Beijing conferences on women’s human rights. The outcome documents of these international conferences, although largely perceived as ‘soft’8 laws, nevertheless provided women’s groups with the moral authority to demand actions from governments that had committed themselves to improving women’s lives. Quite notably, both the Vienna and Beijing consensus documents did more than just recognize that the violation of women’s human rights during wartime constitutes a violation of both international humanitarian and international human rights law. More importantly, they defined the nature of wartime rape as systematically occurring in armed conflict situations and as linked with genocide and ethnic cleansing.9 This means that within the transnational discursive space in UN conferences, there was already an emergent conception that rape was being systematically used as a weapon of war. Various UN Commissions and Special Rapporteurs’ reports on the issue of wartime rape were supporting these claims. In July 1996, a preliminary report submitted by the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on the Situation of Systematic Rape, Sexual Slavery, and Slavery-Like Practices during Periods of Armed Conflict was entitled “Situation of Systematic Rape, Sexual Slavery, and Slavery-Like Practices during Periods of Armed Conflict.” The rapes of women during the Yugoslav and Rwandan conflicts were explicitly mentioned as examples of the use of systematic rape as an instrument of policy. At this point in time, the ICTY and ICTR had already been created and part of their substantive mandates was to prosecute those who were involved in wartime rape, thereby creating a legal precedent for the crime. At the same time, both the Rwandan and Yugoslav tribunals provided an opportune discursive space for women activists to have the necessary exposure to legal processes. The Women’s Caucus had an active member from the former Yugoslavia who worked on cases involving wartime rape victims/survivors and who was instrumental in sharing her insights during the ICC negotiations. Additionally, by June 22, 1998, just as the UN Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries convened in Rome, the Special Rapporteur’s final report on the “Situation of Systematic Rape, Sexual Slavery and Slavery-Like Practices during Periods of Armed Conflict” identified international criminal law as presenting a critical imperative for effective action to end impunity against rape and sexual violence during wartime (U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1998/13, 1998). At the regional level, positive processes related to the promotion of the rights of women were also emerging. For example, both the European Court on Human Rights and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights recognized rape as constitutive of torture.10 Given this backdrop, the Women’s Caucus had the perfect opportunity to push for ‘hard-core’ women’s human rights, particularly in the context of armed conflicts because they had both political and institutional contexts and mechanisms working for them. Interestingly, however, the legalistic nature of the negotiations was one of the initial discomforts of women activists, particularly the nonlawyers,

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who felt that the environment was an ‘alien’ terrain for them. By and large, the negotiation process was indeed quite legal in nature because the working text or draft statute of the envisioned court emanated from the Sixth Committee of the UN General Assembly, a committee composed mostly of the legal advisors of different country missions at the UN. For some women activists, the earlier stage of the Court negotiations created the space where they could engage with people from the Sixth Committee for the first time; for most members of the Sixth Committee, it was their first time to deal with nongovernment organizations. According to a source from the Women’s Caucus, members of the Sixth Committee were “used to negotiating in seclusion because much of what they do does not really draw civil society into it.” Taken together, the work of the Women’s Caucus demanding that an end to impunity for wartime rape be codified in the Rome Statute was anchored in previous gains made in women’s human rights at past world conferences and in existing institutional discourse and jurisprudence on the issue. According to a member of the Women’s Caucus who participated in several PrepComs, various factors created a unique political opportunity structure for them to work and build upon: “a by-product of the confluence of women who have been working on this kind of justice . . . of women who influenced the process.”

4.2

Strategies Employed

Following the functional structure of the Women’s Caucus, several strategies were employed at different stages of the ICC negotiations. In between and during PrepComs, the Caucus focused on two strategies, namely drafting of position papers in consultation with the broader group of members and mobilizing these members for lobbying. First, true to its characterization of being a TFN, the Women’s Caucus operated in what Oosterveld referred to as a ‘consensus model:’ the Caucus leaders always made sure that women from all regions of the world and as many conflict zones as possible participated in the Preparatory Committee or Commission sessions, so that their views would be heard and incorporated, and not just views of women’s rights advocates who happened to be able to participate because of their proximity to New York. This model ran through the strategy of drafting texts. For example, in the preparation of position papers and legal commentary on the issue of wartime rape, Caucus members were sent action alerts via e-mail requesting them to send in their national anti-rape laws. According to a member of the Caucus, “at the time of the International Criminal Court-related negotiations, there was strong groundwork—particularly on violence against

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women in many countries—which yielded some good laws, rich insights in the gaps in laws and criminal justice systems, and national/inter-country networks.” For the Women’s Caucus, using the language of the negotiations— the legal language—was imperative. The issues were more technical than those discussed in the Vienna and Beijing conferences, and, thus, the arguments had to be written in legal parlance. The Women’s Caucus had to draft legal arguments which explained why certain acts were supposed to be recognized as crimes within themselves and not as part of a body of general crimes. In order to do this, the Women’s Caucus had to substantiate their claims by referring to different legal systems and technicalities from different parts of the world. As one lawyermember of the Caucus pointed out, the group needed to be armed not only with an understanding of different legal systems but also examples of actual cases from around the world: Many delegates would welcome the position papers of the Caucus which served as their reference material during the deliberations. Some delegations would even quote verbatim from these position papers when they make interventions. Because negotiations on the ICC statute could be fluid, the Caucus could issue other lobby materials or formulate specific proposed language for specific sections of the text that some delegates would put forward. Their position papers invoked relevant international customary law, international humanitarian law, and international human rights treaty law; consensus documents on women’s human rights, particularly UN documents and resolutions were then cited; and finally, evidence of cases from different countries and regional human rights bodies was given. This meant that the Women’s Caucus drafted well-researched lobby documents for each PrepCom with arguments for specific positions and wording of proposals for the statute as a product of consultation with the larger body of their membership. From the greater base of supporters, the Women’s Caucus established core groups that worked on different committees during the actual PrepCom sessions and the sessions of the Diplomatic Conference. A drafting committee from among the attendees of the negotiations (both in New York and in Rome) began its work as soon as they knew the chapter of the Court statute had been tabled for discussion. Broad position papers were drafted, the final wording and the issues of which were threshed out during drafting sessions of the committee. They used ‘minimum-maximum’ wording of position papers, proposals, and definitions because of the difficulty in the negotiation process where the text of the statute changed over the course of the negotiations. In addition, lobbying, both internationally and locally, was an integral strategy of the Women’s Caucus. In between PrepComs, the Caucus targeted

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different groups for their lobbying efforts. First, the Women’s Caucus had to lobby actors within the UN system, the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly, and the Commission on the Status of Women. However, their established alliances did not automatically generate support for the kind of advocacy the Women’s Caucus set themselves to carry out, and they needed to also lobby and make representations to these bodies. For example, the Women’s Caucus sought the help of the Commission on the Status of Women in coming up with a resolution that would support efforts toward gender integration in the ICC. The Commission did this when it came out with a resolution on women and armed conflict three days before the March 1998 PrepCom was to begin. Because the Commission on the Status of Women helps in pressing government commitments to women, having this resolution was an important political tool to reaffirm the importance of incorporating women’s issues and concerns in the Rome Statute. At the same time, country missions of the UN, particularly those with women ambassadors and those identified as ‘like-minded groups/states’ by the Caucus, were also approached for support. In fact, these ‘like-minded states’ were the same countries that were instrumental in pushing for the adoption of the Commission on the Status of Women resolution. Second, outside of the UN, the Women’s Caucus also lobbied foreign ministries in capitals around the world, national women’s commissions of different countries, and various human rights and civil society organizations through the help of national/domestic women’s groups. This was employed in between and during PrepCom and Diplomatic Conference sessions. Participation of nongovernment organizations in actual government sessions during the negotiation process has been one of the hallmarks of the creation of the ICC. But by and large, the Women’s Caucus along with other civil society groups and networks were not allowed to participate in official sessions of government delegates (especially when issues being discussed were controversial ones). This limitation highlighted all the more the importance of attending the inter- or presessional meetings during the Diplomatic Conference. The ‘politics of convincing’ was always at play during the negotiation period. In negotiating with states, personalities and government commitments mattered greatly, and they came into play in the dynamics of the negotiation, particularly when something surfaced as a ‘non-negotiable’ as opposed to things that would be dropped during the course of the negotiations. On such occasions, the lobbyists of the Women’s Caucus did not hide their dismay toward government delegations who initially agreed to support their proposals but eventually reneged or changed their positions. As concluded by a member of the Women’s Caucus, the various strategies they employed were intended to achieve different objectives, namely “general education of state representatives on international criminal law and precedents, specific education on particular issues, direct discussion with all states, and ensuring that states with similar views work together to include (and protect) language in the Statute.” The legal drafting and lobbying

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programs of the Women’s Caucus were effective strategies to ensure the incorporation of gender perspectives in the statute of the ICC.

4.3

Gender as the Principled Belief of the Women’s Caucus

As norm entrepreneurs, the Women’s Caucus operated on the basic premise that an international court that does not include ‘gender justice’ or formal justice for women is not a universal justice mechanism for criminal justice. At the onset, the core principles of the Caucus reflected the ideational framework with a vision for an independent, broad, and gender-sensitive international justice mechanism. The basic position along with the ideational framework of the Caucus were critical in selling their principled belief to government negotiators in the ICC and especially to those who asked questions about the need for having specific references to women in the Court’s statute and the imperative for gender mainstreaming in the substance and operations of the Court. Strategically, acceptance by government delegates of the Caucus’ principled belief was integral to advancing gender-specific proposals. During the February 1997 PrepCom session, the Women’s Caucus submitted a recommendation to include the term gender justice in the list of prohibitive grounds for persecution. By August 1997, the PrepCom submitted their recommendation on issues such as inherent jurisdiction of the court, trigger mechanisms, complementarity, investigation of alleged crimes, commencement of prosecution, preindictment arrest, and pretrial detention and release. Their proposal with specific reference to gender was part of their recommendation to the elements of duty of the prosecutor to effectively handle sexual and gender crimes. During the December 1997 PrepCom, the Women’s Caucus recommended that the applicable laws of the court must be consistent with existing norms on nondiscrimination based on gender. For the Women’s Caucus, “it would be a travesty if the text creating the world’s permanent criminal court contained no statement on non-discrimination on the basis on enumerated grounds, including gender” (Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice 1999b). Accordingly, the Women’s Caucus recommended “an overarching direction to eliminate discrimination and gender-based stereotypes in the discernment and application of the general principles should be articulated in the Statute” (Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice 1997). During the March 1998 PrepCom, the Women’s Caucus pursued three proposals in the area of composition and administration of the court and of these, two made specific references to the term gender. First, they recommended that, consistent with the principles expressed in CEDAW and the Vienna and Beijing world conferences, the fundamental idea of gender balance and expertise in gender analysis and sexual/gender crimes must be ensured. Second, they also proposed the creation of the position of a Legal Advisor for Gender and Gender-Related Crimes who would advise

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the Prosecutor with regard to gender matters. In the draft PrepCom text, the aforementioned proposals of the Women’s Caucus were included in Article 37(8) on the qualification and election of judges that called for ‘gender balance’ and expertise on ‘gender violence’ as well as in Article 43(9) on the Office of the Prosecutor that called for the appointment of advisors with expertise on violence related to gender. Unfortunately, all of these items (except the article on applicable law) were written in brackets. In the lexicon of international negotiations, bracketed terms are understood as points that have not yet been accepted by consensus (Oosterveld 2005). Interestingly, despite appearing seven times, the term gender was never defined in the draft consolidated text; in the final text of the Rome Statute, the term gender appears nine times. Of the seven proposed items which referred to gender, only four were incorporated in the statute of the ICC, and these pertained to the recognition of gender-based persecution as a crime against humanity, the appointment of advisors with expertise on sexual and gender violence crimes, the linking of gender to the effective investigation and prosecution of crimes, and the protection of victims and witnesses of crimes of gender violence. Their proposal on judicial qualifications was partially accepted as a result of negotiated language. For example, instead of specifically providing that judges must be experts on gender violence, the final text dropped the term ‘gender’ and had ‘violence against women’ put in its place; likewise, ‘fair representation’ displaced ‘gender balance’ in the composition of judges. Negotiating on the language of text was an important part of the process. The text of Article 37(8)(e) of the draft prepared by the PrepCom required judges to have expertise on “issues related to sexual and gender violence” (in brackets), whereas Article 36(b) of the final text of the Rome Statute reads “legal expertise on specific issues including, but not limited to, violence against women and children.” On the other hand, the text of Article 37(8)(d) in the draft consolidated text which called for ‘gender balance’ in the composition of judge’s (in brackets) was altered and in its place, the text of Article 36(8)(a)(iii) of the Rome Statute stated “fair representation of female and male judges.” To a large extent, changes from the draft to the final text reflect the dynamics of ‘negotiating language’ through a web of ‘gender-blindedness.’ For example, during the 14th session of the Committee of the Whole in Rome, the delegate from Syria refused to accept the idea of judges’ expertise on ‘sexual and gender violence’ because he had not heard of any specialized field on ‘gender violence.’ In the 15th session, the delegate from Iran shared a similar view by questioning the point of having special expertise on ‘gender violence’ and not on other issues such as torture. However, other country delegates (during both sessions) from the United States of America, Brunei, Burundi, Australia, and Thailand believed in the importance of special expertise of judges on ‘sexual and gender violence.’ These country delegates, along with the ones from Canada, Columbia, Costa Rica, Ghana, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Oman, Senegal, and

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Sweden argued for the term ‘gender balance’ to be retained in the provision on the composition of judges. Unfortunately, the proposal on the expertise of judges in international law to include women’s human rights was defeated. For the Women’s Caucus, the battle of keeping gender in the statute of the ICC was simply realpolitik. In the context of this struggle, the Women’s Caucus achieved the incorporation of their ideational framework on gender in the different aspects of the Court. As explained by a Caucus member: Substantively, it sets the stage for ending impunity for perpetrators of violence against women. Procedurally, the Rome Statute contains a blueprint for ensuring respect for women, survivors, and victims in the process. Additionally, the Court is empowered to award reparations in a scheme which includes compensation, restitution, and rehabilitation/ assistance. Structurally, the Rome Statute contains provisions intended to ensure the presence of women on the Court, staff with expertise on violence against women and advisors on sexual and gender violence (Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice, 1999c). 5

THE POLITICAL PROJECT OF ‘FRAMING’ WARTIME RAPE

To a large extent, the Women’s Caucus did not have much difficulty with the inclusion of wartime rape in the list of crimes for the simple reason that there was already an existing normative standard on it as a crime constituting of bodily harm. However, they wanted to expand the definition of wartime rape beyond this normative standard. In this regard, building on the firmly rooted principle against adverse discrimination in international humanitarian law in relation to prosecution, the Women’s Caucus implied that the nonrecognition of sexual and gender crimes against women was equivalent to discrimination as set forth in CEDAW Articles 1, 2, 3, and 5. To ensure that the principle of nondiscrimination on the basis of gender would be incorporated in the substantive discourse of the Court’s statute, the Women’s Caucus reiterated the imperative to codify in the Rome Statute more recent progressive developments in international humanitarian law and relevant human rights law that already recognized sexual and gender violence as manifestations of other enumerated war crimes. Specifically, they sought to substantiate their assertion that sexual and gender violence were grave breaches of international humanitarian law, violations of fundamentally guaranteed human rights, and serious crimes of violence against the physical and mental integrity of persons. In other words, the Women’s Caucus sought to ‘mainstream’ sexual and gender violence in all appropriate categories of war crimes, without which, they believed, there would be a regression for a court that is supposed to deliver a universal mechanism for justice. As a step toward the rethinking on rape, the Women’s Caucus suggested further that the Court’s Statute must codify progressive implementation of

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the nondiscrimination principle in customary law with regard to women. Both legal and factual bases for rape to be recognized as a crime constitutive of other serious war crimes were provided, drawing from the statute and indictments of the Yugoslav and Rwandan tribunals, decisions from international/regional human rights bodies (such as the Aydin vs. Turkey case in the European Court of Human Rights in 1997, and the Mejia vs. Peru case in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 1996), and findings of UN Special Rapporteurs on sexual and gender violence against women during wartime. At the same time, in firmly establishing that rape could be constitutive of other crimes, the Women’s Caucus also recommended that rape and other forms of sexual and gender violence had to be recognized as war crimes by themselves and therefore equally chargeable as other enumerated crimes. This means that although mainstreaming these crimes was significant in an international justice mechanism, their severity and particularities could not be compromised in the mainstreaming process. For even while rape is able to meet the elements of other enumerated crimes, general principles of law (i.e. criminal law) provide definitions for rape which are distinct from those of the enumerated crimes. In this light, the Women’s Caucus called for a separate provision identifying rape as a separate crime. In expanding the definition of rape, the Women’s Caucus still had to lobby to ensure the inclusion of rape as a war crime distinct from the provision on ‘outrages upon personal dignity.’ For the Caucus, the characterization of crime as ‘outrages upon personal dignity’ further entrenched the devaluation of women as victims of rape who could be justifiably shunned by their society. In the same vein, continuing to categorize rape simply as ‘humiliating and degrading treatment’ perpetuated the view that the crime was not even to be included as one of the serious crimes in international humanitarian law or a grave violation of women’s human rights. The education and lobbying efforts of the Caucus on the distinction between the characterization of rape as an honor crime to a crime of sexualized violence with “extreme and long lasting physical and mental effects” (Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice 1997) paved the way for a shift in discourse from a perpetrator focus of devaluating the victim’s ‘honor’ to that of the harm suffered by the victim. In such conceptual construction, the institutionalized language of violence against women was strategically used. According to Paragraph 6 of CEDAW General Recommendation 19, violence against women is any form of violence “directed against a woman because she is a woman,” which “includes acts that inflict physical, mental, or sexual harm or suffering threats of such acts, coercion and other deprivation of liberty” (emphasis added). Similarly, Article 1 of Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women and Paragraph 113 of the Beijing Platform for Action defined it in exactly the same way. The Vienna Platform for Action also blanketed the term under gender-based violence in Paragraph 18 by stating that violence against women is “incompatible with the dignity and worth

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of the human person.” Thus, with regard to the framing of wartime rape, the concept of violence against women was used because it was already an existing and even institutionalized language acceptable to the international community. For state actors, such framing made the crime of wartime rape easier to grasp. In the final text of the Rome Statute, the following reconceptualizations of wartime rape had been codified and therefore institutionalized: (1) as a war crime and crime against humanity; (2) mainstreamed into other enumerated grave crimes in international humanitarian law and fundamental guarantees of protected persons in armed conflict situations; (3) as a distinct crime that can be prosecuted separate from other crimes; and (4) a serious crime delinked from ‘outrages upon personal dignity’ and ‘humiliating and degrading treatment.’ After the signing of the Rome Statute in 1998, the Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice brought their advocacy and lobbying within the negotiating fora of the Preparatory Commission designed to hammer out the details of the statute. Since the beginning of the first Preparatory Commission on February 1999 up until the fifth session in June 2000, they were at the forefront of advocating for sexual violence to be regarded as a ‘crime against persons.’ This meant that although sexual violence, including rape, was recognized as both constitutive of other crimes (i.e. mainstreaming) and as crimes in themselves (i.e. distinct crimes which can be charged separately), the Caucus still saw the need for an explicit statement in the Elements of Crime to declare it as both. On this note, they recommended that specific reference to rape as constitutive of crimes against persons had to be made in Article 6 (Genocide), Article 7 (Crimes against Humanity), and Article 8 (War Crimes), in addition to the ones already stated in Articles 7(1)(g), 8(2)(b)(xxii), and 8(2)(e)(vi). Between Articles 6 to 7, particular attention was given to characterizing rape as genocide. The basis for this argument was the ICTR’s decision on the Akayesu case, which concluded that rape and sexual violence were an integral part of the genocidal campaign.11 The inclusion of the term gender facilitated the advocacy of the Caucus. In fact, they garnered strong support from the delegates of the Preparatory Commission as evidenced by the inclusion of this idea in the rolling text of the commentary for genocide, which stated that it “recognized rape and sexual violence may constitute genocide in the same way as any other act, provided the criteria of genocide are met” (Paragraph 3, U.N. Doc. PNICC/1999/WGEC/RT.3).12 Similar calls for a statement of incorporation in the Elements of Crime were made during the third13 and fourth14 sessions of the Preparatory Commission. When the final draft of the Elements of Crime came out after the fifth session in June 2000, the statement incorporating a gender perspective in the crime of genocide was partially achieved. By and large, no general statement on the elements of genocide was made to reflect this idea, but the Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice had to be content with its referral as a footnote (Copelon 2000). For although not

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explicitly stated in Article 6(b) of the Elements of Crime of the ICC, rape was specifically mentioned in the Footnote 3 of the Article as a form of genocide that causes serious bodily or mental harm. Footnote 3 of Article 6(b), in fact, stated that “[T]his [genocide by inflicting serious bodily or mental harm] conduct may include, but is not necessarily restricted to, acts of torture, rape, sexual violence or inhuman or degrading treatment” (U.N. Doc. PCNICC/2000/1/Add.2, 2000). However, contrary to the proposal of the Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice, which called for the incorporation of rape and sexual violence in all the subsection of Article 6, no other part of this article stated the same idea. 6

CONCLUSION

The Women’s Caucus, within the context of the establishment of the ICC, was responsible for ‘engendering’ the Court. Based on the narrative of their involvement, this chapter showed their dual character as a TFN and as a norm entrepreneur engaged in the dynamics of transnational agency. Foremost, as a TFN, the Women’s Caucus emerged from a confluence of factors, namely: (1) transnational women’s movement actively engaged in previous world conferences on women’s human rights and involved in the crafting of consensus documents such as the Vienna and Beijing platforms for action; (2) progressive developments in international humanitarian and human rights laws as well as institutionalized practices within the UN that recognized specific forms of violence against women during conflict situations; and (3) discursive spaces provided by the Yugoslav and Rwandan tribunals that exposed women activists to the milieu of legal negotiations at the international level. These factors provided the Caucus with enabling political opportunity structures, which, in turn, contextually guided their strategies of engagement within the negotiation fora of the ICC. Of particular note was how the Women’s Caucus simultaneously engaged actors within and outside of the UN as well as from the international, regional, and national fronts. Secondly, as a norm entrepreneur, the Women’s Caucus turned out to be the lead-bearer of gender-centric principles in the discursive arena of the Court and was able to integrate gender into the language of the Court’s statute. Furthermore, they were able to advance a more expansive and progressive definition of wartime rape as a specific war crime, crime against humanity, and crime constitutive of genocide. In fact, the very inclusion of wartime rape in the Rome Statute as well as in its Elements of Crime and the Rules of Procedure was a clear manifestation of gender justice being incorporated into the substance, structures, and procedures of the Court. As noted in the discussion above, the Women’s Caucus was able to do this by drawing from existing normative frames on gender in general, and on violence against women in particular.

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Notwithstanding the contribution of other (state) actors in engendering the ICC, this chapter illustrated the agency of the Women’s Caucus as a loosely structured collective committed to ending impunity for crimes committed against women in armed conflict situations. As one of the leaders of the Caucus appropriately concluded: The Women’s Caucus was historical, was magnificent, was very good in influencing the Statute of the ICC by having gender justice. It is a historic achievement which no one can discard. It will always be there in that part of history. Their narrative must not be forgotten.

NOTES 1. This article summarizes the key findings in Chapter IV of the author’s 2009 doctoral dissertation entitled “The Evolution of Norms in International Relations: A Study of the Development of the Norm against Wartime Rape in the International Criminal Court.” This narrative reconstruction draws from the sharing of several women who were part of the Caucus and worked in the critical formative stage of the Court. Unless noted otherwise, quotes throughout this chapter are from research participants. I am deeply indebted to these inspiring women activists. 2. In light of women’s activism, Beckwith (1998, 149–150) speaks of collective identity as “a dynamic and active process of collective meaning construction” where identity is seen as a product of specific contexts where the women activists are located. 3. According to Moghadam (2005), TFNs introduced new concepts such as gender approach, gender equality, empowerment and autonomy, engendering development, feminization of poverty, care economy, women living under Muslim laws, women’s rights are human rights, and gender justice and economic justice. These terms have been used to frame women’s issues and some of them have already been adopted by key international organizations like the UN, World Bank, and donor agencies of major countries. 4. See Report of the Preparatory Committee on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court, U.N. Doc. A/CONF.183/2 available at http://www. un.org/icc/prepcom.htm, accessed January 3, 2012. 5. For full text of the draft statute and draft final act adopted by the PrepCom, see U.N. Doc. A/CONF.182/2/Add. 1. Available at http://www.un.org/law/ n9810105.pdf, accessed January 3, 2012. 6. After the International Criminal Court entered into force, the NGO Coalition came to be known as the Coalition for the International Criminal Court; it coordinates various efforts for the universal ratification of the Rome Statute and advocates for “a fair, effective and independent” court. From the time of its establishment 1995, it has transformed into a global coalition of around 2,500 civil society organization members from all over the world. 7. Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice (1999a) Website, available at http:// www.iccwomen.org/wigjdraft1/Archives/oldWCGJ/aboutcaucus.htm, accessed May 25, 2012.

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8. ‘Soft’ laws, in contrast with ‘hard’ laws, pertain to consensus documents which states have agreed to uphold. They differ from the latter in such a way that no sanction for noncompliance is meted out—rather, what is ordinarily used for noncompliance is the practice of ‘shaming.’ Presumably, this strategy works when and only if state actors are protective of their image in the international community. 9. Refer to Section II, Paragraph 38, U.N. Doc. A/CONF.157/23, 1993 of the 1993 Vienna Platform for Action and Paragraph 131, Declaration 135, U.N. Doc. A/CONF.177/20, 1995 of the Beijing Platform for Action. 10. See European Court of Human Rights, Paragraph 83, 57/1996/676/866 (25 September 1997), and Report on the Situation on Human Rights, Paragraph 134, OEA/Ser.L/V.II88 (1995). 11. The Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice, through the conclusions made in the Akayesu case, illustrated how rape and sexual violence constituted genocide in all of the enumerated articles of this section of the ICC Statute: Article 6(a) or genocide by killing where rape is a means of causing death in the context of genocide; Article 6(b) or genocide by inflicting serious bodily or mental harm where the brutal crime intended to destroy the community; Article 6(c) genocide by inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction of the group or destruction of the spirit of women as a means of bringing destruction to their group; and Article 6(d) or imposing measures intended to prevent birth where women are forcibly impregnated to carry and give birth to the offspring of the aggressors and perpetuate their identity. 12. Also refer to appendix of the Summary Proceedings of the Preparatory Commission at its first session (16 to 26 February 1999), U.N. Doc. PCNICC/1999/L.3/Rev.1 (2 March 1999). 13. See also Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice, Report of the November to December 1999 ICC Prepcom. Available at http://www.iccwomen.addr.com/ icc/pc199912/report.htm, accessed April 20, 2012. 14. Likewise, refer to Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice, Report of the March 2000 ICC Prepcom. Available at http://www.iccwomen.addr.com/icc/pc20 0003/report.htm, accessed April 20, 2012.

REFERENCES Arnaut, D. 2003. When in Rome? The International Criminal Court and avenues for U.S. participation. Virginia Journal of International Law 43(2):525. Barkan, J. 2002. As old as war itself: rape in Foca. Dissent 60(Winter):60–66. Bassiouni, M. C. 1999. Crimes Against Humanity in International Criminal Law (2nd revised ed.). Cambridge, Mass.: Kluwer Law International. Beckwith, K. 1998. Collective identities of class and gender: working class women in the Pittston coal strike. Political Psychology 19(1):147–167. Bedont, B., and K. H. Martinez. 1999. Ending impunity for gender crimes in the International Criminal Court. Brown Journal of World Affairs 6(1):65–85. Beigbeder, Y. 1999. Judging War Criminals: The Politics of International Justice. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Boli, J., and G. Thomas, eds. 1999. Constructing World Culture: International Nongovernmental Organizations Since 1875. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press. Bos, A. 1999. The International Criminal Court: a perspective. In The International Criminal Court: The Making of the Rome Statute: Issues, Negotiations, Results, edited by R. S. Lee. Pp. 463–470. The Hague: Kluwer Law International.

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Bowers, P. 2001. The International Criminal Court Bill (HL). Research Paper 01/39. London: House of Commons Library. Chappell, L. 2003. Women, gender and international institutions: exploring new opportunities at the International Criminal Court. Policy and Society 22(1):3–25. Charlesworth, H. 1999. Feminist methods in international law. The American Journal of International Law 93(2):379–394. Copelon, R. 2000. Gender crimes as war crimes: integrating crimes against women into international criminal law. McGill Law Journal 46:217–240. Della Porta, D., K. Hanspeter, and D. Rucht, eds. 1999. Social Movements in a Globalizing World. London: Macmillan. Emmerij, L., R. Jolly, and T. Weiss. 2005. Economic and social thinking at the UN in historical perspective. Development and Change 36(2):211–235. Facio, A. 2004. All roads lead to Rome: but some are bumpier than others. In Global Issues, Women and Justice, edited by S. Pickering and C. Lamber. Pp. 308–318. Sydney: Institute of Criminology. Flockhart, T. 2006. Complex socialization: a framework for the study of state socialization. European Journal of International Relations 12(1):89–118. Florini, A., ed. 2000. The Third Force: The Rise of Transnational Civil Society. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Japan Center for International Exchange. Glasius, M. 2003. How Activists Shaped the Court. The War Crimes Project Magazine. http://www.crimesofwar.org/icc_magazine/icc-glasius.html, accessed March 30, 2012. Goldstone, R. 1997. The United Nation’s war crimes tribunal: an assessment. Connecticut Journal of International Law 12:227. Guidry, J., M. Kennedy, and M. Zald, eds. 2000. Globalizations and Social Movements: Culture, Power, and the Transnational Public Sphere. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press. Hall, C. K. 2000. The first five sessions of the UN Preparatory Commission for the International Criminal Court. The American Journal of International Law 94(4):773–789. Ikenberry, J. 1993. Creating yesterday’s New World Order: Keynesian new thinking and the Anglo-American post-war settlement. In Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions and Political Change, edited by J. Goldstein and R. Keohane. Pp. 57–86. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press. Jamison, S. 1995. A permanent Criminal Court: a proposal that overcomes past objections. Denver Journal of International Law and Policy 23(2):421–428. Keck, M., and K. Sikkink. 1998. Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press. Lipschutz, R. 1992. Reconstructing world politics: the emergence of global civil society. Millennium 2(3):389–420. Lycklama, A., G. Nijeholt, J. Swiebel, and V. Vargas. 1998. The global institutional framework: the long march to Beijing. In Women’s Movements and Public Policy in Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean, edited by G. Lycklama A Nijeholt, V. Vargas, and S. Wieringa. Pp. 25–48. New York: Garland Publishing. Moghadam, Valentine. 2000. Transnational feminist networks: Collective action in an era of globalization. International Sociology 15:57–85. Moghadam, V. 2005. Globalizing Women: Transnational Feminist Networks. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press. Mueller, J. 1993. The Emergence of Norms in Personal and International Behavior. Paper presented in 1993 conference, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Pace, W., and J. Schense. 2002. The role of non-governmental organizations. In The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court: A Commentary, Vols. I and II,

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edited by A. Cassesse, P. Gaeta, and John R.W.D. Jones. Pp. 105–44. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press. Price, R. 1997. The Chemical Weapons Taboo. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press. Oosterveld, V. 2005. The definition of ‘gender’ in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court: A step forward or back for international criminal justice? Harvard Human Rights Journal 18:55–84. Report of the Preparatory Committee on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court, UN Doc. A/CONF.183/2 available at http://www.un.org/icc/pre pcom.htm, accessed January 3, 2012. Risse-Kappen, T. 1995. Democratic peace warlike democracies: a social constructivist interpretation of the liberal argument. European Journal of International Relations 1(4):491–517. Rudolf, C. 2001. Constructing an atrocities regime: the politics of war crimes tribunals. International Organization 55(3):655–691. Sadat, L. N. 2002. International Criminal Court and the Transformation of International Law: Justice for the New Millennium. Ardsley, N.Y.: Transnational Publishers. Schabas, W. 2001. An Introduction to the International Criminal Court. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. Sikkink, K. 1993. Human rights, principled issue-networks, and sovereignty in Latin America. International Organization 47(3):411–441. Smith, J., C. Chatfield, and R. Pagnucco, eds. 1997. Transnational Social Movements and Global Politics: Solidarity beyond the State. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse Univ. Press. Steains, C. 1999. Gender issues. In The International Criminal Court: The Making of the Rome Statute, edited by R. S. Lee. Pp. 357–90. The Hague: Kluwer Law International. Stiles, K. 1998. Civil society empowerment and multilateral donors: International institutions and new international norms. Global Governance 4:199–216. Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice for the ICC. 1997. Recommendations and commentary for December 1997 PrepCom on the establishment of an international criminal court, United Nations Headquarters December 1–12, 1997, http://www. iccnow.org/documents/5PrepComRecommWomensC.pdf, accessed on May 25, 2012. Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice. 1999a. “About the Women’s Caucus”. http:// iccwomen.addr.com/caucus/about.htm, accessed May 25, 2012. Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice. 1999b. Integrating Gender in the World’s First Permanent Court, http://www.iccwomen.org/wigjdraft1/Archives/oldWCGJ/reso urces/bplus5/part1.htm, accessed May 25, 2012. Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice. 1999c. Beijing’s Critical Areas of Concern in the ICC, http://www.iccwomen.org/wigjdraft1/Archives/oldWCGJ/resources/ bplus5/part2.htm, accessed on May 25, 2012. Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice. 2000. Report of the March 2000 ICC Prepcom. http://www.iccwomen.addr.com/icc/pc200003/report.htm, accessed April 20, 2012.

7

People Living with HIV and AIDS in Thailand as Transnational Social Actors Wolfram Schaffar

In January 2006, the streets of Chiangmai in Northern Thailand were filled with about 10,000 demonstrators taking part in a mass protest against the sixth and decisive round of negotiations of the US-Thai Free Trade Agreement (FTA) (Hongthong 2006). The protests were organized by FTA Watch, an umbrella organization that brought together various NGOs, social movements, and grassroots organizations of people affected by the free trade agenda. The largest group represented was of people living with HIV and AIDS (PLHA), who feared that more stringent provisions in the FTA for the protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) would restrict access to affordable HIV drugs under the newly established universal healthcare scheme in Thailand (BIOTHAI 2008). The second largest group consisted of farmers who feared the loss of their livelihood once free trade brought cheap agricultural products from the United States to the Thai market. What was remarkable was not only the high turnout of protesters and their composition—rarely had there been a coalition between PLHA and farmers for mass mobilization—but also their protest strategies. On the day of the demonstration, a long march of protesters moved through the streets in a kind of ritual dance, occasionally kneeling down on the street for a moment, and then resuming the march toward the hotel on the banks of the river Ping, where the talks were held. While this group approached the hotel, another militant group wearing orange swimming vests swam to the hotel from the opposite side of the river. Both the composition of the protesters as well as their strategy reflected protests in Hong Kong a few weeks before. A broad coalition of social movements from various countries in Asia and the world mobilized and staged mass demonstrations during the entire World Trade Organization (WTO) summit in mid-December 2005 in Hong Kong. Most visible in the international media were Korean farmers who were portrayed as a tightly organized militant protest group with their ritual marching in the street and their symbolic crossings of the harbor basin in swimming vests to reach the convention center (Samuel 2005). Thai activists from FTA Watch were among the Korean protesters; they were detained together with the Koreans and suffered the same humiliating treatment by the Hong Kong

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police (Hong Kong People’s Alliance 2006). Back in Thailand, the protesters applied similar protest strategies in the streets of Chiangmai. When they managed to break through the police barricades and symbolically stormed the hotel, the negotiations had to be moved to a remote golf course where they broke down after a few days. While the breakdown of the negotiations was an immediate success of the protests, it could also be seen as a step that later led to a major shift in the global regulation of IPR. In December 2006, the Thai Minister of Public Health met the demands of the PLHA groups and issued a compulsory license (CL) on several HIV drugs, which overruled patent protection and allowed for the production of generic variants (Cohen 2007; Ford et al. 2009; Kamolrat 2009; Krikorian 2009; Schuettler 2007; Ten Kate 2007). This decision not only secured access to drugs under the Thai national health-care scheme, it also led to a drop in prices worldwide and to a readjustment of the global patent regime. Thai PLHA have been organized in a nationwide network since the mid1990s. Superficially, this network resembles other support groups in other countries, like the AIDS Hilfe in Germany. However, since their first public appearance at a demonstration in 1999, they have developed from a mere self-support network into a group of transnationally organized political actors. In this chapter, I will reconstruct the emergence of PLHA as a transnational social movement using the example of the Thai Network of People Living with HIV and AIDS (TNP+). Drawing on the definition of transnationality by Pries (2007) and the concept of transnationalization of the state by Demirović (2010), I will argue that the transnational character of TNP+ has sociological and political-structural characteristics. The former can be seen in the organizational network that TNP+ is embedded in. The transnational character in a political-structural perspective can be seen in the global political and economic effects that TNP+ triggered with their struggle against the global legal norm setting of IPR. 1

GLOBALIZATION, TRANSNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS, AND THE TRANSNATIONALIZATION OF THE STATE

There is a broad consensus that globalization—i.e. the increasing mobility of people, commodities, and capital—has brought about radical changes in the regulatory capacity of states. Under the pressure of liberalization politics promoted by well-organized interest groups and countries of the North through multilateral trade regimes like the WTO or through bilateral free trade agreements, countries have had to lower tariffs, cut state expenditures, and pursue privatization. Whereas countries in the North and South were exposed to the same kinds of policies, it is in the countries of the South with nascent social security nets, where the policies resulted in the precarization of living conditions of poor and marginalized groups

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(Deacon 2007). These social and economic rifts have led to the formation of various social movements, which have surfaced since the mid-1990s in mass demonstrations on a global scale at WTO Ministerial meetings, G8 summits, or other meetings of high-ranking, decision-making bodies that pushed forward the globalization project during the 1990s and early 2000s. One of the first events that drew the attention of the global public to the mobilization power of these new movements were the protests against the WTO Ministerial in Seattle in 1999, where the demonstration led to a collapse of the negotiations for the first time in the history of the WTO. When the WTO met in Hong Kong in December 2005, pictures of mass demonstrations at the convention site were already a familiar sight and what was called the Global Justice movement1 was a well-established phenomenon, already subject to social and political science research. From the very beginning, the movement had a great variety of issues that were voiced as well as different geographic origins; the movement was a broad coalition of environmental groups, human rights groups, women’s groups, groups fighting for indigenous rights, and small-scale farmers’ groups from countries in the North as well as in the South. The professional mobilization, to a large extent, was facilitated by the transnational activities of NGOs and their innovative use of new media. Smith (1997) introduced the term Transnational Social Movement Organizations (TSMO) to capture the organizational backbone of many networks, e.g. La Via Campesina, the network of small-scale farmers. The questions of whether the Global Justice movement can be analyzed as a transnational movement and the extent to which it constitutes a new historic subject are contested. Whereas Portes (1998) calls the formation of new social movements “transnationalisation from below,” in the sense that it is a reaction to the transnationalization of politics and capital and a genuine counterforce to globalization processes, Sassen (2008) sees the rise of a “new organizing logic of the political” as part of the emergence of a global civil society. According to Waterman (2004), the new social movement goes beyond the global protests and struggles of the 1960s, which he claims were parallel events without much of an interconnection. In contrast, he claims that the new movements are connected by tight networks and qualify as the formation of movements where a new form of internationalism is taking shape. Other analysts are more skeptical and see the new movements as purely virtual phenomena, which only materialize on the occasion of WTO Ministerials or G8 summits. Some go as far as to denounce the idea of transnational social movements as wishful thinking by leftist activists from the Global North, which serves to compensate for their feelings of powerlessness (van der Veen 2000). Since the onset of the global financial and economic crisis in 2008, the visibility of the major global institutions that used to push the globalization agenda has decreased dramatically. The WTO has not been able to stage a ministerial conference since its last meeting in Hong Kong in 2005, and it is doubtful if it will be able to complete the present round of negotiations

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(Doha round). Moreover, new emerging economies have challenged some fundamentals of the globalization project. Countries like Brazil, China, and South Africa are more and more openly embracing state-driven development policies in the tradition of developmental state paradigm, which, in some respects, runs counter to the liberalization agenda of the Washington Consensus. However, the fact that the WTO Ministerial meetings have come to a halt does not mean that progressive liberalization policies and market driven economic integration have also come to an end. On the contrary, with the new round of free trade initiatives by the EU, politics that were formerly pursued by the WTO have now shifted to a bilateral arena. Nevertheless, the end of the WTO as reference point and goal for mobilization gives us the opportunity to analyze the cycle of movements from the 1990s until 2008 and evaluate their character and impact from a distance. I will argue that the PLHA movement in general, and the TNP+ group of Thailand in particular, can be analyzed retrospectively as a transnational social movement, both in terms of its organizational structure and of its role in the process of transnationalization of the state. I am following Pries’ (2007) notion of transnationalism, which departs from concepts established in migration studies. In his programmatic paper where he sketches a research program of transnationalism, Pries suggests concentrating on “transnational societal units as relatively dense and durable configurations of transnational social practices, symbols and artifacts” (2007, 4) as the appropriate unit of analysis. He identifies transnational organizations as a crucial empirical field for the research of transnationalism in so far as it can serve to close the gap between micro- and macro-level studies. Drawing on earlier organizational studies like Keck and Sikkink’s (1998), Pries distinguishes between multinational organizations, global organizations, and transnational organizations. Multinational organizations are characterized as organizations with decentralized resources and weak coordination. Global organizations, on the other hand, are those with centralized resources and strong coordination. In contrast to both, transnational organizations are organizations with decentralized resources and strong coordination, such as Oxfam, Greenpeace, or Attac. I understand the study of PLHA as a contribution to the meso-level of organizational studies of transnationalism (Pries 2007). In my account of TNP+, which fights for access to drugs and against IPR, I show how the network qualifies as a transnational organization and how it developed from a local support group into an organization with decentralized resources and strong coordination. In addition to this sociological perspective of organization studies, I will use the concepts of internationalization and transnationalization of the state to capture another aspect of transnationalism of the PLHA groups. This theoretical framework (Brand 2010; Brand, Görg, and Wissen 2007; Brand et al. 2008; Demirović 2007, 2010; Hirsch 2001; Jessop 2001; Wissel 2007)

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draws on Poulantzas’s (2002) central idea that the state is a social relation. State institutions and apparatuses are seen as the material condensation of social power relations. Whereas their materiality (like buildings, personnel, and budget) as well as their role to facilitate and stabilize class compromises provide them with relative autonomy, they are constantly embattled by various interest groups and are being reshaped in the course of shifting power relations and balances. Building on these fundamental assumptions, the research approach of neo-Poulantzian state theory follows the Gramscian concept that civil society is not a sphere that is separate from the state, but rather consolidated into what Gramsci called the integral state (Gramsci 2007). The research program also draws on central assumptions of regulation theory, namely that the internal contradictions of the capitalist system have to be balanced by regulatory efforts of the state. In this way, the nation-state in the period of postwar Fordism can be grasped as a contingent articulation of the capitalist state, where specific national state institutions served to facilitate compromises between antagonistic factions inside the capitalist class and between the capitalist and working classes. The internationalization of the state is conceptualized along the same lines as the rearticulation or reconfiguration of institutions under conditions of changing class formations and power constellations. Brand and colleagues (2007, 2008) use the term “second order condensation of power relations” to capture these complex processes at different levels. An example would be environmental regulation, where the nation-states are dynamically interacting with the Convention of Biological Diversity, the World Intellectual Property Organization, and the WTO. Drawing on the same fundamental assumptions but with a different interpretation of the levels involved, Demirović (2010) conceptualizes the reconfiguration of the Fordist nation-state as “transnationalization.” Somewhat differently from the implicit hierarchy in the concept of a second order condensation of power relations, Demirović argues that present developments are leading toward what he calls a “transnational network state”— a decentralized global network of state institutions like, for instance, the global network of financial institutions consisting of the US Treasury, the European Central Bank, Wall Street, the rating institutions, and so on. On this theoretical background, I will analyze the social movement of PLHA in Thailand and argue that one aspect of their quality as transnational political actors can be seen in the role they played for the transnationalization processes of the Thai state. 2

THE STRUGGLE FOR ACCESS TO ARV DRUGS IN THAILAND

HIV appeared in Thailand as early as 1984. Until the beginning of the 1990s, the infection rate rose to 140,000 new infections per year and the epidemic

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seemed out of control (UNAIDS 2008). However, through a coordinated multisectoral approach that brought together state and civil society actors, the infection rate was successfully reduced, and by the mid-1990s, Thailand was hailed as one of the few countries in the developing world that seemed to have managed to escape the prospect of a pandemic. The relatively low infection rate of less than 14,000 new infections per year, however, meant a stabilization of the prevalence at a high level (1.4 percent), leaving the Thai authorities with the challenge of providing medical treatment for about 600,000 people infected with HIV (UNAIDS 2008). In the mid-1990s, antiretroviral (ARV) combination therapy was introduced as standard medication in the industrialized countries. ARV prolonged the life expectancy of HIV patients from a few years to more than twenty years, changing the perception of HIV from a lethal disease to a chronic one like diabetes. The situation in the developing world, where most of the HIV-infected people were and are living, however, was dramatically different. Until the end of the 1990s, due to the high cost of the ARV drugs and lacking medical infrastructure, the WHO as well as other international agencies estimated that treatment could not be provided on a universal basis (Ford et al. 2004; Sripen and Gill 2008). Thailand was no exception.

2.1 The National Level: The Formation of PLHA as Political Actors The fact that Thai PLHA, some of whom had already been taking part in pilot projects of ARV treatment, were confronted with the denial of access to medication, was one factor that triggered a process of self-organization. In 1998, the Thai Network of People Living with HIV and AIDS (TNP+) was founded. Wirat Purahong, president of TNP+, characterized the founding process as an act of self-empowerment (Lyttleton, Beesey, and Sitthikriengkrai 2007). In order to solve the problem of lack of access to drugs, patient groups joined hands with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), an international NGO working on health issues in Thailand, and established a network called Buyers’ Clubs (Kreudhutha et al. 2005; TNP+ n.d.). A Buyers’ Club is a structure where the patients themselves organize the procurement and delivery of ARV drugs parallel to the structures of a hospital, and in close cooperation with the hospitals. The first Buyers’ Club was established in a hospital in Rayong, where a nurse from MSF suggested taking over the procurement of the ARV medication because of the insufficiency of supplies under the public procurement system. With this step, the obstacles that prevented a comprehensive treatment were made visible and politicized: when the first Buyers’ Clubs started operating, some essential ARV drugs were only available as brand name products in Thailand, and members of the Buyers’ Clubs traveled to India to import generic variants (Sripen and Gill 2008). This action was an open breach of trade and patent laws. In South Africa, similar activities were openly staged in order to draw media

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attention to the patent restrictions (Boseley 2002). At its height, 21 branches of the Buyers’ Club operated throughout Thailand and secured the supply of drugs for more than 1,000 patients all over the country (Kreudhutha et al. 2005), many of whom would have died without this support. The cooperation between TNP+ and international NGOs like MSF made Thai PLHA experts in the field of health politics and laid the foundation for their political engagement at the national level. This was crucial for the implementation of treatment within the framework of the newly implemented Thai universal health-care system. The year 2001 marked a turning point for the development of healthcare provision in Thailand. Since the 1970s, social movements and labor unions had demanded the establishment of a health insurance system. However, until the 1990s, these demands were pushed aside as too expensive by various military-dominated governments for the sake of creating an investment friendly climate for foreign capital, or they were simply suppressed with military force in connection with the numerous coups d’état2 (Amara, Rakawin, and Nauemol 2002). The first steps toward a public health insurance scheme were taken in the 1990s, but since the scheme was tied to formal working contracts, the new system only reached a small proportion of the population. Despite a number of programs targeting those in need, more than three quarters of the population remained without protection. The turning point came in 2001 when Thaksin Shinawatra became prime minister. His victory in the general elections was based on his promise to introduce economic and social programs in order to pull Thailand out of the difficult economic situation after the Asian financial crisis of 1997/1998 (Pasuk and Baker 2008). The central pillar of the social programs was a tax-financed universal health insurance, which guaranteed every Thai citizen immediate access to medical treatment for the symbolic fee of 30 Baht (Hughes and Songkramchai 2007). This program meant a rapid improvement as far as access to medical services was concerned. The neoliberal opposition, however, criticized it as being populist and carrying incalculable financial risks. It is probably true that Thaksin’s motives in introducing the 30-Baht scheme were strategic and maybe even populist (Pasuk and Baker 2008). He did not consider himself a social revolutionary, but rather the CEO of Thailand Inc. whose major qualification for becoming prime minister was being a successful manager of his media conglomerate Shin Corp. Consequently, Thaksin’s reform policy was inconsistent: in essence, his reform programs were designed to bring about economic growth by expanding marketization, neoliberal restructuring, and privatization. At the same time, social programs were launched to counterbalance social hardships in order to secure the electoral majority. The fact that Thaksin used his social programs for populist reasons, however, has to be separated from an evaluation of the programs themselves. The model of a tax-based universal health-care scheme can be classified as

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an advanced social-democratic model of welfare as far as the parameters of egalitarianism and decommodification are concerned (Esping-Andersen 1990). Moreover, a broad coalition of social movements, unions, and progressive bureaucrats had been working on this proposal for a long time prior to Thaksin’s ascent, so that the actual political process with which it was pushed through did not affect its quality. Somewhat in contradiction to its principle of universality, although treatment of HIV with ARV drugs was not included in the 30-Baht scheme when it was first implemented. The reason was that there were doubts about the program’s budgeting, especially because the costs for ARV medication were expected to be incalculable due to the high prices of the drugs, the large number of infected people, and the need for lifelong medication. Here, the commitment of local groups of PLHA came into play: with the background of their experiences of self-organizing in Buyers’ Clubs, the PLHA groups could draw on many international contacts and on their expertise in organizing and budgeting the cost of treatment. They were able to argue on the basis of the prospective price development of Indian generics that, in principle, a treatment scheme was possible (Sripen and Gill 2008). In October 2001, the Government Pharmaceutical Organization (GPO) launched a fixed-dose combination of ARV (GPO-vir) on the basis of patent-free, first-line ARV drugs (Ford et al. 2009; Sripen and Gill 2008). Under the pressure of political campaigns, the Ministry of Public Health finally agreed to include ARV medication in the universal access to healthcare policy. This process was completed in 2003 when the National Access to Antiretroviral Programs for People living with HIV/AIDS (NAPHA) was established, and PLHA were integrated into all relevant medical and political planning processes, such as those concerning the definition of the standards of treatment or the allocation of the budget. Sripen and Gill (2008) consider this step as a change in quality as far as the cooperation between progressive ministerial bureaucracy and PLHA groups is concerned. At this stage, TNP+ was established as a social actor at the national level. Although the formation of the group was facilitated by cooperation with international NGOs like MSF, their organizational structure, i.e. local groups and a national coordination office, followed a national logic. In terms of neo-Poulantzian state theory, I interpret the establishment and consolidation of the Thai universal health scheme as a process of formation of state institutions, in the sense that they are a condensation of social power relations. According to Brand and colleagues (2008), due to structural heterogeneity and monetary restrictions, the state in many countries of the Global South is weak and lacking relative autonomy because it can rely only on partially hegemonic projects. However, the Thai institutional development in the health sector seems to show a different picture. Health policy was based on long-term civil society activism that brought together various movements and unions. It was a highly contested process, and when Thaksin implemented the 30-Baht scheme, it represented the materialization of a new social contract after the Asian financial crisis of 1997/1998

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(Hewison 2004). Despite persistent structural heterogeneity, the new health scheme was designed to be universal, and despite all the criticism it received for being badly financed, it was attractive to different sectors of society, including poor farmers, workers in the informal sector, as well as middleclass Thais living in Bangkok.

2.2

The Transnational Level: PLHA as Political Actors

No matter how solid the new social contract of the 30-Baht scheme may have been, the problem of access to drugs has a global dimension, which surpasses the regulatory capacity of local and national administrative bodies. At a very early stage of their engagement, the PLHA were confronted with the need to become active at the global level as well. As a first step, they focused on the legal aspects of the shortage of drugs, i.e. the international patent regime. Under pressure from the US administration, Thailand had reformed its patent laws as early as 1992. Under the new provisions, pharmaceutical substances were able to receive patent protection for twenty years, thirteen years before newly industrialized countries were obliged to implement these standards under the TRIPs treaty of the WTO (Jiraporn 2005). Some weeks before the new laws were enforced in 1992, the US-based company Bristol-Myers Squibb registered a patent on didanosine (ddI) (Ford et al. 2004; Weeraboon 2004). The same year, the Thai MoPH had begun to offer ARV monotherapy in hospitals, and was preparing the introduction of a triple therapy on the basis of generically produced didanosine, when the patent holder, Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS), intervened and prohibited the production (Weeraboon 2004). Instead, BMS offered to sell didanosine to Thailand at a special price. However, this price was still much higher than the generic drug would have cost. After the breakdown of the unsuccessful negotiations between the GPO and BMS, the PLHA groups and NGOs called for compulsory licensing as a way to legalize generic production without the consent of the patent holder. It was the first time they took up this issue as a political demand. As mentioned above, compulsory licensing is a tool that is explicitly sanctioned by the TRIPs agreement, especially in cases where health hazards have to be dealt with. However, due to the pressure through various channels from industrialized countries, no country in the developing world dared to make use of this flexibility (Ford et al. 2004; von Schoen-Angerer and Jiraporn 2001). When the GPO formally asked for a compulsory licensing in 1999 in order to be entitled to produce didanosine tablets, the request was refused by the Thai authorities. Meanwhile, the Thai struggle against patents had become an issue at the WTO Ministerial Conference in Seattle in December 1999, and the outrage over the effects of the restrictive interpretation of TRIPs was one factor that led to the historic collapse of the trade negotiations. That same month, about 100 PLHA organized a protest camp in front of the MoPH and became publically visible for the first time. The activists even managed to get a personal

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letter from US President Bill Clinton assuring them that compulsory licensing would not have any negative influence on Thai-US American relations (Jiraporn 2005). However, the Thai government stood by its position and refused to issue any compulsory licensing. What we see are the power effects that we would expect under conditions of globalization. National governments, in particular those in the Global South, are deprived of their regulatory capacity due to the pressure of organized interests from the Global North. Formal rule setting by multilateral organizations, such as the WTO, where in principle sovereign countries converge and arrive at a solution in a consensus-driven negotiation process, does not mirror the factual imbalances of power. At the end of the day, the real competencies of national governments are revealed through the processes and struggles on the ground. What is especially interesting is the fact that even the regulatory competence of the US administration seems to play no crucial role: the explicit encouragement of the president of the United States seems to have been overruled by factual power structures when it came to long-term economic and trade commitments. When it became clear that the possibility of resorting to compulsory licensing was barred, PLHA groups decided for the first time to challenge the patent judicially. Flaws in the application process of the patent promised a chance to win against BMS in court. A working group was formed to coordinate and prepare for the lawsuit, under the leadership of the AIDS Access Foundation, the Health and Development Foundation, and the Drug Study Group, an NGO of committed pharmaceutical researchers from Chulalongkorn University. The Law Society of Thailand, a professional organization of lawyers in Thailand, provided a lawyer pro bono, and MSF supported the coordination group with one full-time project manager (Ford et al. 2009; Weeraboon 2004). In May 2001, two PLHA, together with the AIDS Access Foundation, filed a lawsuit against BMS at the Central Intellectual Property and International Trade Court of Thailand. Rather than the judicial evaluation of procedural errors concerning the issuing of the patent, the litigation had to first answer the question of whether patients could be accepted as litigants in patent disputes (Ford et al. 2004; Weeraboon 2004). In its first ruling in October 2002, however, the court decided in favor of the litigants and explicitly accepted patients as plaintiffs. In addition to that, the court mentioned in its ruling that medical drugs were to be differentiated from other consumer goods because the high prices violated the human right of access to health care (Ford et al. 2004). To the same extent that this ruling was a novelty in the Thai jurisdiction, it was also setting a precedent in worldwide trade and IPR litigation. As such, it mirrored a change in the strategy of HIV and AIDS treatment, as well as a change in the interpretation of patent regimes. At the 2001 ministerial in Doha, Qatar, which was overshadowed by the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the WTO felt obliged to openly react to the critique of developing countries, NGOs, and social movements and issued the so-called Doha

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Declaration, which reaffirmed the possibility of compulsory licensing as one aspect of legal flexibility of the TRIPs agreement and also the fundamental right of patients to have access to treatment (WTO 2001). This partial success on the international political level soon became a point of reference in the struggle for compulsory licensing. Although BMS and the Thai Patent Authority appealed against the ruling, the working group under the leadership of the Drug Study Group used the verdict and its reference to the Doha Declaration and prepared for a second lawsuit, which targeted the legitimacy of the patent itself. Again it was PLHA together with an NGO, this time the Foundation for Consumers, who filed the lawsuit. However, in order to prevent another ruling that might constitute a precedent, BMS offered an out of court settlement to the plaintiffs in late 2003. TNP+ and the Drug Study Group, tired of years of judicial dispute during which several members of the PLHA groups had died—some due to the lack of access to medical drugs— accepted the settlement (Weeraboon 2004). In terms of neo-Poulantzian state theory, the court case can be analyzed as a step toward the internationalization or transnationalization of state institutions in Thailand. What was negotiated in the Central Intellectual Property and International Trade Court of Thailand was not just a domestic issue about how to organize access to ARV as part of the national universal health program. As can be seen from the character of the actors who met in court, the contestation had a transnational scope and the litigants represented transnational social forces. Since the WTO Ministerial in Seattle in 1999, social movements, NGOs and other actors of the emerging Global Justice movement had used the issue of Thai PLHA as an example of the negative impact of WTO regulations. During the court case, it was not only the Thai PLHA groups and MSF as an international NGO, but also groups like Act Up Paris, a French activist group working on HIV and AIDS, and the Consumer Project on Technology (CPTech), a US-based think tank working on IPR, which played a crucial role in linking up HIV/AIDS to other social issues and facilitated information flows and coordination between various actors at a global level. Thus, the Thai PLHA were the focal point of a transnationally organized network of social movements and NGOs. In court, they met with representatives of transnational corporations (TNC), which are not only working on their core business, such as the development of new medical products, but are also highly active in influencing political processes of norm setting that influence the conditions of production. What is interesting to note is that with the action taking place in the Central Intellectual Property and International Trade Court of Thailand, a national state institution became the condensation point of two social forces acting transnationally. Although the conflict was present at the WTO Ministerial in Doha as well, the arena of the Thai court was as important for the conflict as the highest decision-making body of the WTO. One reason for this may be the structure of the TRIPs agreement, which does not set up a centralized IPR regime but only defines a framework for national norm

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setting and legislation. Another factor is the role of precedents in international law, which uses the judgments of national courts and thus gives them an international scope. However, as the conflict about compulsory licensing shows, the dynamics of transnationalization of the state, i.e. the process by which national state institutions become condensation points for transnational social power relations, is not restricted to courts.

2.3 Compulsory Licensing and the Transnationalization of the State Although the Thai network consisting of PLHA groups and NGOs achieved its aim of broadening access to ARV medication under the universal coverage scheme on the basis of generically produced didanosine, the out of court settlement meant that no judicial judgment on the legitimacy of patents was achieved. Thus, despite the partial success, the problem of access to ARV medication was only postponed, and it was clear that it would soon become a problem in an even more serious form. The ARV medication provided for by the GPO was mainly based on a combination of so-called first-line drugs, i.e. drugs that were developed at an early stage of the HIV epidemic and for which the patent protection had already expired. In the course of the medical treatment of HIV, however, the virus inevitably develops resistance, meaning that at later stages of the treatment, certain first-line substances have to be substituted for so-called second-line drugs. Since these drugs result from relatively recent medical research, most of them are protected for at least another five years under legally indisputable patents. Another obstacle was that the transitional arrangements for the implementation of the TRIPs provisions for middle-income countries expired in 2005. This meant that countries like India had to comply fully with TRIPs standards until that date. The direct consequences were that the import and export of generic drugs was hindered and competition between different generic producers, which was the main trigger for cheap prices, was undermined. In order to prepare for the problems arising with the full implementation of TRIPs, the Brazilian Ministry of Public Health took the initiative and launched a number of semiformal meetings between officials from the health ministries of Brazil, China, Nigeria, Russia, Thailand, and Ukraine (Ministério da Saúde 2004). However, no steps were taken after that, and the coordination was only the first step in what would later evolve as an important new structure of cooperation. As with the other countries with a considerable population of PLHA, this new development posed serious problems for Thailand. Without access to cheap generic versions of second-line ARV drugs, the whole project of providing access to ARV under the universal coverage scheme would become unaffordable. In 2003, about 63 percent of the entire budget for ARV medication had to be allocated to only three patent-protected drugs (Cawthorne et al. 2007). The WHO calculated that the costs for second-line ARV drugs

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for one quarter of the HIV patients under treatment would use up three quarters of the budget until 2020. With prices being stable, costs would rise to 500 million US dollars per year. Therefore, even the World Bank recommended the use of compulsory licensing (Cawthorne et al. 2007; Revenga et al. 2006). The fact that compulsory licenses were issued in Thailand in late 2006 was the result of another episode of struggle where the local and the global level interacted in a specific way, granting the GPO the right to import and produce second-line drugs and making it possible to sustain the ARV treatment under the universal coverage scheme. A window of opportunity opened in 2006. In late 2005, Thaksin Shinawatra came under pressure from a social movement that mobilized mass demonstrations and demanded his ousting. Under the umbrella of the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD), a coalition was formed among various social movements that voiced different concerns and joined hands in their demand to oust Thaksin (Pye and Schaffar 2008). PLHA participated in response to Thaksin’s ambition to sign a Free Trade Agreement with the United States, which would have tightened the patent regime. As with most bilateral FTAs, the Thai-US FTA also contained so-called “TRIPS plus” provisions which went beyond the TRIPS agreement of the WTO, guaranteed longer periods of patent protection, and excluded flexibilities such as compulsory licensing. The prospect that Thailand might soon be unable to continue its ARV program, as well as many concerns from farmers and other groups affected by the free trade agenda, triggered a massive mobilization of various groups under the umbrella of FTA Watch, as described in the introductory paragraphs of this chapter. In January 2006, this network took to the streets of Chiangmai where the final negotiations about the treaty were being held and massive civil disobedience by about 10,000 farmers and PLHA caused the breakdown of the meeting. A few weeks later, FTA Watch agreed to join the anti-Thaksin protest movement in Bangkok and it was this coalition that made the PAD gain momentum in early 2006. However, although the PAD started out as a broad coalition of various civil society groups, it soon turned into a royalist-conservative movement calling for the king’s intervention to replace Thaksin (Hewison and Kengkij 2010). After a stalemate for several months, the military took the initiative and staged a coup d’état—a step that, after the bloody clash between the military and prodemocracy protesters in 1992, breached a taboo in Thai politics. The military abrogated the constitution, dissolved the parliament, and installed an interim government consisting of so-called experts. Whereas the coup meant a severe regression of the democratic process, it turned out to be a window of opportunity for progressive bureaucrats in the MoPH to take the next step in the struggle over compulsory licensing (Chotesungnoen 2009).3 Mongkol na Songkhla, a member of the progressive bureaucracy, became minister of public health in the military-installed government. During his one year in office, his diligence and dedication soon set him apart

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from the rest of the government, and he became one of the most popular politicians and the figurehead of the interim government. To a certain extent, the appointment of Mongkol as minister was as much an act of populism as the introduction of the universal coverage scheme by Thaksin. The government, which was sanctioned by the military, tried to make its mark in social policy in order to compensate for its lack of political legitimacy, especially in relation to all those who had supported Thaksin for his social agenda. Right after taking office, Mongkol issued the first compulsory license on efavirenz and breached a political taboo. Never before had a government in the developing world used the flexibility of TRIPS. A few weeks later, another two compulsory licenses for lopinavir+ritonavir by Abbott and for one drug for heart disease followed. With this step, Mongkol met the demands that PLHA groups and NGOs had pushed for since 1999, and his decision sent shock waves through the global patent policy of the big industrial countries as well as the pharmaceutical industry. What is crucial for the analysis is that only a few days later, Brazil, another large middle-income country, followed, issuing compulsory licenses for efavirenz (Bridges Weekly News Digest 2007; Ford et al. 2007). The significance the pharmaceutical companies placed on this action can be seen in their reactions (Check 2007). In an extensive public relations campaign with full-page advertisements in Thai newspapers, postings on Internet blogs, and articles in various newspapers, a lobby group disguised as an NGO spread the view that Mongkol’s policy was illegal and that the entire Thai government was as illegitimate as the Burmese military junta was. Abbott withdrew all pending applications for new drugs in Thailand and introduced a dual-price policy with reduced prices for essential medicines in middle-income countries that excluded Thailand from this offer. The entire population was symbolically punished. TNP+ and the network of HIV/AIDS activists used their international contacts in order to launch a campaign to support Mongkol. TNP+ participated in a boycott campaign against Abbott (TNP+ 2007), Act Up Paris organized a hacker attack on Abbott’s homepage, and through their international contacts, the network tried to counter the pressure that was exerted by the pharmaceutical industry (Erklärung von Bern 2008). The PR battle, in which Thailand was accused of breaking international law and WTO rules, continued for a couple of weeks. When in 2008 it became clear that the ministry stood by its compulsory licensing policy, even after the minister in charge changed twice, and when Brazil also continued its compulsory licensing policy, the campaigns were suspended. However, because no national government member of WTO ever questioned the legality of the step, the issuing of compulsory licensing was never formally ruled upon by the WTO dispute settlement body (Sonhkla 2009). This means that, for the time being, the Thai Ministry of Public Health’s decision established the use of compulsory licensing as a legitimate element of health policy. Furthermore, the ministry set standards of global validity.

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To put it more precisely, the Thai Ministry of Public Health evolved as one node of a coordinated network of health ministries, which constituted what can be called a transnational network state apparatus. The foundation for this regulatory power, however, lay in the struggle between the two antagonistic transnational actors. The arena where the struggle over legality of compulsory licensing condensed, i.e. where the balance of power between the antagonistic social forces of PLHA and the pharmaceutical companies materialized and yielded a specific outcome with global validity, was not the WTO, but rather an institution of the Thai nation-state. 3

CONCLUSION

In this chapter, I have sketched the development of the Thai policy dealing with HIV and AIDS. The focus of the study was on the processes that accompanied the implementation of universal access to medical treatment for HIV patients as part of Thailand’s national universal coverage healthcare scheme. I have shown that the Thai HIV/AIDS policy was developed under globalized conditions, where questions of global standards of IPR protection and health governance were negotiated and where transnationally organized antagonistic social forces evolved as crucial actors. I have shown that PLHA in Thailand, and TNP+ in particular, can be characterized as transnational social actors. Firstly, their organizational structure, which evolved in the course of their struggle, led to a transnational integration into a network that was characterized by decentralized resources and dense coordination. Secondly, the movement played a crucial role in the transnationalization process of the Thai state. Because TNP+ brought the struggle between the PLHA movement and the transnational pharmaceutical companies to state institutions in Thailand, it triggered a process that established Thai state institutions as nodes of what Demirović (2010) called a transnational network state. NOTES 1. This movement, which was retrospectively referred to as the Global Justice movement, was also called the Anti-Globalization Movement, GlobalizationCritical Movement, or, in Romance languages, movimiento altermundista or mouvement altermondialiste (Goodman 2009). 2. The systematic prohibition of the establishment of social security schemes is a typical feature of developing countries that belong to the capitalist block. Regulation theory has coined the term Bloody Taylorism for these regimes. 3. I do not intend to follow Chotesungnoen’s (2009) framework of opportunity structures as analytical category. On the contrary, in the framework spelled out here, the shift in the balance of power, brought about by the contestation of transnationally organized actors, is the crucial precondition for the successful implementation of compulsory licensing policy.

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Ford, N., D. Wilson, P. Cawthorne, A. Kumphitak, S. Kasi-Sedapan, S. Kaetkaew, S. Teemanka, B. Donmon, and C. Preuanbuapan. 2009. Challenge and cooperation: civil society activism for access to HIV treatment in Thailand. Tropical Medicine and International Health 14(3):258–266. Goodman, J. 2009. From global justice to climate justice? Justice ecologism in an era of global warming. New Political Science, Special Issue on the Changing Face of Political Ideologies in the Global Age 31(4):499–514. Gramsci, A. 2007. Prison Notebooks. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. Hewison, K. 2004. Crafting Thailand’s new social contract. The Pacific Review 17(4):503–522. Hewison, K., and K. Kitirianglarp. 2010. “Thai-style democracy.” The royalist struggle for Thailand’s politics. In Saying the Unsayable. Monarchy and Democracy in Thailand, edited by S. Ivarsson and L. Isager. Pp. 179–20. Kopenhagen: NIAS. Hirsch, J. 2001. Die Internationalisierung des Staates. In Die Zukunft des Staates, edited by J. Hirsch, B. Jessop, and N. Poulantzas. Pp. 101–138. Hamburg: VSA. Hong Kong People’s Alliance on WTO and Asian Human Rights Commission. 2006. Human Rights Violations during the Policing, Arrests, and Detentions during the WTO Protests in Hong Kong, December 2005 [Submission to the 86th Session of the U.N. Human Rights Committee: Consideration of the Second Report of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China in light of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights], Hong Kong. http://www.ahrchk.net/pdf/HKPA_AHRC-UNReport2006. pdf, accessed April 2006. Hongthong, P. 2006. FTA TALKS: Protesters Storm Trade Negotiations. The Nation. January 11, 2006. http://www.bilaterals.org/?fta-talks-protesters-stormtrade&lang=en. Hughes, D., and S. Leethongdee. 2007. Universal coverage in the land of smiles: lessons from Thailand’s 30 Baht health reform. Health Affairs 26(4):999–1008. Jessop, B. 2001. Globalisierung und Nationalstaat. Imperialismus und Nationalstaat bei Nicos Poulantzas. In Die Zukunft des Staates, edited by J. Hirsch, B. Jessop, and N. Poulantzas. Pp. 71–100. Hamburg: VSA. Keck, M., and K. Sikkink. 1998. Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Inthaca: Cornell Univ. Press. Kreudhutha, N., B. Donmon, K. Upakaew, P. Cawthorne, O. Bunjumnong, D. Wilson, and N. Ford. 2005. Experience of a community-based antiretroviral Buyers’ Club in Thailand. Essential Drugs Monitor 34:10–11. Krikorian, G. 2009. The politics of patents: conditions of implementation of public health policy in Thailand. In Politics of Intellectual Property, edited by S. Haunss and K. C. Shadlen. Pp. 29–55. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Limpananont, J. 2005. Impact of US-Thailand FTA in access to medicines in Thailand. In Free Trade Agreements and Their Impacts on Developing Countries: The Thai Experience, edited by C. Chanyapate Bamford and A. Bamford. Pp. 59–74. Bangkok: FTA Watch. Lyttleton, C., A. Beesey, and M. Sitthikriengkrai. 2007. Expanding community through ARV provision in Thailand. AIDS Care 19:44–53. Ministério da Saúde, Secretaria de Vigilância em Saúde, Programa Nacional de DST e Aids. 2004. A Technological Network on HIV/Aids amongst Developing and Emerging Countries. Ministério da Saúde: Brasilia. Phongpaichit, P., and C. Baker. 2008. Thaksin’s populism. Journal of Contemporary Asia 38(1):62–83. Pries, L. 2007. Transnationalism: Trendy Catch-all or Specific Research Programme? A Proposal for Transnational Organisation Studies as a Micro-Macro-Link. Paper presented at the conference on ‘Transnationalisation and Development(s): Towards a North-South Perspective,” Center for Interdisciplinary Research,

People Living with HIV and AIDS in Thailand

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Bielefeld, Germany, May 31–June 01, 2007 COMCAD Arbeitspapiere—Working Papers No. 34. Portes, A. 1998. Globalisation from below: The rise of transnational communities. Transnational Communties Working Paper Series No. 1, Oxford. http://www. transcomm.ox.ac.uk/working%20papers/portes.pdf. Poulantzas, N. 2002 [1978]. Staatstheorie. Hamburg: VSA. Pye, O., and W. Schaffar. 2008. The 2006 anti-Thaksin movement in Thailand: an analysis. Journal of Contemporary Asia 38(1):38–61. Revenga, A., M. Over, E. Masaki, W. Peerapatanapokin, J. Gold, V. Tangcharoensathien, S. Thanprasertsuk. 2006. The Economics of Effective AIDS Treatment. Evaluating Policy Options for Thailand. Washington: The World Bank. Samuel, J. 2005. WTO Ministerial: Story of a farce foretold. InfoChange, December 2005. http://infochangeindia.org/other/analysis/wto-ministerial-story-of-a-farceforetold.html. Sassen S. 2008. Neither global nor national: novel assemblages of territory, authority and rights. Ethics & Global Politics 1(1/2):61–79. Schuettler, D. 2007. Interview—Thailand fed up with high drug prices—minister. Reuters, Bangkok, February 19. http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/02/19/ us-thailand-drugs-minister-idUSSP34188520070219. Smith, J. 1997. Social movements and world politics: a theoretical framework. In Transnational Social Movements and Global Politics: Solidarity beyond the Nation State, edited by J. Smith, C. Chatfield, and R. Pagnucco. Pp. 59–77. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse Univ. Press. Sonhkla, MN. 2009. Health before profits? Learning from Thailand’s experience. The Lancet 373:441–442. Tantivess, S., and W. Gill. 2008. The role of state and non-state actors in the policy process to the scale-up of antiretroviral therapy in Thailand. Health Policy and Planning 23(5):328–338. Ten Kate, D. 2007. The bold Thai health minister who rattled big pharma will step aside after next month’s election. Asia Sentinel, November 23. http://www.asiasentinel. com/politics/thailands-drug-company-stare-down-faces-an-uncertain-future/. TNP+. 2007. To the citizens of the world. Boycott Abbott. http://www.petitionon line.com/bcottabb/petition.html, accessed June 18, 2011. TNP+. n.d. Chomrom cat syy yaa. Bangkok: TNP+. http://www.thaiplus.net/page4. html, accessed December 5, 2006. UNAIDS and WHO. 2008. Asia, AIDS Epidemic Update. Regional Summary. Geneva: WHO. Van der Veen, R. 2000. Event-Hopping. iz3w, Oktober 2000, 248. von Schoen-Angerer, T., and J. Limpananont. 2001. US pressure on Thailand. The Lancet 358:245. Waterman, P. 2004. The global justice and solidarity movement and the WSF: a backgrounder. In World Social Forum: Challenging Empires, edited by J. Sen and P. Waterman. Pp. 55–63. Montréal: Black Rose. Wisartsakul, W. 2004. Civil Society Movement to Revoke the Thai Patent on ddI. Bangkok: Medecins sans frontieres—Belgium (MSF-B). Wissel, J. 2007. Die Transnationalisierung von Herrschaftsverhältnissen. Zur Aktualität von Nicos Poulantzas’ Staatstheorie. Baden-Baden: Nomos. WTO. 2001. Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health [adopted on 14 November 2001], WTO Ministerial Conference, Fourth Session, Doha, 9–14 November 2001, WT/MIN(01)DEC/2.

8

Asian New Religious Movements as Transnational Cultural Systems Implications for Agency Wendy Smith

1

INTRODUCTION

This chapter will focus on the way in which transnational new religious movements (NRMs) provide globally accessible alternative cultural systems in which individuals assert their agency, in a context which transcends their national identity or culture of socialization. They do this by choosing, through a process of religious conversion and commitment to the organization’s daily lifestyle requirements, to become members of these NRMs, which may have originated in cultures often very different from their own, conceptualized as ‘cultural distance’ (Hemmasi, and Downes 2013; Shenkar 2012).1 In doing so, the members radically depart from many of the values and practices of their culture of birth or socialization in their daily lives and social relationships, to participate in the transnational culture of the movement. In fact, in many cases the degree of cultural distance between their culture of upbringing and the culture of the NRM is striking. For instance, highly traditional Asian cultural practices and values, such as those embodied in NRMs from Japan or India, may be embraced by people brought up in European cultures. This has been called the Easternization of the West (Campbell 2007), but the phenomenon is equally true for these Asian NRMs being taken up in Africa or in other Asian countries with significantly different cultures. In this chapter, I examine the phenomenon of cultural distance from a new perspective, where individuals are living in their country and culture of origin but have adopted a new culture for their daily lives, the culture of the NRM to which they have affiliated by a process of conversion, without leaving their home base. Moreover, the culture of the NRM exists transnationally and is embraced equally by members from many national contexts.2 Hence, the agency of the individual in a transnational religious context is examined in the context of case material unique to the description of cultural distance in current research. Thus, while continuing to reside in their country of origin, the members of these NRMs enter a transnational community, meeting other members from around the globe, for instance, during international trips for pilgrimage to the movement’s headquarters. In doing so, they fundamentally alter

Asian New Religious Movements as Transnational Cultural Systems 149 many of their roles and social positions in their societies of birth and socialization. Using case studies of two NRMs as empirical examples, I demonstrate how the transnational cultural system of the NRM exerts a strong pull which transcends national cultural allegiances to establish a transnational membership where the original ethnic or national identities of individuals become secondary. It will be shown how the entrance into these transnational NRMs lessens the difficulties that are typically associated with crossing boundaries of culture, nationality, and ethnicity. In this process, members’ individual agency is enhanced, and this may in fact be a key element in motivating their conversion to the movement.3 The chapter will discuss how a notion of enhanced agency is a vital element in the conversion process and how membership in the NRM increases the agency of individuals in the context of their individual daily lives, within the circle of members, in the wider society and in the world, conceived globally and in future time. Religion, as part of ethnic identity, is usually discussed in the context of transnationality as one of the central institutions in the social life of newly settled communities, which becomes a key source of binding relationships for activating social capital, cooperative networks, and identity affirmation, as it unifies the group in the face of marginality and deprivation. In fact, their faith often becomes intensified in the process (Levine and Stoll 1997). In other words, it is an important resource for migrants to gain agency, often in a deprived situation as members of minority, lower-class communities. Less attention has been paid to the transnationality of religious organizations, where religious identities are maintained across the borders of nation states in a community whose members do not necessarily have face-to-face daily life contact. Hence, this chapter will focus on religion in a different light, as a context for the existence of transnational imagined communities (Anderson 1983), which transcend the nation state and often the cultural boundaries associated with the nation state or its dominant population.4 Whereas it has been common to view the major religions as having a global presence, and in some cases, a central administration, for instance, the Roman Catholic Church, in the case of global NRMs, including revitalized movements of the established religions such as Zen Buddhism, this transnationality takes on a more dynamic quality at the level of individual members. The religions under study are two such NRMs, Sukyo Mahikari (Supra Religion of True Light) (henceforth, Mahikari), based in Japan, and the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University (BKWSU, henceforth, BKs) (Prajapita Brahma Kumaris Ishwariya Vishwa Vidyalaya) based in India. They were conceived by their founders at the outset as supra religions which subsume existing religions. For instance, in Mahikari, it is said that it is not incompatible with other religions, but practicing Mahikari will make a Christian a better Christian, a Jewish person a better follower of Judaism, etc. (Cornille 1991). Similarly, while not using the term ‘supra religion’, BK doctrine includes the notion of the Tree, whose branches are the major

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religions, with the founder Brahma Baba and his female counterpart, Mama, at the root (see Ramsay 2009, 117). These NRMs are thus viewed as transnational organizations, akin to multinational corporations (MNC) (Smith 2008), but with a spiritual rather than a profit core to their raison d’être. NRMs and MNCs are comparable in many aspects, such as global reach, membership size, property holdings, financial wealth and its management, staffing, issues of operating in crosscultural management and communication contexts and so on (Nakamaki 1991; Matsunaga 2000; Smith 2006). In far-flung MNCs, operations are reinforced by a central reference point, a strong and identifiable corporate culture, which is usually heavily influenced by the local culture at the headquarters, and is embodied in secular rituals, dress codes, communication styles, myths, and focal roles especially relating to the founder and leaders. The culture thus becomes the repository of roles and associated values which guide the behavior of employees when they communicate or travel around different international branches of the MNC. This is no less true for religious organizations (Smith 2002). Therefore the ‘corporate culture’ of the NRM is of extreme significance in the way it impacts on the daily lives of members. Where it is very different from their culture of upbringing, it takes effort on the part of the individual to embrace that difference and maintain allegiance to the new ‘culture’, with the new roles, values, rituals, and practical living arrangements it mandates. Significantly, the discussion of how NRMs will operate as multinational organizations in new cultural contexts is usually focused on how they will adapt to the new setting at the organizational level, in other words, how much hybridity or enculturation in doctrinal interpretations or rituals will be either purposely created by the parent organization or tolerated by its central leaders as a spontaneous outcome of local adaptations. However, Cornille (1991) has observed: Over its two decades of missionary activity in the West, Mahikari has not developed any real policy of inculturation. If there is a policy at all, it has been to resist any form of transformation by the culture into which it moved. (. . .) It is to a certain extent this resistance to inculturation that accounts for the success of Mahikari in the West. The appeal of a religion like Mahikari lies in its functional, explicitly magical nature, in its promise of immediate and this-worldly effects, in its emphasis on healing. (282–283) I argue that in some NRMs, especially the two described here, the ‘metaphor of purity’ (McVeigh 1992) is so strong that there is no possibility of change of doctrine or core ritual, and it is the members, no matter how culturally distant their background, who must adapt. This does not mean that everyone is able to do this. The dropout rate of those who enter an NRM can be high.5 From the anthropological participant observation I conducted, the core members maintained a very high level of adherence

Asian New Religious Movements as Transnational Cultural Systems 151 to the movements’ values and rituals, many of them for decades, and this shared uniformity of ‘corporate culture’ facilitated their ability to visit centers transnationally and communicate with other members without any cross-cultural communication boundaries. Despite the global and transnational aspects of these world-pervasive NRMs, the nation state cannot be discounted from the discussion, and, indeed, some NRMs take on the nation state in a spiritual project of reform. Conversely, the nation state may take them on as potential destabilizers of the state, as in the case of Falun Gong in China (Penny 2012, 35–37). For instance, Soka Gakkai, a Japanese revitalized Buddhist NRM set up its own political party, the Komeito (Clean Government Party) which has had considerable success in parliamentary representation (Fisker-Nielsen 2012). Mahikari invites influential public figures to the major annual ceremonies at its headquarters, and, similarly, the BKs set up conferences and seminars for local policy makers and politicians.6 At the supranational level, the United Nations, the BKs describe themselves as an international NGO, where they have general consultative status with the Economic and Social Council, consultative status with UNICEF, and affiliation with the UN Department of Public Information.7 BK representatives based in New York have been active in the UN’s Values Caucus and various climate change fora (Ramsay 2009, 212–219). The research for this topic has been multisited (Marcus 1995) and longitudinal, involving the collection of qualitative data through anthropological participant observation and interviews. Fieldwork was conducted in Mahikari centers from 1995 to 1997, in Australia in Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney, and the regional headquarters in Canberra, and in centers in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, and Manila. I also visited centers in Kyoto, and the headquarters, the Main World Shrine, in Takayama, Japan. My participant observation and interviews were conducted in BK centers from 1997 to 2007, in Australia in Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney, including the Regional Headquarters, retreat centers in Baxter and the Blue Mountains. I also visited centers in Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur), Philippines (Manila), Germany (Munich, Regensburg and Nuremberg), Sweden (Stockholm), Spain (Granada and Barcelona), Italy (Rome), Netherlands (Amsterdam), USA (Washington and New York), United Kingdom (Global Co-operation House in London, headquarters for the movement’s international activities, the Global Retreat Center in Oxfordshire), the three campuses of the main headquarters at Madhuban, Gyan Sarovar, and Shantivan at Mt Abu, Ragasthan, and other centers in India (Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad). 2

NRMS AS TRANSNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS—THE CASE OF THE BRAHMA KUMARIS AND SUKYO MAHIKARI

Transnational new religious movements (NRMs) present holistic social systems of beliefs and values; rituals for coping with crisis and uncertainty; daily routines, codes for dress, diet, and relationships; ways of speaking,

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greeting; annual festivals, and rituals for birth, marriage (where appropriate), and death, to converts across the globe (Smith 2007a). Joining such organizations radically changes a convert’s cultural perspective on life. But even more important is the fact that many NRMs have made this impact across a global sweep of cultures with little perceivable variation in the way converts from different national origins accept the new system. These global NRMs frequently originate from Asia, in which case their beliefs and rituals are grounded in the Asian culture of origin. This makes for quite an extreme form of cultural dissonance with followers from the West, Africa, and Latin America. Yet converts accept the total package of doctrine and lifestyle and modify their persona, personal values, daily routines, kin, and voluntary relationships, not to mention diet, speech patterns, and dress, in order to embrace their new spiritual path. And this happens among all fully committed members within one NRM, despite their nationalities (see Walliss 2002, xii, citing Howell and Nelson 1998 (published 2000)).

2.1 Central Characteristics of Sukyo Mahikari and the Brahma Kumaris Before examining the transnational features of the two NRMs, which are used as case studies for this analysis, I will briefly outline Sukyo Mahikari and the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University. Sukyo Mahikari is a Japanese Shintoistic NRM established in Japan in 1960 by Okada Kotama (1901–1974), respectfully called Sukuinushisama (Great Saviour), who received revelations from God in 1959. After his death, the organization encountered problems with the leadership succession process, and it bifurcated into two. Sukuinushisama’s adopted daughter, Okada Keiju, respectfully called Oshienushisama (Great Teacher), assumed the leadership of the Sukyo Mahikari wing and it has come to have the greater following overseas (Smith 2007b), with its headquarters the Main World Shrine (Suza) in Takayama, Gifu Prefecture, Japan (Tebecis 1982). In Japanese, Mahikari means True Light, a spiritual and purifying energy, the Divine Light of the Creator, Su God. People become members or kamikumite (those who go hand in hand with God) after attending the three-day Primary Kenshu (training course) and receiving an omitama (divine locket) which enables the person to act as a channel through which they project the True Light from Su God. The giving of True Light (okiyome, or purification) is the central activity of Mahikari, along with attending regular monthly and annual ceremonies when the Light is intensified. The purpose of transferring Light is to purify the mind of the receiver and the attaching spirits seeking revenge for the karmic misdeeds of the individual during former lives or those of his or her ancestors. It is emphasized by the organization that, although dramatic miracles of healing may result, such as a cure for cancer, the process is one of purification and not of healing per se (Tebecis

Asian New Religious Movements as Transnational Cultural Systems 153 1982, 2004). Nevertheless, many members join the movement due to the healing they have experienced (see Smith 2007b).8 The Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University is a Hinduistic NRM9 which emerged in Hyderabad in the 1930s and was forced to move to Karachi in the 1940s, then Mt Abu, Rajasthan after the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. It was founded by Dada Lekhraj, a pious Hindu and a wealthy jeweler and member of the Hindu Bhaiband caste of merchants from Sindh. In the mid-’30s, Dada Lekhraj began to have strange visions of transcendental power, of blissful light energy, and utter destruction. He withdrew from secular life and established spiritual gatherings for scriptural study, meditation, and chanting. Many women attended, as their husbands, as merchants, were often away from home. The group, initially called Om Mandli, received hostile attacks from the community, as wives and daughters were seen to be leaving their families and following the celibate lifestyle of the movement. (Chander 1983; Ramsay 2009; Walliss 2002) In 1937 Dada Lekhraj, who came to be known as Brahma Baba, handed over all his wealth and the management of the movement to a group of young women practitioners, who later became the leaders of the movement, a very unusual affirmation of the spiritual and organizational capabilities of women according to the values of the time (Babb 1984; Howell 1998; Skultans 1993). The community secluded itself on Mt Abu for many years, then emerged to establish centers all over India. Overseas expansion began in 1971 from the International Coordinating Office in London, and the movement now claims to have 8500 centers in 115 countries, with a membership approaching one million (Ramsay and Smith 2008). The central practice of the BKs is raja yoga, an open-eyed meditation practice in a comfortable seated posture, gazing at the representation of Shiv Baba, the Supreme Soul, a star-shaped burst of light on a red background (Ramsay 2009, 124). Purity through regular mediation and lifestyle, vegetarianism and celibacy, is the key theme in BK life. Members rise at 4.00 a.m., for amrit vela, a time of meditation and private conversation with God, then bathe, put on white clothing, and attend their local center for the morning murli class, when, after a period of raja yoga meditation, a center resident will read the murli text for that day, a text based on trance messages conveyed by Brahma Baba from Shiv Baba, the Supreme Soul, during his lifetime, or by a trance messenger, one of the senior sisters, Dadi Gulzar, since his passing. Another central practice of the group is the exchange of dristhi (Babb 1981) the open-eyed gazing between a senior member who is leading the meditation and individual meditators. While seated on the gaddi, a padded platform, facing the class in front of the Shiv Baba representation, she or he conveys through the eyes the godly energy from Shiv Baba, glancing at the forehead (third eye) of each meditator around the room in turn. In returning this gaze, members relate various paranormal experiences and perceptions of light while receiving dristhi. The significance of ‘altered states of consciousness’ experiences for the commitment of members of NRMs and the BKs

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in particular has been described in a detailed study of the organization by Howell (1997). The BKs offer various courses with secular appeal, such as Positive Thinking, Self-Management Leadership, which attract wide participation from members of the public. Becoming a committed BK is a gradual process. One attends the Seven Day Course. The curriculum includes an explanation of karma, the notion of the Tree, which includes all the major religions, and most importantly, the notion of the cycle of time (Walliss 2002, 58–59), a 5000 year cycle, also found in Hindu philosophy, which explains that human life is perfect in the Golden Age, then degrades in the subsequent Silver Age, then further in the Copper Age when vices emerge and human beings need the support of prophets and religious teachings, so the major religions emerge, then there is further degradation of society in the Iron Age (recently), and the current Confluence Age which is the cusp of an apocalyptic transformation back to the Golden Age, during which only those who have been following a pure BK lifestyle will be on earth. Gradually, the other souls who have been waiting in the soul world will come into incarnation in the subsequent ages. Thus BKs can be said to be a millenarian movement.

2.2

The Transnational Features of Mahikari and the BKs

As transnational NRMs, Mahikari and the BKs have branch centers in the capital cities and other major regional cities of countries in all continents. Membership in these NRMs is typically a matter of individual agency, a process of individual conversion, often going against the person’s cultural and religious background of socialization and, even in extreme cases, against established family ties. In other words, converts to new religions leave their community or ethnic group of socialization, often distancing themselves from their birth family as well, or insisting they convert too in order to keep the family together, and enter the new ‘family’ of members which transcends national and cultural boundaries, as well as local community and family ties. In its place, the convert enters a new family, yet one which requires a new set of practices for daily life. Thus the individual, and his or her family, if they agree to accompany the person on this process of conversion (some do not) live geographically and economically inside, but in terms of identity and spirituality, psychically and emotionally, outside the pervasive society. In other words, their affiliation with the organization becomes their primary identity. It must be added that members establish localized communities too, and due to the intensity of daily ritual obligations, many move to have close geographical proximity to a local center which they attend daily. Friendship circles tend to shrink to members of the organization. So this network is also reinforced by living in a spatially close community, a neighborhood of the BK center, or even co-resident, single-sex households (bhavan) (Howell and Nelson n.d., 15). In the case of Mahikari, conventional family life, of parents and their children, is celebrated so family households may seek to buy or rent a house closer to their center.

Asian New Religious Movements as Transnational Cultural Systems 155 3

THE TRANSFORMATION OF IDENTITY AND PERSONAL LIFE

In the context of transnationality, identity has mainly been discussed in the context of migration (see, for instance, Vertovec 2001), with recognition of the portability of national identity (Sassen 1998), and the suggestion that migrants may develop multiple identities as they move back and forth between multiple social worlds (Castles 2000). This chapter contributes a new perspective on identity in the context of transnationality, by providing ethnographic data on the transformation of identity in the context of a transnational NRM, while the individual remains resident within his or her nation state. In a sense, the identity change which manifests after one joins the NRM is in contest with prior identities. In the section below, data on contexts of identity change will be presented. The identity of an individual as a social actor may be expressed through his or her choice of name; appearance as manifested in clothing styles, personal grooming, etc.; language or style of speech used; food and drink consumed; choices concerning sexual relationships, etc. The cultural norms and values associated with these patterned behaviors are usually derived from a long-term process of socialization. After joining the NRM, however, members manifest many changes in values and associated behaviors derived from the encounter with its ‘new’ culture, leading to a purposeful change in their identity. Conversion to the NRM also involves members changing other fundamental aspects of their personal lives, such as kin/affinal relationships, occupations, places of residence, etc. Some of these contexts will now be described in detail within the two NRM case studies.

3.1

Names

It is common for converts to a religion to be given a new name. This was true of the BKs in the early days of international expansion when foreign (non-Indian) converts, referred to as ‘double foreigners’ when they visit the headquarters in Mt Abu, were given Indian names. Such names became terms of address and reference within the movement and, if the individual chose it, in secular contexts as well. The custom of giving new ‘double foreigner’ members an Indian name has died out, but some of those with earlier names still use them.

3.2

Clothing

Many religions specify forms of dress as appropriate or even mandatory for their members. Often these are delineated along gender lines, or pre-, post-puberty life stages. For instance, dress codes for males and females are highly codified in Islam and have become a key definer of membership in the religion. As such, following dress codes becomes a central signifier of membership in the religious community and a personal way of asserting one’s identity as a member.

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The standard ‘uniform’ of BKs is a modest white garment, the sari or khalwar shameez for women and kurta pajamas (long tunic and pants) for men (Ramsay 2009, 135, 188). In India, white garments signify spiritual purity. Members wear white garments when attending the inner circle’s early morning meditation and murli classes where only full members are present. In the early days of global expansion, non-Indian members outside India were known to wear white clothing, even saris, to their secular jobs, but this extreme form of identifying with the movement has softened. The issue of modifications to dress is one of the few observable aspects of hybridity. Even at public events, incorporating lectures by visiting Dadis (‘grandmothers’— a respectful term for a senior female leader), for instance, members formerly greeted members of the public wearing their white clothing, but this has stopped as it was felt that this would set them apart too dramatically from those attending. Also there was the fear of being seen as a ‘cult’.10 But when visiting the headquarters in India, all members from all countries wear white all the time, usually from their point of departure. In Mahikari there are no special styles of dress, but, nevertheless, there is a dress code for members to wear neat, modest clothing when visiting the centers to give and receive True Light. As it involves kneeling and lying down, suitable garments are required, and a blanket will be provided for women who have come to the center in a dress rather than slacks.

3.3

Food and Drink

Commensality, eating and drinking together, is one of the strongest contexts for forming and maintaining social relationships. In premodern societies, offering food is a sign of friendship and accepting food is a sign of trust as the food may be poisoned or contain magical substances designed to influence the outcome of a relationship. In many religions, the sharing of food and drink is incorporated into sacred rituals, for instance, the Christian Communion, and the ganachakra in Hinduism and Vajrayana Buddhism. Religions also delineate which food may or may not be consumed and at which times. Food taboos and restrictions are thus part of the main world religions.11 Many NRMs similarly exhibit special rituals, rules, and prohibitions related to food. This is a very powerful way of defining membership of the organization, creating an in-group and out-group context and reinforcing identities. If people cannot eat together because of ritual food taboos, an immediate, powerful boundary is drawn around members of that religious community. In the case of the BKs, there are very strong food taboos. BKs follow a sattvic (pure) diet, similar to that of the Hindu Brahmin caste. The diet is strictly vegetarian and, additionally, no garlic, onion, or egg may be consumed. Likewise, drinking alcohol and smoking are not permitted. The rationale is that the consumption of ‘strong’ foods or intoxicating substances creates a state of ‘body consciousness’, whereas the aim of BKs is,

Asian New Religious Movements as Transnational Cultural Systems 157 through meditation, to be as far as possible while living in the secular world, in a state of purity which facilitates ‘soul consciousness’. This is achieved by regular meditation and remembrance of God throughout the day, by adhering to the dietary rules, and by living a celibate life. Similarly, food consumed by BKs should be cooked only by oneself or by another BK living the dedicated lifestyle of a BK, in order for the food to have the spiritual attribute of soul consciousness. When the movement was new in the West, members were exhorted not to eat food at their family homes if the family members where not BKs. Some young members were therefore placed in the difficult position of not being able to eat their mother’s cooking, and they took their own rations to family gatherings. Unlike the BKs, there are no food taboos associated with being a member of Mahikari. However, members do purify their food with the Light in order for it to have a more beneficial effect. They also give Light to foodstuffs they are making such as miso (fermented soya bean paste), and I was told that the miso does not decay so quickly if it has received the Light. Most importantly, food offerings are made at the altar on festival days, very similar to the Shinto practice (Ono 1962, 54). Food figures very significantly in the daily rituals of a Mahikari member. Devoted practicing members will set up an altar in their homes dedicated to the ancestors (Cornille 1991, 277; Tebecis 1982, 44). The ancestral altar enshrines tiny tablets with the names of ancestors in the male/surname line of the family. This poses problems, for instance, in a postmodern Western society where divorce is common and there may be a blended family with children from the former marriages of both parents plus children from their own marriage. So it becomes difficult to honor the ancestors of all the members of the household.12 The altar has a place for food and drink offerings to be made in tiny dishes and cups. It is the duty of the wife/mother of the family to make these offerings daily, recognizing the importance of the ancestors in a family’s ongoing existence, a very Confucian, Japanese, ‘rice-growing society’ phenomenon (Hendry 2012).

3.4

Sexuality and Relationships

The involvement of members of religions in mainstream society takes place at the level of kinship or family relationships, voluntary relationships of friendship, and economic relationships in the context of work. The way these relationships manifest can be linked to the focus of the religion on ‘this worldly’ happiness as opposed to ‘other worldly’ (hereafter) salvation (Shimazono 1991). In the BKs it is very clear that to be a practicing BK one must live the lifestyle of purity (Ramsay, Smith, and Manderson 2012), the key element of which is brahmacarya, celibacy, in the strict Hindu Brahmin sense (Khandelwal 2001). Converts who were married before encountering the movement, and they may even be parents, must abstain from sex with their spouses if they wish to be regarded as full BKs and attend the morning murli class and

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the BabDada’s Meetings13 in Madhuban. Indeed, all BKs must declare on a written form that they have been celibate (and vegetarian) for a period of one year before they will be granted permission to go to Madhuban for the BabDada’s Meeting. Due to the power of the experiences and the blissful state attained in raja yoga meditation through receiving dristhi and unification with the Supreme Soul, some converts will steadfastly leave a marriage relationship behind. Others will become members as a couple and live as householders in a celibate marriage. Single BKs are advised under the maryadas14 (codes of conduct) (Walsh 2004) not to hug or have close friendly involvements with members of the opposite sex. Similarly, males and females sit on opposite sides of the room at murli class in most centers. In other areas of ritual practice, dristhi, for instance, is given by brothers or sisters to the whole gathering without any overtones of sexuality, despite the deep gazing involved. Where an individual male and female BK happen to find a romantic or sexual attraction is developing between them, (and high levels of spiritual attainment can be very attractive, so this sometimes happens), they would make strong efforts to guard against inappropriate behavior to the point of avoiding each other. There have also been cases where the couple have married and left the movement. No strong censure attaches to them doing so, although ongoing members would regard it as a pity that they have given up the purity of Brahma Kumari life. As the lifestyle and beliefs of BKs are often very culturally distant from those of their families in societies outside India, it is challenging for other family members to understand and support the member’s new life engagement. Reactions range from hostility and opposition to gentle accommodation but, whatever the circumstances, the relationships are put on a new basis in the sense that the BK lifestyle takes over the whole lifestyle of the member. He or she gains new friends, a new ‘family’, as it is designated. Similarly, with friends from the old life, the mainstream socializing activities, going to parties, films, consuming alcohol and food at any restaurant are no longer possible if one is living a strict BK lifestyle. Old friendships mutually drop away and are replaced by the brother and sisterhood and busy daily schedule of BK life. In the case of Mahikari, family life and the birth of children are celebrated. Modeled on Japanese notions of the family where Confucian principles are dominant, the movement champions happy family life and harmony in relationships. This is enhanced by the daily giving and receiving of Light between family members who are eligible to do so. There is no doctrinal or ritual reason for friendships outside the organization with members of the wider society to be abandoned. Indeed, members are encouraged to give Light to as many people in the wider community as possible, especially if they are in difficult circumstances, and this has been a way of attracting members. But normal socializing with nonmembers tends to drop away, too, as the Mahikari lifestyle requires focus in terms of time and energy;

Asian New Religious Movements as Transnational Cultural Systems 159 visiting the center and giving Light on a daily basis take up leisure time. Also, the worldview of members changes considerably, moving away from the dominant one of consumer culture, pleasure, and individualism, and there is less and less in common with former friends who do not embrace the Mahikari values and lifestyle, so often these friendships fall away. In both NRMs, if a member leaves the movement she or he not only abandons a complete spiritual frame of reference, but also loses an entire social circle and daily routines.

3.5

Gender Roles and Social Status

In the context of both the societies of origin of these NRMs, India and Japan, gender roles show a stark contrast to the normative gender role behavior in those societies. What is very striking is the degree of agency they provide for women members in general and for those women in positions of leadership, power and responsibility high up in the organizational hierarchy. In India, at the time of the founder of the BKs, Brahma Baba, women were expected to marry, bring a substantial dowry to their husband’s family, and take their place as bearers of children (Young 1987). Brahma Baba attracted young women to his organization who were willing to forgo marriage, due to the vow of celibacy, and to give their dowry wealth to the organization. Other women left their marriages. This caused an uproar in the society of the time, and the organization was subject to violence and legal attacks (Babb 1984; Skultans 1993; Walliss 2002). Moreover, for all members then and currently, the movement constitutes a challenge to Hinduism and the caste system, because, while borrowing many of the cultural forms of Hinduism, it nevertheless calls its members ‘Brahmins’15, the highest caste of ritual specialists in the Hindu social structure. However, female gender roles are elevated to the extent that the highest roles of leadership in the organization are in the hands of women (Puttick 1997, 179–180), national, regional (international), and zonal (India) heads and local center coordinators are also preferably women. Women, as ritual specialists, normally the domain of males in most religions, prepare the sacred bhog offering, give dristhi, and conduct the daily ceremonies and the peak pilgrimage ceremonies, the Meetings with BabDada, where the senior member in the highest role, the trance medium, is a woman, Dadi Gulzar. Thus, membership in the organization in its country and society of origin gives women the possibility of escaping the limitations of traditional gender roles through spiritual practice and attainment. Moreover, all members from Indian Hindu society can potentially escape the limitations of their caste status in the context of this organization, so it could be said to be a social movement as such (see the work of Dube 2010). In Japanese culture, women always take second place in the hierarchical system of relationships codified under Confucianism—a woman is subordinate to her father before marriage, her husband after marriage, and her

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eldest son after being widowed (Kelleher 1987). Despite Japan being one of the largest economies in the world, women have almost no representation in higher management and are expected to retire from the workplace upon marriage or, at the latest, the birth of their first child. If they strive to stay in employment after starting a family, they must either opt for the general track of basic clerical tasks or the career track which means they must perform like a ‘salary man’, staying late at the office every night, spending weekends on company activities, and being available for regional or overseas postings (Lam 1992). Given the woman’s husband is probably also subject to these employment conditions, it is almost impossible for a married women, what more one with children, to perform in the career track, so she will probably choose the general track, which means no training opportunities or career advancement (Pharr 1984). With this characteristically lowly status of women and their most suitable gender role being seen as ‘senmon shufu’ professional housewife, supported by the ideology of ‘good wife-wise mother’ (Hendry 2012), it is extraordinary to see how women have major leadership roles in Sukyo Mahikari. The successor to the founder, Sukuinushisama, was his adopted daughter, Oshienushisama.16 Center heads can be women, and there are examples of Daidojo (the largest category of center in the organization), for instance the Kyoto Center, which have female center heads.

3.6

Members’ Occupations and Financial Issues

Members of Mahikari, who are not Doshi (Ministers) (see Smith 2007b, 61), generally live in their community of origin or place of residence where they first encountered the organization and continue with their occupation and their engagement with their home society, their wider family life, and social circle, although this may become diminished as they adopt the Mahikari lifestyle more intensely. They come to see their main aim in life as giving the Light to family, friends, other members at the center, and even strangers in the case of an emergency, and this activity is woven around the daily commitments to family and occupation. There is, theoretically, no need to modify these ongoing situations unless they were against the principles of Mahikari; for instance, a professional gambler would probably feel less affinity with that occupation having joined Mahikari. The lifestyle of members is very community- and family-based, focusing around their home center, but they are free to live and work as they did before becoming members. Doshi, however, devote their whole life to the organization and receive a stipend from the head of the organization in Japan. They live frugally and have few possessions, quite often sleeping in the center itself to guard the Goshintai (the focal point of the center, an enshrined sacred scroll with the Chon, symbol of Su God, from which Light emanates (Tebecis 1982)) which must not be left unattended. Doshi marry relatively late because their daily

Asian New Religious Movements as Transnational Cultural Systems 161 life is devoted to serving others and private family life would take time and energy away from that. Members are expected to make a ritual offering of money every time they attend the center. There is a very distinct ritual for this. After removing shoes at the entrance and washing hands at the washing place, one next moves to a table where there are donation envelopes and writing materials provided. One must write one’s name, the date, and the amount of the donation on a form to be included inside the envelope. The envelope is placed reverently and carefully in the donation box at the front of the center in front of the main altar, housing the Goshintai. Through the entry rituals practiced when visiting the center, all donations given by members are known and recorded. One is only expected to donate according to one’s means. But membership becomes a central part of one’s daily life, visits to the center are frequent and donations can be substantial. Through the effects of receiving Light, members may experience prosperity in their careers or business activities, and so this reinforces their devotion and willingness to donate money to the organization. The BKs characterize themselves as living an ascetic lifestyle, while at the same time living within the wider community in order to give service to the society by providing programs for lay people and also by manifesting calmness and purity. A key teaching for daily life is “Have pure thoughts and good wishes for everyone”. BKs thus make great personal effort to fulfil the requirements of the BK lifestyle, while at the same time holding down a regular job which provides income for the donations they will make to the center. Administrative roles are largely carried out by BKs resident in the centers, although for some special tasks, members living outside may be asked to help, e.g. members’ e-mail listing compilation. Those living in the centers are also expected to maintain jobs in the prevailing economy. Often they use their personal income from such jobs to pay the rent, utility bills, and other expenses of the center, thus guaranteeing its core funding. Regional heads move center coordinators around to different centers every few years as an antidote to members becoming too emotionally attached to the incumbent head. (The relationship with the Supreme Soul replaces all worldly attachments.) These transfers often challenge their secular working arrangements. Center heads may be moved interstate or even oversees, meaning that they have to resign from their jobs. If they are posted to a rural retreat center, they may need to become a full-time staff member, as it is difficult to find work in the vicinity. In this way, the personal circumstances, family ties, and culture-of-origin factors become subordinated to the life of serving Baba through service to BK members and to society. For ordinary BKs, there is no request for money to be donated per se, although most members would donate regularly to the center where they attend murli because they know the center has running expenses, and it is usually a rented premises. Donations are made anonymously into the small,

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modest ‘Baba’s Box’ located near the entrance of centers and retreat centers. For public programs, residential retreats, even the long two week stay in Madhuban by members attending BabDada’s Meetings, there is no request for any payment, so it is up to the feeling of the participants to decide to give or not, and to decide how much they can afford and what is appropriate. As an NRM, the BKs are unusual in their approach to financial matters, and the refusal to ask for specific fees for any of the services, seminars, and spiritual events organized for both members and nonmembers is remarkable, especially given the delicious food and comfortable accommodation provided at retreats.

3.7

Daily Life and Religious Practices

The way NRMs modify the daily life cycles of their members is a striking point of comparison between these two cases, which can be drawn on the basis of daily, weekly, monthly, and annual cycles, not least the annual pilgrimage to the headquarters of the movement. Mahikari’s central practice is the giving of True Light and members are expected to give Light every day, ideally at the center, but at least to their family members at home. If they have inaugurated a family ancestral altar at home, they would be making offerings of food and drink in tiny containers to the ancestors. If the family has been granted permission to have a Goshintai inaugurated in their home, the care of this is even more rigorous, and it is not supposed to be left unattended—someone should always be in the house, which makes taking vacations difficult. The monthly ceremony at each center is a big family event and combines ritual sequences, including prayers with claps and bows, offerings, and a section where a chosen member gives a rehearsed testimony17 about how he or she encountered Mahikari and became a member. Often these stories are very harrowing tales of extreme hardship, sickness, or suffering, and often the speaker will cry and members of the audience are reduced to tears as well. They are powerful devices for defining and reasserting the organization’s culture and doctrine in its special status as an island-like community. A pinnacle of the annual cycle is the pilgrimage to Takayama headquarters, the Main World Shrine (Suza) for one of the various seasonal festivals, for instance, the Grand Autumn Festival. These are huge events attracting hundreds of thousands of members from around the world. Services are conducted with simultaneous translation in the major languages coming through headsets. If they have the funds, members would ideally like to make this pilgrimage every year. For the BKs, the daily cycle is very well delineated with amrit vela, a silent dialogue between the member and Baba, at 4 a.m., then getting ready to reach the center at 5:30 a.m. for a half hour of meditation with dristhi from the center coordinator, followed by the reading of the murli. After murli

Asian New Religious Movements as Transnational Cultural Systems 163 class, members stay in the center chatting, drinking chai, buying books or meditation CDs from the bookshop. Then they leave, spiritually refreshed, to plunge into the secular world of their occupation. Nevertheless, they are encouraged to do ‘traffic control’ throughout the day, remembering Baba. It could be that you have a ‘Just a minute’ software embedded in your hard drive which is a charming cartoon and jingle encouraging you to take a minute off to do meditation and remember Baba every hour.18 In centers, formal traffic controls are implemented every few hours, at 10:30 a.m., 12:30 p.m., 5:30 p.m., 7:30 p.m. (and before retiring) when signaling music is played through loudspeakers, also at the campuses at headquarters, and everyone stops what they are doing for three minutes to remember Baba. The evening programs starts with meditation (open to the public) at centers at 7 p.m. then on some weeknights center residents run programs, such as the ‘Seven Day Course’ for aspiring new members, or a Self-Management Leadership course, a Positive Thinking course, or a Women of Wisdom lecture, these being for lay people, including many ‘friends of the BKs’ who come regularly but do not follow the lifestyle of purity. In terms of the weekly cycle, at the Thursday morning murli, the bhog food offering is made to Baba during meditation, Thursday being the holy day of the week. This is cooked by one of the center residents and must be done in a state of soul consciousness. In large cities such as Melbourne where there are several centers, it is customary for all the BKs to gather at the main center for the Sunday murli. The breakfast where the bhog is shared afterward is a leisurely occasion, normally the peak social event for BKs each week. A bhog offering may also be made on special occasions during the annual cycle. The annual cycle centers around the commemorative days of the death of Brahma Baba, 18 January, and of Mama his female counterpart, 24 June, and also the season of usually ten meetings with Baba, from October to March, the cool season in India, when BKs from India and from the global organization, travel to Madhuban for a stay of several weeks, attend teachings by senior sisters and brothers and the pinnacle event, BabDada’s Meeting, an evening ceremony attended by to up to 20,000 participants in the large hall, Diamond Hall, built at the foot of Mt Abu at Shantivan.19 The main feature of the event is a teaching in Hindi (with some English words included, later to become a murli) and dristhi given by BabDada, through the trance messenger Dadi Gulzar. Non-Hindi speakers can access a broadcast in simultaneous translation of major world languages and Indian regional dialects, through personal media devices. The annual ten meetings with BabDada are translated into world languages from the international headquarters in London and are made available almost immediately the next day. It is these murlis which are read and reread in the murli study classes during the year and some years later in a cycle; the same murli being read in every center all over the world on any

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one day. Any BK who is traveling overseas can, with a letter of introduction from his or her center coordinator, visit any BK center and attend their murli class. If dropping in later in the day, it is customary to ask to read the murli of the day, which will be readily provided. The simultaneous reading of the same text in every center every morning around the world, and the provision of simultaneous Internet video transmission of the trance message from the meeting with BabDada to all centers around the world equipped to receive it, in real time, make for a very powerful transnational dynamic in the organization and impart a strong sense of membership in a global ‘family’ to all members participating. 4

TRANSNATIONAL NRMS TRANSFORMING AGENCY—A COMPARISON OF SUKYO MAHIKARI AND BRAHMA KUMARIS

Converts to a NRMs are usually adult individuals, who may then involve their existing families with varying degrees of success, but membership characteristically is based on a process of conversion in the context of an individual who has, for instance, experienced a miracle through receiving the Light (Mahikari) or experienced a different level of being, which may be very blissful, through meditation and receiving dristhi (BKs) (Howell 1997). The initial encounter with the movement, for instance, through meeting an inspiring individual member may lead a person to attend their center, receive the warm welcome from existing members, support in practical life, and with specific problems through the giving of Light (Mahikari) or through attending courses such as Positive Thinking and reinforced by sessions of meditation (BKs), until gradually one is drawn into the group and the lifestyle. Certain factors are at work in the process of conversion. Firstly, converts may be open to the spiritual environment due to hardships they are experiencing in health, relationships, or even their business or occupation. Secondly, the organization provides a solution to that, in terms of the experience of a miracle; for instance, recovery from cancer (Mahikari), or the experience of bliss while engaging in group meditation reinforced with simple, yet powerful devices afterward, such as choosing randomly a blessing card or a virtue card whose short text would seem to relate directly to one’s very personal idiosyncratic situation (BKs). Thirdly, the experience of ‘coming home’ into a nurturing group whose goodwill and dedication to serving others is clearly visible as mentioned. But a fourth factor which merits more emphasis in the conversion literature is that of enhanced agency which the new convert derives from membership in the group. Walliss (2002) focuses on this in his discussion of a fourfold typology of identity negotiation in relation to patterns of membership in the BK: instrumental users, eclectic users, spiritual searchers, and interpretive drifters.

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4.1 Sukyo Mahikari—Enhancing Agency through Purification Practices and Challenging Gender Inequality In the case of Mahikari, members, by giving Light, are able to perform miracles which, as they exist in the spiritual literature, are usually only performed by yogis, who have spent years of ascetic lifestyle and spiritual practice, by saints, sufis, prophets, and bodhisattvas. Yet with the omitama, members of Mahikari are able to channel the Divine Light of God to recipients to purify their attaching spirits, who jeopardize their welfare, health, or happiness, causing these spirits to be pacified of their vengeful feelings toward the human beings they are afflicting, to leave them alone and go away, healed in themselves also, which results in that person being restored to health and happiness (Matsunaga 2000; Tebecis 1982). The importance of this phenomenon has been signaled in the work of Hardacre, in her concept of ‘lay centrality’. Stein (2012) notes in his study of the giving of purificatory Light in several Japanese NRMs including Mahikari: This empowerment of the laity that Hardacre (1986, 97) calls ‘lay centrality, [the] tendency to narrow the gap between leaders and followers,’ accomplished through the bestowal of these amulets and the authorization to perform healings, is a salient factor in the popularity of these sects. (118) In the case of Mahikari, lay members are equally as capable of spiritual activity as the spiritual specialists are; although, the Center Chief or a Doshi will take over from a lay member if a recipient of the Light begins to manifest an attaching spirit through spirit movements and utterances. The powerful sense of agency in being able to help other human beings (Smith 2012), as oneself may have been helped, through the device of the omitama is a fundamental reason why people may undergo the conversion process to Mahikari. Moreover, this agency in the form of a spiritual technology is available to all, making differences in age, gender, class, race, ethnicity, and nationality irrelevant. In this way, the transnationality of the culture of the movement, its universality within the organization,20 its lack of hybridity in terms of the way things are done to the same standards of purity and ritual precision in any center in the world, enhances the agency of members. Perhaps the most dramatic area of agency gained by members, in relation to the Japanese cultural background to the movement, relates to women within the organization. Not only can they give and receive the Light on an equal footing with men, but women can become Doshi, in which role they may be posted internationally (very uncommon in Japanese multinational enterprises), they can become center heads, they can inaugurate a Goshintai at home if they are not married, and they can become group carers and

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serve in other important administrative roles in the center’s hierarchy. Most importantly, the second leader of the organization, from 1974 till 2009, was a woman.

4.2 Brahma Kumaris—Enhancing Agency through Spirituality and Service, through Challenging Gender and Status Inequality In the case of the BKs, the dominant motif of purity in lifestyle and relationships, achieved by pure diet, celibacy, and raja yoga meditation, has as its goal the passage of that soul through the Confluence Age, the cataclysmic transition from the degraded Iron Age, into the Golden Age where BK souls will incarnate into a perfect society in a perfect natural environment (see above). So members exert a spiritual agency in relation to their existence in the hereafter, but equally, there is a focus on living an ascetic lifestyle in the midst of secular society, serving society with programs and mediation opportunities for non-BKs for their spiritual upliftment. Many people benefit from attending the guided meditation sessions and programs without committing to the BK lifestyle. The perceived ability to serve the society and its members by living a pure lifestyle is a strong motivation to the inner circle of members. Equally, membership in an Indian, Hindu caste context, opens the possibility for non-Brahmin caste Hindus to transcend their lowly caste status. The sattvic (pure) diet similar to a Hindu Brahmin diet, the pure white clothing, even the self-referent designation of members as ‘Brahmins’, is a way out of the ascriptive status positions of the traditional Hindu social structure. Even the title of the organization, Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University, with the emphasis on daily spiritual study, opens up the possibility of study, albeit in a spiritual context, which might be beyond the grasp of some members of mainstream Indian society. Equally, women, who are expected to marry and serve their husbands and their in-laws in a domestic environment, can gain freedom from those gender roles and attain the highest spiritual standing in the movement as center coordinators, regional coordinators, and, indeed, the spiritual heads of the organization, as it has been from the time when the founder Brahma Baba handed over his wealth and the management of the organization to the group of young women followers. As is the case with Mahikari, members are able to visit any center around the world. They will be accepted as if local members, able to attend murli class, sit in the Baba’s room for quiet meditation, and share pure food with center residents. The culture of the movement transcends national cultures and members are able to feel at home and gain help when overseas through visiting local centers. The pinnacle of this principle operates during the pilgrimage to the headquarters for the BabDada’s Meetings.

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4.3 Exclusivity—The Ambivalence of Gaining and Losing Agency The Mahikari lifestyle makes one very committed and busy on a daily basis. A new circle of friends, and new ideas take over from mainstream society customs. As topics of conversation, world views and calendar commitments focus around Mahikari, the inclusivity turns into membership in a rather exclusive group. There are no boundaries between Mahikari members and the wider society per se. But the cultural distance created by the Mahikari world view and practices make it difficult for nonmembers and members to bridge the gap in terms of daily practical conversations and values. Hence, a committed Mahikari member draws more and more into the Mahikari social world, apart from time spent on his or her occupation. This ambivalence has also been noted by Walliss (2002) in his study of the BKs, where he postulates their evolution from “a world rejecting to a world ambivalent movement” (49). After the move from the newly partitioned Pakistan to Mt Abu in India, the founder and his band of followers sought to seclude themselves and focus on spiritual practice. Then, in the 1970s overseas expansion began, and the movement gained followers across the globe, largely independently of the spread of an Indian diaspora. Members live the life of renunciates, while participating in the mainstream society’s occupations and providing programs within the self-help and New Age genre without mentioning to participants the millenarian aspects of their belief system, unless they subsequently choose to attend the introductory Seven Day Course. As with Mahikari, BK doctrine contains an explanation of other major religions as contained within its spiritual system, explaining that they arise in Copper Age in response to the increasing degradation and suffering in the societies and lives of incarnating souls. Thus BK is represented as a supra religion, explaining and subsuming the other religions. This functions as an inclusive element for new converts who can therefore explain how their previous religious belief fits in with BK doctrine, but once they start practicing the BK lifestyle, there are many elements which craft them into an exclusive group and make it difficult for them to continue their former social relationships outside the BK family.

5

CONCLUSION

In comparing these two transnational new religious movements, the chapter exemplifies the way in which transnationality in the form of a culture exclusive to the movement yet exerting a more powerful influence on the individual than his or her culture of origin and socialization, can provide a unique opportunity for the individual to exert agency outside of the constraints of

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gender roles, class relationships, ethnic identity, or racial discrimination, which they may have experienced in the national social context. The supra religious attribute of their doctrines presents them as open and accessible to potential converts, yet once they enter the movement fully, the prescriptions for daily life become stricter and the totality of the cultural system which enhances their agency in some ways (e.g. in terms of facing difficult situations and helping other people altruistically), nevertheless restricts old patterns of agency; for instance, their ability to maintain relationships with their natal families (BKs) and old friends (BKs and Mahikari members). Their agency is thus focused within the system but as the aim of the system is to benefit others, this may be a compelling reason for them to stay, despite the tension generated with former associates. Secondly, the chapter has aimed to elucidate transnationalism from a new angle. Here national cultures, or community-based ethnic cultures, are modified by the homogeneous NRM culture operating transnationally. So we can now view transnationalism not just as border-crossing social space, but as a transformation within a national context, making it irrelevant to a degree in the daily lives, values, and world views of members, not only in their home countries, but also when they travel overseas. So the national context is diminished in importance in their lives, and a transnational entity, the culture of the NRM, transforms the national. It is hoped that the comparison between these two detailed ethnographic examples at the emic level has facilitated a view of how agency takes place in a transnational context at the etic level of analysis. The power of the transnational culture of the NRM is clearly demonstrated by the fact that no matter what the culture of origin of the convert, and what the degree of cultural distance between his or her former culture and the NRM’s culture, the latter is adopted to operationalize daily activities and one’s understanding of the spiritual dimensions of human life.

NOTES 1. The literature on cultural distance emerged in response to the experience of expatriate managers posted to branches, subsidiaries, or joint ventures of the multinational corporations in which they were employed (Shenkar 2012). Originally this was the experience of a home country national in a host country location. 2. The concept of ‘New Religions as Global Cultures’ has been introduced by Hexham and Poewe (1997) in their comprehensive overview of many issues associated with NRMs in a global context. Rudolph and Piscatori (1997) edited a volume on Transnational Religion—Fading States which examined the political implications of transnational religious organizations. This chapter takes an anthropological view from below—outcomes for the members’ identity and agency in joining NRMs. 3. Lebra (1970) has described the enhanced agency of poor Japanese migrants to Hawaii through their conversion to the NRM Tensho, as an escape from

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4.

5.

6. 7. 8.

9.

10. 11.

12.

13. 14.

the social structural constraints of their native Japanese culture to the more opportune multiethnic Hawaiian culture, a process which she describes as one of deculturation and resocialization, or transculturation. Werbner (2005) has explained a similar phenomenon in relation to a Sufi cult with a global presence: “Sufi cults are trans-regional, transnational, and transethnic. (. . .) They leapfrog across major political and ethnic boundaries, creating their own sacred topographies and flows of goods and people.” (44) Cornille (1991, 270) mentions 70% for Sukyo Mahikari and in the case of the BKs, a majority of interested newcomers who attend the Seven Day introductory course drop out after the final session where mandatory celibacy and vegetarianism are mentioned. Others, as ‘friends of the BKs’, not core members, may adapt their acceptance to a degree, without following the lifestyle of vegetarianism or celibacy (Walliss 2002, 79). In the case of Mahikari, some choose to give Light without accepting other beliefs (Cornille 1991, 280). The founder himself aimed to bring ‘Godly Knowledge’ to the attention of world leaders, with the goal of thus achieving a wider sphere of influence (Walliss 2002, 39; see also Nelson and Howell 2000). http://www.brahmakumaris.org/whatwedo/bksattheun, accessed December 18, 2014. There are many excellent studies of Sukyo Mahikari in English language academic publications. See the work of Cornille (1991), McVeigh (1992, 1997), Hurbon (1991), Matsunaga (2000) among others. Some aspects of the discussion in existing publications would seem to emphasize an overly etic approach. For a contrasting view from a member’s perspective, see the publications of A.K. Tebecis (1982, 2004), the director, or bucho, of the Australia-Oceania Regional Headquarters and a former academic at the Australian National University. There are many such movements in India, often emerging as a response to colonization and social inequality. They are categorized as Hindu reform movements as they draw heavily on Hindu concepts and practices (see Walliss 2002, 60). Particularly after the 1995 Aum Shinrikyo Tokyo subway sarin gas attack. Members of this cult wore white clothing. For instance, the prohibition on the consumption of beef in Hinduism and vegetarianism for the highest caste, the prohibition on the consumption of pork in Judaism and Islam, dietary rules for Lent in Christianity, and vegetarianism in some Buddhist contexts. In a traditional Japanese family, the wife married into her husband’s family and effectively severed ties with her family of birth. This was symbolized by the fact that her ashes were interred in the grave of her husband’s family, and she assumed his surname in life and death (Hendry 2012). BabDada is conceptualized as a combined form of Shiv Baba, the Supreme Soul, and Brahma Baba, the founder, now in the Soul World, who speaks from there through the trance medium (chariot) Dadi Gulzar. There are sixteen Maryadas to guide BKs in their individual and interpersonal behavior: remembrance of Baba at amrit vela; attending daily murli class; observing celibacy in thought, word, and deed; pure diet; keeping good company; inculcation of divine virtues; performing service for the world; keeping a chart of spiritual progress; never causing sorrow to others; observing the principles; creating a peaceful atmosphere; not discussing business at the center or printing and distributing literature without permission from the zone-in-charge; not staying at a center without permission; taking a letter of introduction if visiting another center; and observing all the principles for twelve months and obtaining permission before visiting Madhuban. Other verbally

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15.

16.

17.

18. 19. 20.

Wendy Smith taught maryadas: do not go to movies; do not eat food or drink made by nonmembers; observe a three-foot rule of separation from other members, especially of the opposite gender; no hugging, socializing, etc.; do not read worldly (lokik) novels or magazines; do not live in houses with mixed gender accommodation; do not gamble; bathe after each bowel movement; and only members following a strictly pure lifestyle can read murli—usually a center resident (see Ramsay 2009; Walsh, Ramsay, and Smith 2007). BKs adopt the material lifestyle of Hindu Brahmins, wearing pure white clothing, eating a pure (sattvic) diet, and adopting celibacy, the highest spiritual practice of ascetic Hinduism. This same phenomenon of transforming one’s ritual status and escaping the caste system through living a pure lifestyle has been outlined in relation to the Satnampanth movement (Dube 2010). Oshienushisama subsequently handed over the leadership and title of Oshienushisama to her adopted son, Okada Ko-o, in 2009, after he had served as her official assistant (Odairisama) since 2002 (http://sukyomahikari.org.au/pages/ holyMasters.html (accessed December 24, 2014)). She subsequently assumed the title Seishusama (http://www.sukyomahikari.org/newsletter/2009-11-1. html, accessed December 24, 2014). These testimonies, or conversion stories, have been studied as a key feature in many Japanese NRMs’ rituals. Mahikari also publishes testimonies in its in-house monthly national magazines, for instance, those in Japanese and English, and there are many verbatim testimonies published in Tebecis 1982. http://www.just-a-minute.org/en/extra_jam/, accessed December 12, 2014. http://www.brahmakumaris.org//whoweare/headquarters/shantivan.htm, accessed December 12, 2014. For instance, while giving Light, all members, no matter what their nationality, cultural background, or native language, must recite the Amatsu Norigoto (Divine World Prayer), a prayer in archaic Japanese, in a loud voice (Tebecis 1982, 63). This must be memorized, which is quite a feat for a non-Japanese speaker as it has 16 lines, each from 4 to 11 words long.

REFERENCES Anderson, B. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso Ed. Babb, L. A. 1981. Glancing: visual interaction in Hinduism. Journal of Anthropological Research 37(4):387–401. Babb, L. A. 1984. Indigenous feminism in a modern Hindu sect. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 9(3):399–416. Campbell, C., ed. 2007. The Easternization of the West. A Thematic Account of Cultural Change in the Modern Era. Boulder, Colo.: Paradigm. Castles, S. 2000. Ethnicity and Globalization. London: Sage. Chander, J. 1983. Adi Dev: The First Man. 2nd English ed. Mount Abu: Brahma Kumaris. Cornille, C. 1991. The phoenix flies west: the dynamics of the inculturation of Mahikari in Western Europe. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 18(2–3): 265–285. Dube, S. 2010. After Conversion—Cultural Histories of Modern India. New Delhi: Yoda Press. Fisker-Nielsen, A. M. 2012. Religion and Politics in Contemporary Japan—Soka Gakkai Youth and Komeito. London: Routledge.

Asian New Religious Movements as Transnational Cultural Systems 171 Hardacre, H. 1986. Kurozumi-kyō and the New Religions of Japan. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press. Hemmasi, M., and M. Downes. 2013. Cultural distance and expatriate adjustment revisited. Journal of Global Mobility 1(1):72–91. Hendry, J. 2012. Understanding Japanese Society. London: Routledge. Hexham, I., and K. Poewe. 1997. New Religions as Global Cultures—Making the Human Sacred. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. Howell, J. D. 1997. ASC induction techniques, spiritual experiences, and commitment to new religious movements. Sociology of Religion 58(2):141–164. Howell, J. D. 1998. Gender role experimentation in new religious movements: clarification of the Brahma Kumaris case. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 37(3):453–461. Howell, J. D., and P. L. Nelson. 2000. The Brahma Kumaris in the Western World Part 11, Demographic change and secularisation in an Asian new religious movement. Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion 11:225–239. Howell, J. D., and P. L. Nelson. n.d. Cross-Cultural Adaptations: BKs in the West. http://www.socsci.biz/papers/BKTransplantation.pdf, accessed December 21, 2014. Hurbon, L. 1991. Mahikari in the Caribbean. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 18(2–3):243–264. Kelleher, T. 1987. Confucianism. In Women in World Religions, edited by A. Sharma. Pp. 135–160. New York: SUNY Press. Khandelwal, M. 2001. Sexual fluids, emotions, morality: notes on the gendering of Brahmacharya. In Celibacy, Culture, and Society, edited by E. Sobo and S. Bell. Pp. 157–179. Madison WI: Univ. of Wisconsin Press. Lam, A. 1992. Women and Japanese Management: Discrimination and Reform. Routledge, London. Lebra, T. S. 1970. Religious conversion as a breakthrough for transculturation: a Japanese sect in Hawaii. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 9(3):181–196. Levine, D., and D. Stoll. 1997. Bridging the gap between empowerment and power in Latin America. In Transnational Religion—Fading States, edited by S. Rudolph and J. Piscatori. Pp. 63–103. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. Marcus, G. E. 1995. Ethnography in/of world system: the emergence of multi-sited ethnography. Annual Review of Anthropology 24:95–117. Matsunaga, L. 2000. Spiritual companies, corporate religions—Japanese companies and Japanese new religious movements at home and abroad. In Japanese New Religions in Global Perspective, edited by P. B. Clarke. Pp. 35–73. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon. McVeigh, B. 1992. The master metaphor of purity: the symbolism of authority and power in Sukyo Mahikari. Japanese Religions 17(2):98–125. McVeigh, B. 1997. Spirits, Selves, and Subjectivity in a Japanese New Religion: The Cultural Psychology of Belief in Sūkyō Mahikari. Lewiston, NY: E. Mellen Press. Nakamaki, H. 1991. The indigenization and multinationalization of Japanese religion—perfect liberty Kyodan in Brazil. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 18(2–3):213–242. Ono, S. 1962. Shinto—The Kami Way. Tokyo: Tuttle. Pharr, S. J. 1984. Status conflict: the rebellion of the tea pourers. In Conflict in Japan, edited by E. Krauss, T. Rohlen, and P. Steinhoff. Pp. 214–240. Honolulu: Univ. of Hawaii Press. Penny, B. 2012. Master Li encounters Jesus: Christianity and the configurations of Falun Gong. In Flows of Faith—Religious Reach and Community in Asia and the Pacific, edited by L. Manderson, W. Smith, and M. Tomlinson. Pp. 35–50. Dordrecht: Springer.

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Puttick E. 1997. Women in New Religions—In Search of Community, Sexuality and Spiritual Power. New York: St Martin’s Press. Ramsay, T. 2009. Custodians of Purity: An Ethnography of the Brahma Kumaris. PhD thesis, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash Univ. Ramsay, T., and W. Smith. 2008. The Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University. IIAS Newsletter 47:1.4.5. Ramsay, T., W. Smith, and L. Manderson. 2012. Brahma Kumaris: purity and the globalization of faith. In Flows of Faith: Religious Reach and Community in Asia and the Pacific, edited by L. Manderson, W. Smith, and M. Tomlinson. Pp. 51–70. Dordrecht: Springer. Rudolph, S. H., and J. Piscatori. 1997. Transnational Religion—Fading States. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. Sassen, S. (1998). The de facto transnationalizing of immigration policy. In Challenge to the Nation-State: Immigration in Western Europe and the United States, edited by C. Joppke. Pp. 49–85. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press. Shenkar, O. 2012. Cultural distance revisited: towards a more rigorous conceptualization and measurement of cultural differences. Journal of International Business Studies 43(1):1–11. Shimazono, S. 1991. The expansion of Japan’s new religions into foreign cultures. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 18(2/3):105–132. Skultans, V. 1993. The Brahma Kumaris and the role of women. In Women as Teachers and Disciples in Traditional and New Religions, edited by E. Puttick and P. Clarke. Pp. 47–62. New York: The Edwin Mellen Press. Smith, W. 2002. The corporate culture of a globalized Japanese New Religion. Senri Ethnological Studies 62:153–176. Smith, W. 2006. Japanese management and Japanese miracles: the global sweep of Japanese economic and religious organisations. In Dismantling the EastWest Dichotomy: Views from Japanese Anthropology, edited by J. Hendry and D. Wong. Pp. 74–80. London: Routledge. Smith, W. 2007a. Asian new religious movements as global cultural systems. IIAS Newsletter 45:16–17. Smith, W. 2007b. Sukyo Mahikari in Australia and Southeast Asia—a globalized Japanese new religious movement outside the Japanese Diaspora. In Japanese Religions in and Beyond Japanese Diaspora, edited by A. R. Pereira and H. Matsuoka. Pp. 45–78. Berkeley, CA: UC Berkeley/Institute of East Asian Studies. Smith, W. 2008. Asian new religious movements as global organizations. IIAS Newsletter 47:3. Smith, W. 2012. New religious movements as transnational providers of social support—the case of Sukyo Mahikari. In Transnational Social Support, edited by A. Chambon, W. Schröer, and C. Schweppe. Pp. 63–77. London: Routledge. Stein, J. 2012. The Japanese new religious practices of jōrei and okiyome in the context of Asian spiritual healing traditions. Japanese Religions 37(1/2):115–141. Tebecis, A. K. 1982. Mahikari—Thank God for the Answers at Last. Tokyo: L.H. Yoko Shuppan. Tebecis, A. K. 2004. Is the Future in Our Hands? My Experiences with Sukyo Mahikari. Canberra: Sunrise Press. Vertovec, S. 2001. Transnationalism and Identity. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 27(4):573–582. Walliss, J. 2002. The Brahma Kumaris as a ‘Reflexive Tradition’: Responding to Late Modernity. London: Ashgate Publishing. Walsh, T. 2004. How Much Can a Yogi Bear? A Yogi’s Tale. Yoga Traditions, the Brahma Kumaris and the Pressures of Lifestyle: Adaptations Required to Adjust to an Australian Socio-Cultural Environment. B.A. Honours Thesis in Sociology/ Anthropology: La Trobe Univ.

Asian New Religious Movements as Transnational Cultural Systems 173 Walsh, T. Ramsay, and W. Smith. 2007. The Transplantation of Eastern Spirituality into a Contemporary Australian Sociocultural Environment. Paper presented at the Conference on Spirituality in Australia: Psychological, Social and Religious Perspectives, University of Western Sydney. July 20th. Werbner, P. 2005. ‘Pilgrims of love.’ Sufism in a global world. ISIM Review 15:44–45. Young, K. 1987. Hinduism. In Women in World Religions, edited by A. Sharma. Pp. 59–104. New York: SUNY Press.

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Part III

Transnational Education and Social Support

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9

Transnational Transformations of Schooling in Toronto, Canada Naomi Lightman

In the July 1916 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, American leftist intellectual Randolph Bourne presented what was arguably the first use of the term transnational, stating that “America is coming to be, not a nationality but a transnationality, a weaving back and forth, with the other lands, of many threads of all sizes and colors” (Bourne 1916, 96). In his article, Bourne addresses many of the key issues that remain prevalent in today’s debates about immigration, integration, and sustained connections to places of origin (transnational ties). Bourne refuted public concerns about the transnational connections maintained by some non-Anglophone Protestant immigrant groups (many of whom were not considered “white” at the time), foreshadowing current discussions. He stated: To think of earlier nationalities as culturally assimilated to America, while we picture the later as a sodden and resistive mass, makes only for bitterness and misunderstanding. There may be a difference between these earlier and these later stocks, but it lies neither in motive for coming nor in strength of cultural allegiance to the homeland (Bourne 1916, 88). Bourne also predicted that schools, with their emphasis on cooperation among groups, would facilitate the studying and working together of AngloSaxons and acclimatized foreigners as citizens of a “larger world” (Bourne 1916, 93–94). Today, students in Toronto, Canada, increasingly come from diverse backgrounds and maintain ongoing links to their or their parents’ place(s) of origin. Such students and their families sometimes experience multiple, divided, and/or fluctuating loyalties as they travel back and forth (emotionally and geographically) between Canada and their homeland(s). At present, there is very limited research exploring the implications of these connections within the realm of education; significantly, it remains unclear if such ties generally assist or hinder the immigrant integration process in schools. Teachers, as a primary conduit for conferring a common language, heritage, values, knowledge of institutions, and modes of so-called “legitimate” behavior to youth are integral actors within this schooling/transnationalism nexus (Levin 2001, 7).

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This chapter aims to provide an institutional perspective, with teachers, students, and their parents conceived of as individual agents working within the constraints of their schooling context. The data presented consists of four in-depth, qualitative interviews with educators in public and private secondary schools in Toronto in 2011. A brief overview of Canada’s increasingly neoliberal immigration and institutional contexts are presented first, followed by a review of the relevant North American literature connecting schooling to transnationalism. Subsequently, the data analysis examines how students’ transnational connections affect teaching practices and experiences in selected Toronto schools. Themes explored include the extent to which economic class impacts the way that transnational links are expressed and viewed within a classroom context; how teachers, with diverse access to resources and mandates, view young people’s ongoing ties to their place(s) of origin; and schools’ institutional responses and the controls they impose, which teachers must work within and around. Overall, it is hoped that the insights provided by these teachers resonate in the current global context and are valuable for transnational individuals and communities, as well as for education systems in Canada and beyond. 1

THE CANADIAN IMMIGRATION AND INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXTS: A SHIFT TOWARD NEOLIBERALISM

Historically, Canada was “less a land of second chance than a land of second choice” (Reimers and Troper 1992, 18), as most immigrants came to Canada with the goal of ultimately settling in the United States. A decentralized federal state with considerable provincial powers, the relations between the English and French-speaking populations have often taken precedence in Canadian policy matters, immigration or otherwise. Education is under provincial jurisdiction and is primarily publicly funded through a mix of federal, provincial, and local governments (Troper 1993). In 1971, amid a consistent flow of immigrants from Europe and beyond, the reality of diversity was formally acknowledged in Canada with the introduction of multiculturalism within a national bilingual framework. In 1982, multiculturalism was recognized in section 27 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Since that time, multiculturalism has become a well-entrenched component of “Canadian” identity. To date, supporters of the multicultural project view it as assisting with the social and economic integration of immigrants and minorities by removing barriers to their participation and making them feel more included. Such a view holds that multiculturalism leads to a stronger sense of belonging and pride in being Canadian for all citizens. Through multiculturalism, Canadian schools reinforce what Zúñiga and Hamann (2009) term the common schooling script, whereby “schools are meant to prepare good citizens who are loyal to the host community and feel a sense of belonging to the nation.

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In pursuing this purpose, all other countries are subordinated in the curricula” (Zúñiga and Hamann 2009, 5). Critiques of Canadian multiculturalism come from both the ideological right and the ideological left. The former often suggests that multiculturalism leads to ghettoization and separation, encouraging members of ethnic groups to look inward and inhibiting social integration. On the left, immigrant and antiracist advocacy groups often argue that the broad intercultural ideals central to Canadian multicultural policy are tokenistic and come at the expense of specific, achievable goals and objectives. As well, there is a suggestion that multiculturalism is simply the natural evolution of assimilation, as both primarily serve to uphold the existing power structures within the state (Bloemraad, Korteweg, and Yurdakul 2008; Kymlicka 2010; Reitz and Banerjee 2007). In 2002, Prime Minister Harper introduced the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to replace the 1976 Immigration Act, increasing the emphasis in immigration eligibility on education and language proficiency, and moving away from family reunification and humanitarian concerns. Immigrants today continue to earn less on average than Canadian-born workers, particularly upon entering the labor market (Mitchell, Lightman, and Herd 2007; Picot and Sweetman 2005); are two to three times more likely to experience low income for at least one year (Palameta 2004); suffer the negative impacts of a recession first and for longer (Picot and Sweetman 2005); and fill the most precarious jobs and experience unusually high unemployment rates (Saunders 2005; Vosko 2002). Reflecting global economic trends, the current fiscal environment in Canada has also led to an increasingly neoliberal institutional context and a stronger emphasis in Canadian education on privatization and individual choice. Some Canadian provinces have begun to allow, or even encourage, the “separating out” of different groups from the public educational system amid its perceived breakdown. Private schools, encouraged by conservative politicians and education policy think tanks, promote their institutions as a means to assist students in the increasingly competitive global job market. Such schools purport to offer a more enriched academic environment for students who excel within the public system, and a more tailored, individualized, and responsive atmosphere for students who struggle (Davies 2004; Levin 2001; Mitchell 2003). Whereas critics of this neoliberal educational agenda argue that it leads to greater inequities and disparities in society, those in favor of privatization contend that such initiatives embody positive moves toward “innovation” in education (Basu 2004; Davidson-Harden and Majhanovich 2004). Since the 1990s, the Canadian education system has experienced growth in private schooling programs that target wealthy international students and families, with only minimal increases in public school assistance for immigrant and refugee families (Davies 2004; Tannock 2010). School boards now widely market their institutions overseas among the upper classes. According

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to Bruno-Jofre and Henley (2000), the increasing presence of upper-income students from the Global South in Canadian classrooms introduces a new dimension into discussions about diversity. Tannock (2010) suggests that the disparate socioeconomic familial backgrounds of students in public versus private schools contribute to the creation and legitimization of inequalities in education and in society more generally. Overall, immigrant and minority youth in Canada outperform the children of non-immigrant parents in terms of educational attainment. However, much of the education literature continues to find evidence of cultural and racial bias in Canadian schools at the primary and secondary levels, as well as within universities. Researchers have found evidence of Eurocentric prejudices among teachers and within the curriculum, the streaming of minority students into nonacademic programs, and a lack of minority representation on school boards. The determining factors are often attributed to socioeconomic class, race, and/or the context of settlement. Such barriers likely alienate immigrant and minority students and may negatively impact their educational outcomes (Dei 1996; Reitz and Somerville 2004; Reitz, Zhang, and Hawkins 2011). Thus, in recent decades, globalization and the spread of a neoliberalism have created a shift in Canadian education policy. There is a growing perception that the student population requires a mobile, skill-based education emphasizing “strategic cosmopolitanism” that will aim to traverse markets and borders. At the same time, there has been increasing recognition of the transnational ties maintained by some immigrants and minorities, leading to an increase in research on both the potential benefits and drawbacks of such connections (Good Gingrich 2003; Mitchell 2003). 2 CONNECTING TRANSNATIONALISM AND EDUCATION: TRANSIENT vs. TRANSILIENT STUDENTS Since at least the beginning of the twentieth century, some transnational communities have been sending their children back to the place(s) of origin for education that is deemed more appropriate or to assist with cultural maintenance. Providing a historical example, Ayukawa (2008, 2011) documents how prior to WWII the eldest son in Japanese families in Canada was sometimes sent back to Japan for education and language retention purposes. In the comparative North American literature, Hagan (1994) finds that members of the Maya, an indigenous group from San Pedro, Guatemala, who live and work in Texas, sometimes send their children back home to be raised by grandparents or relatives in what is considered a “morally purer” environment. The parents, meanwhile, work full time and send remittances, which pay for the children to attend prestigious Guatemalan private schools (Hagan 1994). In some cases, younger children of Mexican migrants to the US are sent back to Mexico for schooling if their learning experiences become

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unproductive or unbearable in America due to language barriers or racism. In the case of older youth, occasionally the entire family returns to Mexico in order to reeducate teenagers about traditional family values. In New York, Kasinitz and others (2002) find that a surprising number of West Indian and Latino youth continue to be sent home to live with relatives at some point during their teenage years, due to parental fears about the dangers of New York streets (Kasinitz et al. 2002; Trueba 1999; Zúñiga and Hamann 2009). Some young adults return to their place(s) of origin on their own account when they finish schooling in North America, because of improved economic opportunities abroad (specifically due to their English-language proficiency, technical skills, or the cachet of a Western education) and/or because of a real or perceived lack of economic opportunities and amenities in the new place of residence. Taiwan, for example, has lured back better trained and more experienced personnel to research and development centers, many of whom had left previously for better opportunities elsewhere (Aydemir and Skuterud 2004; Ritzer 2010). Louie (2006) posits a transnational theory, which states that the children of immigrants who sustain a connection to their or their parent(s) place(s) of origin evaluate their lives in the US (or Canada) in comparison with the sending state(s). She emphasizes that “little attention has been paid to the implications of such a dual frame of reference for second-generation immigrants’ views on education and mobility” (Kasinitz et al. 2002; Louie 2006). Valenzuela (1999) touches on the same idea in her case study of Mexicanborn and US-born, Mexican-origin high school students in Texas. She finds that immigrant students work harder because their multiple frames of reference lead them to evaluate their circumstances in America through the lens of their prior schooling experiences in Mexico. Thus, “their positive assessment manifests itself as an esprit de corps that undergirds both their higher achievement and their pro-school ethos” (Valenzuela 1999, 117). In existing analyses connecting transnationalism and education, two typologies of migrants are often presented: the very poor and the very rich. In the US, most relevant research focuses on poor, transient Mexicans or on migrants from Central America. Hamann (2001) terms the young within these populations sojourner students.1 He states that sojourner students’ defining characteristics are their vulnerability to dislocation and their transnational backgrounds: they are often poor, Latino/a, have limited English proficiency, and lack official documentation. Sojourner students often struggle with contradictions between their families’ survival strategies and the perspectives of their schools. In the case of families with precarious work schedules, such students often become known for their extended school absences, which parallel their parents’ cycle of unemployment (Hamann 2001; Ruiz-de-Velasco and Fix 2000). In the Canadian context, by contrast, most case studies connecting transnationalism and schooling focus on what Richmond (1969) terms the

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transilients; in this case, wealthy Asian populations on the West Coast of Canada who are sometimes considered “the most desirable immigrants on earth” (Cannon 1989, 21). This population is among the elite, with many entering Canada through the Business Immigration Program, which allows applicants to skip the processing queue for landed immigrant visas if they pay a one-time fee of $500,000 to the Canadian government (Aydemir 2011; Ley 2010; Mitchell 1999; Waters 2005).2 For elite Hong Kong and Chinese transnationals in Canada, fear of educational failure back home is often the impetus behind migration. Relocation to Canada is sometimes perceived to be a cheaper option for families, as compared to paying international tuition rates for postsecondary education. Canadian schools (both secondary and postsecondary) are often considered more prestigious and easier academically, and provide better opportunities for English-language acquisition. As well, some within these communities perceive an added benefit in the critical thinking promoted in Canadian schools, as compared to perceptions of rote learning back home (Waters 2006). Thus, the educational experiences of sojourner students are likely to be significantly different than those of the transilients. Little is currently known about the educational experiences of transnational youth and families outside the economic elite in Canada, or those who live in Toronto or its surrounding metropolitan areas rather than on the West Coast. Existing literature on poorer transnationals in Canada generally focuses on individuals with temporary work visas, such as live-in caregivers, fieldworkers, or “mail order” brides who often lack protections or coverage for social services, and refugees or migrants who arrive with professional skills but are unable to recertify or gain Canadian work experience upon their settlement. However, there is minimal discussion of educational experiences for these groups. Some educators suggest that the organizational rigidity and linear structure of the schooling system may accentuate, rather than alleviate, the challenges that migration brings for children and youth. North American schools often have limited staff that is trained to work with nonnative English speakers and are unsure how to build on immigrant students’ existing capabilities and/or how to properly assess their prior learning. Students with transnational ties, regardless of their socioeconomic status, may suffer from discontinuity and feel caught between the culture of their home, their school, and their parents, leading to resentment about their migration and ongoing mobility (Hagan 1994; Trueba 1999). Hamann (2001, 56) consequently suggests that an overhaul of the American education system is necessary: Creating curricula that are responsive to sojourner students requires a dramatic rethinking of school organization, curriculum, pedagogy, student needs, and the relationships at the instructor, student, curriculum nexus. . . . [Sojourner students require] a curriculum and assessment system that recognizes the realities in which such students live, the topics in which they are interested, and the culturally-related ways in which

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students are best at indicating/applying what they know. Faced already with the challenges of gaining one’s bearings in a new place and feeling uncertain about the duration of one’s stay, such students may need even more affirmation of their existing knowledge and its potential application to present circumstances than do most students. However, a contrasting perspective holds that rather than making schooling more flexible to individual needs, greater uniformity in education will better assist students with transnational ties; it is suggested here that a “national” education project may have become irrelevant. Rather than focusing on educating children to become members of the national community, transnational families and communities may be more interested in educating them to be successful global citizens. Zúñiga and Hamann (2009) label this a fragmented schooling script, which emphasizes that schools are the institutional instruments of modern economies for providing workers who can be productive in the face of changing and globalized labor market needs (Mitchell 2003). Overall, transnational communities may feel that a curriculum with increased emphasis on regular standardized testing will allow their offspring more flexibility to move both locally and internationally for work or other opportunities. In contrast to focusing on individual needs (or perhaps concurrently), a multinational or global curriculum might assist with the transference of credentials and minimize cultural differences in schooling norms (Gehring 2001).3 However, it is as yet unclear whether and how such curriculum changes could be developed or adequately resourced. As well, at present there is limited data available on how and if students with transnational ties would measurably benefit from either more individualized or more standardized educational orientations. 3

METHODS AND STUDY PARTICIPANTS

Most existing research connecting transnationalism and education focuses on the perspectives of transnational parents and/or students; there has been minimal analysis of educators’ perceptions of the implications of transnationalism on North American schooling. The relevant studies of educators that do exist focus primarily on the US and Mexico, examining the viewpoints of teachers working with sojourner students. Such research often finds that students with transnational ties are invisible to teachers; once the existence of students with transnational ties is brought to their attention, in some cases teachers do express interest in supporting them, but are perplexed about and unsure how to achieve this purpose (Rendall and Torr 2008). However, in other cases, educators both in the US and in the Global South are found to view the transnational experiences of students as an academic disadvantage.

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In a case study in Georgia, Hamann (2001) finds that many local teachers complain about the lengthy absences of newcomer Latino students, particularly around Christmas time when whole families return to Mexico. Zúñiga and Hamann (2009) find that some Mexican teachers have misconceptions about American schools, viewing them as overly technology-oriented, anonymous, and marked by antisocial behavior and conflicts. Such teachers claim that students with transnational ties are behind their native Mexican peers in language, as well as in Mexican history and geography, and that they do not understand local schooling norms. Reyes (2000) and Zavala (2000) similarly find that Puerto Rican teachers misunderstand and reject students with transnational ties returning from the US mainland, whereas Goodman (2012) and White (1993) document the stereotyping and biases experienced by Japan’s kikokushijo or “returnee children.” Goldstein (2003) provides a rare case study in a Toronto high school. She finds that immigrant students develop a form of linguistically based peer social capital to assist with their academic success (e.g., asking other students who speak Cantonese to help with their homework). However, educators in the school do not support or sanction these actions, due to concerns about plagiarism and creating further linguistic divisions in the classroom. For this chapter, the primary research occurred in spring 2011 and utilized in-depth, qualitative, semistructured interviewing with four teachers in Toronto secondary schools, as the initial pilot phase of a larger study being conducted. Toronto was chosen as the location because it appears to have been relatively ignored in the scholarly literature exploring connections between transnationalism and education, despite experiencing rapid growth in the numbers of immigrants and visible minorities in recent decades (Ley 2007; Reitz et al. 2009). Toronto will likely become a “majority-minority” city by 2017, and has higher percentages of poor refugees and South Asian and Middle Eastern immigrants than the rest of Canada. Toronto consequently provides a context that is very unlike the well-heeled regions of the West Coast described in the majority of the existing relevant Canadian literature (Basu 2002; Ley 2007). Robert and Ruth, two of the study participants, teach at elite single-sex private schools in Toronto that have a growing number of immigrant and minority students. The other two interviews were with Jasmine and Andreia, teachers in public high schools with majority immigrant students, one in the west end of Toronto and one in the inner city. The study thus aimed to consider both ends of the socioeconomic continuum, as it was theorized that this differentiation would be essential to better understanding the phenomenon. All the teachers are Caucasian and three have long familial roots in Canada, whereas the fourth emigrated from Portugal to Canada as a child. The participants were chosen because they had an interest in the subject area, were available to meet during the allotted time period, and worked in schools with high levels of diversity and/or a rapidly increasing proportion of immigrant and visible minority students. Each interview was transcribed and all participants were given a pseudonym to protect their identities and allow for openness in their responses.

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Broadly, the research goal was to explore these teachers’ insights into the meaning of transnationalism in their schooling context and the responses of their schools to the transnational links among their students. From the data, three key themes emerge: strong emotional connections to countries of origin are related to concerns by educators about a perceived lack of “Canadian” identity; extended absences from school to return “home” are viewed negatively within the schooling system; and teachers and schools are employing new strategies to adapt to the evolving student milieu, often outside the framework of multiculturalism. Each of these themes suggests that teachers are aware of transnational connections among their students (although they may not consider them through this specific term). As well, clear differences between the perspectives of the teachers in private schools as compared to those working in the public system are evident, backing the supposition that transnationalism is not solely an elite phenomenon but, rather, manifests differently in different schooling contexts and is affected by economic privilege, among other factors. The private schools teachers interviewed have considerably more resources to draw upon within their classrooms to assist students who are new to Canada and emphasize that their students with transnational connections are usually very academically oriented. The public school teachers interviewed experience greater difficulties in regards to extended absences by students who are returning to their place(s) of origin and have more concerns about these students’ lack of affinity to and interest in the Canadian curriculum. Yet, whereas the data suggests that teachers perceive students’ transnational ties both positively and negatively, it is evident that teachers and schools are currently working to accommodate the divergent needs of students with transnational ties, both within and outside the multicultural framework. However, this certainly does not mean that the existing services or supports for such students are successful or that more are not needed. Whereas many of the themes explored in these interviews could be relevant to any immigrant student/teacher interaction, it is the combination of these themes that leads to new ideas about transnationality within Canadian schools. 4

THEMES IN THE DATA

Theme 1: Strong Emotional Connections to Countries of Origin by Students are Related to a Perceived Lack of “Canadian” Identity Perhaps not surprisingly, all the teachers interviewed emphasized that many of their students with transnational ties sustain strong emotional connections to their/their parents’ place(s) of origin. Whereas the teachers viewed these connections mostly positively, there was some concern that they came at the expense of a unified “Canadian” identity. The teachers felt that many of their students were more connected to issues in their home country or even in the US, as compared to specifically Canadian issues. Andreia, a teacher at an

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inner city public high school, emphasized that her students were not interested in Canadian politics, but, instead, used various communication technologies to stay up-to-date on issues of concern in their place(s)/region(s) of origin: They’re not engaged with Canadian issues . . . They probably know when there’s an election, but they’re much more likely to hear if there was a huge accident or something. But most of them keep tabs on what goes on at home. They talk about it, and now with the internet it’s so easy [to stay in touch]. I have a student from Korea, her parents are there, and she tells me all about Korea and what’s going on there . . . I think it’s wonderful because in the past they would call on the telephone and that was really expensive . . . now they Skype, they email, they use social media. Thus, despite her concerns about a lack of “Canadianness” among students with transnational ties, Andreia stressed that, in her opinion, such students’ international experiences and worldviews add richness to classroom conversations. She adds that, when possible, she incorporates these different perspectives and priorities into her assignments. The private school teachers perceived their students with transnational ties as having a “postnational” identity; the students appear to have minimal attachment to Canada, and instead see their future locations and loyalties as being dictated by wherever the best school or work opportunities lie. Rather than being a safe haven, Canada is perceived as a jumping off point for these students’ future economic or social betterment. Robert, who teaches at a private boys’ school, said that some of his students have family who own property all over the world and that many of his students from the Middle East have family businesses that they expect to run when they are older. However, Robert gave the example of a student from Kazakhstan who has decided, much to chagrin of his family, to study film in Toronto rather than return home to run his family business, demonstrating that some students stay in Canada for professional opportunities and/or deviate from the expectations of their families back home. Ruth, who teaches at a private girls’ school, provided the example of some of her Korean students who say that they will return to Korea after finishing their schooling or perhaps go to America for university: There’s a sense that [after high school] they’ll go back to Korea for a while or go to the States and then go to Korea. Sometimes when I ask them why [they plan to return], they’ll say they find life in Canada a bit slow. Some of the Hong Kong girls say that too. Socially it is slow, business is too slow, opportunities are too slow. Some of them will say “Schooling in Canada, back to Korea for opportunities.” However, this sense of geographical boundlessness was more the case for the students at the private schools, who likely have the financial resources to

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facilitate future school, work, or travel abroad. For public school teachers, there is a more obvious sense of traditional nationalism about the place(s) of origin permeating the student body. This nationalism sometimes manifests in gangs or fights between students from different countries, while at other times the teachers say it is primarily evident in terms of support for different sports teams, such as cricket or soccer. It may be that this heightened nationalism is a case of “reactive ethnicity” (Portes and Rumbaut 2001, 148–149), occurring as a result of the hostile receiving context in their host society, but there may be other reasons as well. Generally, all the teachers said that that many of their immigrant and minority students were strongly connected to their homeland(s) in an ongoing manner, and all of the teachers voiced concerns that this was somehow related to a lack of connectedness to Canada. Whereas to some degree the teachers did perceive it to be their role to engender a greater Canadian identity in the student body, this dearth of “Canadianness” manifested itself differently in different contexts and was impacted by students’ familial and economic resources.

Theme 2: Extended Absences from School to Return “Home” are Perceived Negatively The most obvious behavioral enactment of transnationalism by students is ongoing or sustained travel to the place(s) of origin; however, it was notable that this was only a concern for the teachers in the public school system. For the teachers in the private system, students with transnational ties generally come from upper and middle-class families where educational attainment is highly stressed. These teachers assume that parents, especially because they are paying upward of $25,000 per year for each child’s education, do not sanction extended absences from school that might come at the expense of high grades. However, for the teachers in the public system, extended absences from school by students who travel home is an ongoing reality, with the length of time away generally ranging from several weeks to several months during the school year. These teachers mentioned a variety of reasons for this, the most obvious being special occasions or visits to family members in the place(s) of origin who are sick. As well, they both said that some female students return home to get engaged or married locally, usually as arranged by their parent(s). Jasmine, a teacher in a public school with majority immigrant and Muslim students, mentioned that in some cases parents send their offspring home as a disciplinary tactic, to instill greater respect for Canadian education: I’ve heard stories of parents at the school that send their kids back to Somalia to sort of smarten them up. Apparently they come back very obedient and ready to do whatever they need to do. I think they send them to the north part of Somalia, which is more stable, but it’s still very poor. So when they go and they see the differences, they realize how many opportunities they have here.

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In the cases where students were absent for extended periods, these teachers saw it as something that often came at the detriment of their academic success. Andreia mentioned a student named Sam whose parents took him back to China for over a month and a half when school was in session, during which time he missed taking the mandatory standardized literacy test required for all ninth grade students in the province. While before leaving for this trip Sam had been doing well at school, after the visit he was no longer passing the course. Andreia emphasized that, as a teacher, she had no choice but to follow her school’s rules about absences and, consequently, students who returned home for extended periods often suffer academically: It becomes really problematic because these extended trips home are just like being absent. We used to excuse kids from all sorts of work when they were away, but this year, for example, when Sam went back to China and I approached the administration, and said “What do I do?” they said that the parents had the choice to take him back in the summer and instead they chose to take him back now, during school time. So he essentially got zeros on all the work that was missed. Thus, rather than being educationally enriching or providing perspective on the benefits of Canadian schools, the teachers perceive extended trips home as impacting students educational attainment negatively. The teachers also feel constrained in their ability to help these students, due to the rules of their institution regarding student absences. However, this issue appears to be primarily of concern to educators within the public system.

Theme 3: Teachers and Schools are Employing New Strategies to Adapt to the Evolving Student Milieu, Often Outside of the Multicultural Framework All the teachers interviewed feel that their schools are taking concrete actions to assist students with transnational ties, but gave limited examples. Whereas the teachers all spoke positively about multiculturalism as a framing pedagogical concept, none of them really emphasized how it was specifically valuable or relevant in creating new policies, curriculum, and/or support services for students with transnational ties. In the private system, Robert and Ruth point to several ways that their schools are adapting to the students’ increasing transnational connections. Robert mentioned that his school hires tutors to teach literature courses in the students’ native languages for those who have problems with English. The school has offered literature in Korean, German, Farsi, and Mandarin, sometimes just for one student and other times for an entire class. However, hiring these tutors is a costly luxury that public schools oftentimes cannot afford. As well, the students at Robert’s and Ruth’s schools all come with at least functional English. In cases where the students have very low English proficiency, they are rejected from these schools, which

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act as independent institutions, on the grounds that they cannot be properly supported there. In the public system, Jasmine and Andreia feel that there are numerous supports for their students with transnational ties, such as community councils and homework clubs, and, for example, a Somali Youth Association that organizes basketball games. Jasmine mentioned a case where a student at her school returned home for an extended period to assist with a sick family member, but was able to utilize the schools co-op program (an unpaid internship program, meant to provide students with real-world work experience), so as to not lose all the credits he would have otherwise gained that semester: In some cases the school can accommodate [transnational] students. One kid, he’s a very good student, but his family was going to Iraq because his grandmother is sick. Instead of losing the whole year, we transferred him to continuous intake co-op and he was able to get two credits by working in his uncle’s business there. All the teachers interviewed thought that multiculturalism was something that was theoretically helpful for students with transnational ties, as it could facilitate them in sharing information about their ethnic heritage and ongoing family connections, thereby allowing them to feel more comfortable about having more than one home or loyalty. However, both teachers in the public system felt that, in their schools, multiculturalism did not amount to much more than rhetoric, and that it was not helpful for day-to-day concerns. These teachers stressed that their students are so busy with other programming that multiculturalism often gets swept to the wayside. Andreia, who has been teaching at her school for 23 years, said that there is simply not enough time, resources, or interest to sustain multicultural activities in her school: When I first came here we used to have Multicultural Night, when all the different ethnic groups would have a room and they would put on a show or whatever. But other things replaced this. It was overwhelming the amount of work that went into it and kids are so much busier now. There’s just not enough interest. All the teachers interviewed think that the transnational connections of students have positive benefits that can be harnessed in the classroom setting, either by enriching group discussions or incorporating these students’ ideas on how to diversify the curriculum. Some limited action toward this is being taken at their schools, but the teachers generally feel that more could be done. Whereas the resources available and student populations differ greatly in the public and private systems (and internally within each of these), none of the teachers interviewed provided any tangible example of how a multicultural framework is instrumental to assisting students with transnational ties. Rather, multiculturalism appears to be more something that teachers support at the level of theory.

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LIMITATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS

The interviews presented here provide the perspectives of four teachers on how the transnational connections of their students affect their professional practices and experiences in Toronto secondary schools. The different subject positions and socioeconomic backgrounds of their students resonate with Tannock’s (2010) notion of “global city education,” which describes an institution that is implicated in the creation and legitimization of inequalities in education and in society more generally. Teachers (as well as students and parents) act as individual agents, working within the constraints of their institutional schooling context. It must be acknowledged that teachers, while a product of their generation and the hiring practices of their institution, are not necessarily representative of their schools. Teacher’s individual experiences and backgrounds contribute to their views on whether and how these students can or should be accommodated in the classroom. However, teachers do hold an important intermediary (and possibly more objective) subject position between policymakers and administrators and students with transnational ties and their families/ communities. Thus, they have a valuable voice in analyses and critiques of the education system (Feuerverger 1998). A goal of this research was to explore whether transnationalism, at least insofar as it is recognizable in a schooling context, is purely an elite phenomenon. The data demonstrates that socioeconomic class is an important component of how transnationalism is perceived and performed within schools. Robert and Ruth, sharing their perspectives from teaching at private boys’ and girls’ schools, respectively, emphasized how many of their immigrant students are not focused on settlement and integration in Canada. Rather, they maintain a postnational outlook, and rely on familial and economic connections, as well as privileged educational commodities, to allow them future access to the best universities, jobs, and peer networks. Private schools are partially made up of what Ritzer (2010) would define as “tourists,” students who have come to Canada for education due to preference, with few or no barriers to their movement. At times in his interview, Robert referred to his students as “clients,” hinting at the customer-service dynamic inherent in selling education as a scarce commodity (Bruno-Jofre and Henley 2000; Davies, Aurini, and Quirke 2002). These teachers’ students and their families seem to practice a form of strategic cosmopolitanism, “motivated not by ideals of national unity in diversity, but by understandings of global competitiveness, and the necessity to strategically adapt as an individual to rapidly shifting personal and national contexts” (Mitchell 2003, 388). Jasmine’s and Andreia’s perspective from public high schools are quite different, but also highlight the importance of transnational connections among the student population. To these women, transnationalism is not an elite phenomenon; it is a daily reality for their immigrant students and their families who are emotionally and otherwise connected to their place(s) of

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origin. While their schools are attempting to support immigrant students, through English as a Second Language classes, homework clubs, and co-op programs among other things, these teachers have much more limited time, resources, and social and economic capital at their disposal. Their students with transnational ties, rather than attaining a postnational orientation, appear to maintain strong nationalistic feelings to their places of origin, possibly due to social exclusion in the host society. In public schools, there is limited or no ability to hire tutors to teach classes in different languages, no assumption that all the students will arrive well fed or with highly educated parents who stress academic achievements. The students generally do not have a sense that after high school is completed they can work or study anywhere in the world. In addition, these schools do not have the luxury of turning away students if they do not have a certain level of English-language proficiency. Thus, in this schooling context, the resources and strategies utilized in the private system are simply not possible. However, whereas relatively poorer students are less likely to have additional family homes and businesses in their place(s) of origin, many are still able to return home for extended periods, as well as engage in other forms of transnational activity, often through social media. Whereas the public school teachers view extended absences from schools to return home negatively, there remains a sense that in many ways their connections provide assets; the teachers see such students as enriching the classroom environment in discussions of world issues and providing a broader range of perspectives and learning styles for assignments. Thus, overall, the data demonstrates that while the current curriculum largely does not incorporate ideas of transnationality, in Canadian schools, transnationalism is evident among a range of students. In these schools, transnationalism is not solely an elite phenomenon, but certainly is impacted by socioeconomic privilege, among other factors. It appears that students with transnational ties are not invisible to teachers, yet that sometimes teachers do not know how to assist these students. On occasion they have negative or stereotypical views about such students’ prior schooling experiences, but generally they view these connections as providing an added element of diversity within the classroom. As well, these teachers feel it is, at least partially, the role of the school and individual teachers to accommodate the potentially differing needs of students and families with transnational ties. Future research in this area could focus on the perspectives of socioeconomically diverse parents and students in Toronto who hold transnational ties, as well as educators, as the former could provide a range of first-hand accounts of how and if schools are adapting to the transnational context, and whether they should. This would expand existing knowledge on what, if anything, ought to be done by Canadian schools at a policy level to address the needs of students with transnational ties or, conversely, to build on the strengths these ties provide. Ultimately, both individual teachers and schooling arrangements more broadly must be conceived of as critical and evolving forms of social support within the global migration system.

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Randolph Bourne, for his part, ended his 1916 polemic with a resounding plea, writing “let us make something of this trans-national spirit instead of outlawing it” (Bourne 1916, 97). Almost a hundred years later, it appears that in some respects, immigrant-receiving societies such as Canada are embracing this transnational “spirit” in schools and beyond, whereas in other respects they are not recognizing it, or even actively opposing it. NOTES 1. The sojourner student likely experiences what Rutter (2006) terms chaotic migrancy, where young transnationals, characterized by irregular or timelimited migration, have little or no contact with welfare agencies and possess minimal education or cultural capital. Writing in the European context, Rutter finds that chaotic migrancy is particularly prevalent in certain migrant communities, such as those employed in seasonal work or living in smaller towns in rural areas. 2. Specific program details vary over time. 3. According to Fox (1985), however, a purportedly “global” curriculum would run the risk of privileging Western culture and knowledge and/or the socioeconomic elite.

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10 Relaunching Citizenship within an Agency-Oriented Perspective Transnational Lessons for Social Work and Educational Studies Eberhard Raithelhuber

Global processes and transnational flows of people, capital, goods, and ideas have a strong impact on our current understanding of citizenship. Indeed, citizenship has become a key subject of tension both in theory and practice, as the nation-states’ boundaries themselves and the political and social constitution of national societies are continuously altered. This is evidenced by the ongoing discussions on the erosion of democracy and national citizenship, on the proper meaning of citizenship, and on the corresponding role of education. On that score, it is necessary to determine how these discussions and their empirical bases affect our common understanding of these concepts. With this in mind, this chapter brings together two perspectives which are not commonly intertwined: the discussions on citizenship in transnational studies and the emerging debate on citizenship education in educational studies and policy. By juxtaposing the essential findings in both fields, this chapter outlines an initial conceptual approach that allows for a deeper analysis of citizenship matters in both transnational studies and educational studies. Further, the chapter argues for relaunching the approaches toward citizenship within an agency-oriented perspective. A strong case is made for approaching citizenship issues from within, that is, from the perspectives of practices and processes within which citizenship can be achieved and democratic politics enacted. In particular, this contribution aims at outlining a framework for research and theory in educational studies and social work addressing political issues related to transnational challenges. The first section presents the conventional understanding of citizenship, and then changes which have been triggered to a large extent by transnational research with its emphasis on practices of citizenship below and beyond the nation-state framework. A strong agency proneness is identified in transnational reasoning about citizenship, and state-of-the-art findings are presented. With a keen eye on the lived experience of people, the second section critically examines the mainstream approach toward citizenship education in both educational studies and policy. In contrast to the prevailing individualistic conceptualization of citizenship, democracy, and

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the “good citizen”, an alternative educationalist approach to understanding citizenship is then presented, which is inspired by recent contributions in political philosophy. Hence, this features as a salutary shift from a depoliticized concept of citizenship toward one within the sober reality of politics. It is argued that a relaunched engagement with citizenship in transnational and educational research should approach citizenship from within (e.g. as it emerges and is generated in acts of democratic politics). Finally, section four draws some brief conclusions. 1 AGENCY-PRONENESS IN TRANSNATIONAL REASONING ABOUT CITIZENSHIP Since the “return of the citizen” (Kymlicka and Norman 1994) in political and social theory more than two decades ago, citizenship issues have experienced a strong increase in theory and research as well as in politics and educational practice. Thus, across a number of domains and disciplines, there is wide debate about how citizenship can be conceived and how citizenship rights, status, practices, and identities have changed. This development has been fueled by the broad field of transnational studies (Khagram and Levitt 2008; Vertovec 2009). The extent and relevance of transnational research has grown throughout the social sciences almost at the same time as citizenship has become a matter of new interest (Isin and Turner 2002b). Moreover, in both fields of study, a growing number of scholars advocate an agency-oriented, processual approach toward social phenomena which will be outlined below.

1.1 The Conventional Understanding of Citizenship: The Nation-State-Based View Most commonly, citizenship is understood as the legal status a person called a “citizen” possesses within a polity and as a member among equals in an organized political community, both bounded and exclusive (Bosniak 2006, 5). This definition involves two interdependent but conceptually distinguishable aspects: the state-based dimension and the society-based, or actor-based, dimension (Fox 2005, 174). The state-based dimension, commonly associated with liberal political theory, refers to the vertical relation between the individual and a political authority. Thus, the institutions of political authority (e.g. governments) are equipped with a mandate through democratic representation to exercise power over citizens, but at the same time they are accountable to them. The society-based dimension highlights the horizontal relations that citizens engender and maintain as bearers of equal rights and duties, while also relying on each other with regard to their expectations of solidarity (Bauböck and Guiraudon 2009, 442). It can be said that society-based, or actor-based, understandings of citizenship place

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a stronger value on active participation, collective processes, and publicness. Hence, models emphasizing citizenship-as-practice and citizenshipas-identity are more sensitive toward social agency, toward ways of belonging, and toward social formations of “ordinary” people as the moving forces of democratic politics. To give but two examples, such notions are reflected in models of “radical democracy” (Laclau and Mouffe 1985) and “strong democracy” (Barber 1984). However, beyond these distinctions, this conventional mapping of citizenship reveals that it equates citizenship roughly with nation, state, and territory. According to this doxa, the triad “nation—state—territory” delineates a natural space and community in which citizens live and develop their political identity and action (Bauböck and Guiraudon 2009, 439–442). In other words, modern citizenship is based on the idea of community or of “the people” with a strong emphasis toward “oneness”. Mostly, it is seen as a model of a closed national society in the sense of a unity or “imagined political community” (Anderson 1983, 5–6). Therein, “citizens” maintain political relations with people assumed to be full members of a society, the structure of which is also taken as a natural fact. “Citizens” form the group of natural inhabitants, whereas “aliens” substantially lack this legitimate quality (Bosniak 2006). Within such an inward-looking framework, as a normative conception, citizenship entails a universalistic ethics, because it assumes that everyone is included. At the same time, the constitution and maintenance of this community is achieved by it having sharply defined edges and policed borders. Thus, community belonging is produced by exclusivity and closure (Bosniak 2006, 4). As a consequence, it has been assumed that citizenship can (solely) be enacted, exist, or take place within the boundaries of a nation-state (Bosniak 2000, 449).

1.2 The Deconstruction of Citizenship in Transnational Studies This conventional mapping of citizenship has been contested and provoked. Transnational researchers especially have noted the growing inadequacy of this common approach (Fox 2005; Fraser 2007; Ho 2008; Isin and Turner 2002b; Sassen 2002). Transnational reasoning has emphasized the contingency and historicity of the concept of citizenship. Studies criticizing “methodological nationalism” (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002) have also tackled the unquestioned and widespread assumption in the social sciences that “nation/state/society” is the natural social and political form of the modern world (Khagram and Levitt 2008, 25–29; Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004). Thus, transnational studies have helped to demystify and “denationalize citizenship” (Soysal 1994). One could say that a transnationally “colored” way of thinking about citizenship is critical of a narrowing legal or political perception of citizenship. Rather, transnational thinking about citizenship can be considered

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as agency-prone (Guarnizo and Smith 1998; Smith 2001; Sosyal 2001) in the sense that it highlights on an empirical level how people challenge and reconfigure existing nation-state-centered citizenship regimes in a creative way through cross-border practices, networks, and organizations. And it takes note of the fact that people’s achievements of social agency cannot be any longer considered as something that happens within the container of the nation-state, especially with regard to the aspects of social and political citizenship. Such concerns about citizenship have been a key area of transnational studies from the very beginning. According to Basch, Glick Schiller and Blanc (2007, 263) a multiplicity of involvements in two or more societies is the key characteristic of transmigrants. The emerging perspective under the headline “transnational” from the 1990s onward has focused on the political dimensions of such processes as people develop their subjectivities and identities through networks of relationships anchored in more than one nation-state. This perspective has been focusing on the analysis of the lived experience of people. This implies a strong emphasis on both how the lives of transmigrants and their ties are shaped by the nation-state and, in turn, how they impact on the nation-states themselves (Basch, Glick Schiller, and Szanton Blanc 2007, 265; see also Guarnizo and Smith 1998, 4–5). As a consequence, studies of transnational phenomena have the potential to facilitate the updating of notions of citizenship for analytical, theoretical, and normative reasons: in other words, to relaunch citizenship as a concept. However, this means hazarding the consequences of in-depth debates on the fundamental meaning of citizenship with regard to a number of other, closely related concepts in political theory which are also affected by a transnational perspective, such as “democracy” (e.g. Anderson 2002; Barnett and Low 2004; McGrew 2002) or “the public sphere” (e.g. Bohman 2009; Fraser 2007; Nash 2007; Wessler et al. 2008). It has become clear that much transnational research challenges the common understanding of citizenship and its locus. Investigations into transnational phenomena have revealed that these developments have in part also led to citizenship being performed and constructed in changing sites and spaces (Pries 2001) and on different scales. Empirically, such “mutations in citizenship” (Ong 2006) are induced by interdependent processes beyond, above, and across nation-states: First, processes commonly linked to globalization with related flows of capital, labor, and people undermine local rights and redefine the idea of national sovereignty and the scope of the state. Thus, mobile subjects themselves develop several reactions to cope with these circumstances in a fluid and opportunistic manner. Focusing on these changes, Aihwa Ong points to “flexible citizenship” as a strategy that people adopt to deal with late capitalism and dynamic, borderless market conditions (Ong 1999). Second, processes of devolution inside national territories and processes of supranational integration have altered the vertical dimension of citizenship, i.e. between the individual and (various) political authorities

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(Bauböck 2000), e.g. through the buildup of multilateral institutions and international accords (see Wolfram Schaffar’s chapter in this book). To give but one example, research has shown that through judicial agency and based on international human rights, norms, and conventions, however temporary, deprived nonresident migrant workers can claim rights in foreign national domains (Basok and Carasco 2010). This establishment, enhancement, and enforcement of international human rights standards points toward a trend toward recasting the concept of citizenship in universal terms (Tambakaki 2009, 3). Third, extensive migration processes have led to notable “citizenship spillovers” across international borders (Bauböck and Guiraudon 2009, 443). In other words, as numerous citizens and noncitizens (i.e. illegal aliens, immigrants, denizens, etc.) are becoming more and more mobile, they are carrying networks of rights and obligations with them and are interweaving them with other systems of rights and obligations (Isin 2008a, 15). Further, increasing numbers of people are participating in the legal and institutional systems and political practices of two or more countries. For example, “transborder citizens” (Glick Schiller 2005) relate to and act toward more than one government. Moreover, as a reaction to processes of mobility, migrant organizations with cross-border activities are emerging in the public sphere. Thus, people are acquiring multiple and differentiated forms of citizenship (Faist 2007). And, in turn, nation-states are trying to incorporate their “nationals” abroad in newly assembled transterritorial formations (Guarnizo and Smith 1998, 8; Ho 2008, 1291–1294). This political process of nation building has been referred to as leading to “deterritorialized nation-states” (Basch, Glick Schiller, and Szanton Blanc 2007, 270). Fourth, the emergence of a transnational civil society (Batliwala and Brown 2006; Della Porta, Kriesi, and Rucht 1999; Florini 2001; Naidoo 2006) is enhancing claims to membership in cross-border civic and political communities, movements, and organizations. Many times they are founded in both universalistic and particularistic rights-based world views, such as the individual and collective rights of certain social groups (e.g. women, indigenous people) or with regard to special concerns (e.g. environment, culture, gender, work, care, etc.). Thus, people who develop practices and identities with regard to political issues linking them to more than one national polity have been described as “transnational activists” or “transnational advocates” (Tarrow 2005, 43). Such forms of activist citizenship practice beyond borders have emerged because of a growing awareness of interrelatedness in the face of a global spread of claims on equality, social justice, and rights (Keck and Sikkink 1998). Furthermore, efforts have been made to push forward a politics of difference, and claims for particularistic identities have been mobilized to rework the concept of citizenship, e.g. from a feminist perspective (e.g. Lister 2007, 52). All these attempts have promoted the acknowledgment of internal diversity within national societies (Leydet 2006).

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1.3 An Updated Understanding of Citizenship: Emphasizing Scale, Sites, and Practices These findings add weight to the criticism of conceiving of “the nationstate as the sole source of authority of citizenship and democracy” (Isin and Turner 2002a, 4). Transnational studies have made one thing clear: citizenship can no longer be exclusively conceived of as a status or a bundle of rights which describe the position of an individual in relation to a polity or a nation-state, bounded community. Thus, both the state-based and society/actor-based dimensions of citizenship have to be updated. Firstly, in order to reflect this, several authors state that there have been both scalar and spatial shifts in citizenship (e.g. Çağlar and Glick Schiller 2011; Isin 2008b, 266; Low 2009; Sassen 2010, 8–10) as well as forms of realignment and rescaling of citizenship. For Bauböck and Guiraudon (2009, 448) “ ‘realignement of citizenship’ refers both to macro level processes changing constellations of political boundaries and to the individual level of vertical relations with political authorities and horizontal ties among co-citizens.” According to contributions to the new geographies of citizenship, it has recently been rescaled upward (i.e. above the nation-state) and downward (i.e. to place-based communities) as is the case in political attempts to foster active citizenship (Desforges, Jones, and Woods 2005, 440ff). Both dynamics, upscaling and downscaling, do not necessarily contradict the ongoing relevance and power of national citizenship and the nation-state as a specifically bounded space. Nevertheless, at the same time these political scales can be thought of as dynamic and potentially intersecting. Secondly, the study of transnational processes has also contributed to the discussion about where citizenship takes place in society. In a narrow liberal sense, citizenship and related practices are relegated to a special sphere of the social that is called “political”. However, feminist perspectives, in particular, highlight the interdependency of “citizenship, borders, and gender” (Benhabib and Resnik 2009). Here, the development of domestic labor mostly furnished by women from the Global South often serves as an example. Such gender perspectives on transmigration show that even spheres such as the workplace or the household can be considered relevant sites of citizenship practices (Bosniak 2009; Ong 2009). Thirdly, the study of transnational phenomena has also helped highlight a central feature which has lately received greater attention: claims on citizenship. As Aihwa Ong puts it, “we have a shifting political landscape in which heterogeneous populations claim diverse rights and benefits associated with citizenship, as well as universalizing criteria of neoliberal norms or human rights.” (Ong 2006, 500) Thus, scholars who engage in the fields of urban development (e.g. Bauböck 2003; Ford 2001; Glick Schiller and Çağlar 2011; Smith 2001, 2007) and transnational civil society (e.g. Batliwala and Brown 2006; Edwards and Gaventa 2001) or concentrate on migrant civic and political participation, advocate an agency-driven concept of citizenship

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that is closely linked to a claiming-of-rights perspective (Fox 2005, 176). Authors such as Jonathan Fox state that one should analytically distinguish between the two dimensions of acting like a citizen and being a citizen. Others consider that citizenship should be understood more and more as a social process and political practice, and particularly as a “mode of participation in public life” (Stokes 2004, 120). Within such accounts, the practical dimension of acting as a citizen is also emphasized as an indispensable feature of citizenship. New subjects of rights and action have evolved along with new fighting arenas for citizenship. Following Engin Isin, it is safe to say that “through these new subjects, sites and scales of struggle, citizenship (. . .) became increasingly defined as practices of becoming claim-making subjects in and through various sites and scales” (Isin 2008a, 16).

1.4 Summary: The Multiscalar, Multilayered Social Processes of Citizenship in Formation In summary, discussions on, first, scalar and spatial shifts, second, extended spheres and localities for citizenship and, third, the practical dimension of acting as a citizen encapsulate the conception of people’s cross-border mobility as a common thread and factor that engenders the constant reshaping of citizenship. Taking this into account, citizenship can be understood as something constantly unfolding and changing. Hence, it is more fitting to see citizenship as a vibrant, dynamic, and nonlinear quality, i.e. as a citizenship formation (Marston and Mitchell 2004, 101), rather than treating it as a finished product. Thus, research projects criticizing traditional notions of legal or political citizenship tend to focus on the practices through which people become political subjects who make claims, obtain differentiated legal statuses, and develop a sense of belonging. All of this happens through a complex process of reference to various related locations and on overlapping layers (Lister 1998; Smith 2007; Staeheli 2003). This perspective focuses on finding out how people are produced as citizens through a variety of practices; how citizenship is enacted; how they achieve social agency through simultaneous, coupled processes of localization and transnationalization; and how publicity or public spheres develop which do not fit into the common framework of a nation-state-centered concept of citizenship. This stresses the historicity and changeability of the institution of “citizenship” as an empirical phenomenon and as a theoretical concept (Isin 2008a, 16). Citizenship can be practiced in multiple sites below, beyond, and across the nation-state, and citizenship can be treated as a multiple, multilayered, and overlapping construct (Bauböck and Guiraudon 2009, 439; Bosniak 2000, 452). The shift to practices of citizenship which has been promoted through a transnational perspective emphasizes citizenship as a social process (Isin and Turner 2002a, 4). It suggests that we need to concentrate on even smaller, more transient moments of doing to find out how claims are raised, how people develop subjectivities, how “citizens” and “noncitizens”

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are made, how status is contested, and how citizenship is learned. All of this has to be considered in relation to relatively enduring practices and solidified institutions in which lived forms of citizenship are embedded (Isin 2008a, 17; Lister 2007, 55). The sphere of education is one such institutional context. 2 THE REINFORCEMENT OF CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION: A CRITICAL STANCE The first section of this chapter stressed that, taking the view of transnational studies, citizenship has become a major concern across a number of disciplines in the last two to three decades (e.g. Turner 1993, 2003). Likewise, it is important to point out that, almost in the same period, citizenship has become a central topic for nation-states and supranational institutions, especially with regard to questions of education. Thus, there is a growing literature taking stock of these still ongoing policies and discourses about citizenship education (e.g. Arthur and Davies 2008; Banks 2004; Demaine 2004). Because international migration, internal cultural diversity, and the arrival of newborn members into society generally contest the established social order, modern nation-states have always been interested in constructing a number of systems to deal with minorities and newcomers. Throughout the existence of the modern state, the very institution of citizenship itself and the creation of centralized political institutions have served both as integrative and excluding forces. In addition, the spread of one or several national languages, compulsory education, the building up of national institutions such as military forces, state-regulated welfare systems and social service provisions, or, in some cases, religious organizations have been promoted to fulfill related functions (Castles and Miller 2009, 43). Hence, considering education as a central mechanism to shape the relationships of citizens vertically (citizen—state) and horizontally (citizen—citizen) within a nationstate framework is nothing new per se. Nevertheless, it is quite instructive to analyze the contexts in which discussions about citizenship education arise. What ideas about citizenship and democracy do these discussions entail? And how are the phenomena of the citizen and of citizenship itself reworked through these nation-state-induced practices?

2.1 The Rise of Citizenship Education: Historical Context and Societal Conditions It is quite notable that the “return of the citizen” (Kymlicka and Norman 1994) and the discussion on “citizenship education” as a major topic go hand in hand with larger historical, social, cultural, and political developmental trends, some of which were mentioned in the early part of this

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chapter. First, increasing mass immigration toward “Western” nation-states since the end of World War II has undermined liberal and universal assumptions about citizenship. Further, awareness of internal ethnic diversity within existing nation-states has been growing, in part due to requests for rights by minority groups and the emergence of ethnic and religious revitalization movements (Werbner 2002). Second, especially in Europe, the “transnationalization of the political” (Balibar 2003, VIII) has raised immanent political questions on the future of national identity, membership, and participation with regard to supranational claims on democracy, constitutionality, and citizenship. Likewise, growing awareness of global interconnectedness and of issues such as human rights, sustainability, peace, and human development are also reflected in a number of declarations and action plans connected to education, learning, and school curricula (e.g. Global Education Week Network 2008, 65ff). Third, growing social inequality has jeopardized or even broken the promise of economic, social, and even political participation for large parts of the population within nation-states following the model of “taming” capitalism by means of state-regulated welfare policies. This trend toward social inequality is related to economic globalization throughout the last two decades and can be observed even within those nation-states that are generating a large export surplus. In addition, the increasing broad public expenditure cuts in social welfare and social entitlements since the outbreak of the enduring global economic crisis in autumn 2008 have endangered the dimension which in Marshallian terms is known as social citizenship (Marshall 1950). Fourth, the latest wave of state modernization with its emphasis on new governance (Kooiman 2003, 119ff) shows a strong bias toward the politics of individual agency and enablement in the public sector (Gilbert 1998, 2002; Greener 2002, 697). It is related to policies of individual activation, responsibilization, and moral dutification in the social, economic, and political sphere.

2.2 Responses of the State: The Swing toward Participation and “Enhanced” Citizenship Nation-states partly initiate these social changes mentioned above and, likewise, are core actors in bringing them about. At the same time they react toward them in a variety of ways. Thus, nation-states aim to shape the behavior and affective capabilities of their citizens to preserve their own legitimacy and exclusive competence in managing citizenship. They try to push forward the idea of rights, responsibilities, virtues, and duties in the context of formal and informal education for citizenship. Mike Bottery has labeled this model the “enhanced citizenship option” (Bottery 2003, 71f.). It is, for example, reflected in the elaboration of new curricula and discussions on the delivery of citizenship education. This model is accompanied by the “active participation option”, which seems to have a less directive nature. It aims at activating and motivating citizens to participate in society

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to bring about a more equal and harmonious world. While after World War II discourses on citizenship focused on citizens’ rights (Marshall 1950), more recently the emphasis has shifted toward questions surrounding corresponding duties and responsibilities and issues concerning active participation. This is backed up by a popular claim, clearly audible since the 1990s, according to which the standing and rights of citizens require contribution on their part (Pateman 1998, 191). Following this logic, the knowledge and skills of each single person as a citizen must be built up. People’s individual agency has to be strengthened to make them become “active”, “effective”, and “responsible” citizens (Raithelhuber 2011). Thus, scholars coined the phrase “the pedagogical state” as a concept, theme, and research agenda to focus on the different educational and pedagogical strategies which are used nowadays to govern citizens (Pykett 2010, 617). This development is backed up by many surveys and debates on democracy. These show a decline in, or even an absence of, a political culture that is based on confidence in state institutions and in the active participation of a satisfactory proportion of citizens in formal political processes and practices, a phenomenon widely referred to as democratic or “political disenchantment” (Stoker 2006; for the European discussion see Hoskins et al. 2006; Schmitter and Trechsel 2004). This brief depiction makes it clear that in many established democracies, the major problem is not perceived as in relation to the formation, constitution, and functioning of the institutions of democratic societies, nationstates, or supranational entities such as the European Union. Although issues related to institutions are debated within these discourses on citizenship and democracy, it is the actions, attitudes, beliefs, and motivations of citizens that are of concern as more pressing, whereas this perspective seems to be underpinned by empirical findings: those individuals under surveillance by the state who are not perceived as actively involved are particularly likely to be seen as lacking substantial social capital (Putnam 1995) or are seen as not even (or no longer) capable of participation in democratic processes and practices.

2.3 Teaching the “Good Citizen”: The Solution to the Erosion of Democracy? If we look at how the nation-state and supranational institutions react toward these perceptions, we can see that education becomes a central means of action. For example, on an European level “Education for Democratic Citizenship” has been at the heart of political, teaching, and research agendas since the 1990s (European Commission 2009). Similar efforts have been made by the Organization of American States (OAS-CIDI 2005). Thus, in the last two decades there has been discussion of how active citizenship and education/learning for democracy interrelate (European Commission 2006; Hoskins 2006), and most discussions mainly following the idea of

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education as a gateway to citizenship. For the most part, such agendas arise in the context of a perceived withdrawal of citizens (especially young ones) from traditional institutions of democracy (e.g. low turnouts at elections or membership in political parties); and a decline in public forms of political participation. Currently, national, school-based conceptions of citizenship education are being revised and so is the nature of citizenship (Kymlicka 2008; Bottery 2003; Davies, Evans, and Reid 2005; Parker 2008, 330). In reaction to this, and because of changing forms of (multilayered) citizenship rights, practices, and identities (Enslin 2008), new forms of citizenship education, especially noncurricular ones, are being claimed, promoted, and investigated. Forms involving people being enlisted in civic participation are particularly in the spotlight, as in the case for volunteer work (LadsonBillings 2008). Moreover, many research projects in the field are asking how different institutions bring about knowledge, values, skills, competencies, motivations, and attitudes within the individual that are deemed to be conducive to a future active citizenship (Hart 2009, 641). Active citizenship is conceived as being based on individual traits and as an outcome of formal, informal, or nonformal “learning” within an educational trajectory (see also Arthur and Croll 2007). Most notably in the US tradition, citizenship education is almost becoming equated with character education. According to this rather unusual idea, once such a desired civic character (e.g. a set of dispositions and skills) is formed, the bearer of such characteristics will be able to show a trait called “citizenship”, that is “effective, appropriate participation in the democratic public sphere (. . .) in order to serve the common good” (Berkowitz, Althof, and Jones 2008, 400, 402). In brief, the problem of citizenship and democracy is conceived as an educational exercise in how to produce a “good”, “active”, “responsible”, or “effective” citizen. Education in this context is referred to as a central means to create this desirable character who then should engage in democracy. What is reinforced in “Western” nation-states and in many states with a colonial heritage is a policy aimed to bringing about a distinct normative figure called a “citizen” through education, among other mechanisms, which is understood as a gateway to citizenship. 3

FROM TEACHING CITIZENSHIP TO LEARNING DEMOCRACY

What is wrong with this conception of citizenship education? In a nutshell, much research and many initiatives tend to focus on issues pertaining to a perceived erosion of democracy only with regard to established institutionalized forms of “the political” or “democracy”. However, these forms were established in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries within the concept of the sovereign nation-state. Hence, political institutions and debates alike remain stubbornly “national” in focus and content (Hay and Stoker 2009, 232).

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3.1 Institutional and Individualistic Biases in Models of “Education for Democracy” Mainstream research on political participation and citizenship education shows a nationalist-institutional bias toward the issue of democracy (see also Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002). It perceives the agency of people merely as something individual that is fully contained by a naturalized set of institutions labeled as “democratic” within a nation-state. Thus, it is safe to say that contemporary discourses follow a model of “education for democracy” or “education for democratic citizenship”. This means they reflect the idea that people would behave as “good” or “active” citizens if they had a proper identity and related knowledge, skills, and competences. Likewise, it is assumed that individuals would acquire favorable citizenship dispositions if they were engaged in certain kinds of social activities. Such notions often highlight education as a central means to “produce” the right attitudes and dispositions for the “active citizenship” of individuals as an “outcome”. This implies that dispositions for citizenship are acquired or “learned” by the individual in one situation and can be transported into another situation, where they will lead almost automatically to certain types of behavior. Gert Biesta argues that this way of thinking entails an instrumental conception of democratic education (“citizenship-as-outcome”) and an individualist approach to democratic education (Biesta 2006, 117–126; 2007, 742). This conception takes for granted that the appropriate knowledge, skills, virtues, etc. can be determined in advance of political action. It seems as if they are just waiting to be rubber-stamped by those who have already become “good citizens” through education. Thus this account “individualises democratic citizenship itself” (Biesta, Lawy and Kelly 2009, 5f) and shares an “individualistic view of democracy” (Biesta 2007, 742). Further, it entails the assumption that democracy is only possible once everybody has been equipped with equal and corresponding knowledge, dispositions, skills, etc. regarding democracy. Moreover, this perspective tends to treat citizens as deficient, because it assesses them from a predefined point of view.

3.2 The Salutary Shift from Depoliticized Citizenship to the Sober Reality of Politics Faced with these concepts of citizenship education, Biesta and Lawy proposed a significant shift in the educationalist perspective for research, policy, and practice which they called “from teaching citizenship to learning democracy”. This concept, which is informed by political and educationalist philosophy, suggests the importance of focusing on the ways and contexts in which people experience citizenship and democracy. This implies paying attention to the different settings and levels (e.g. local, national, global) in which people learn about the idea of democracy, acquire skills for

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decision-making and deliberation, and form dispositions toward an ideal called democracy (Biesta and Lawy 2006, 64f). Up to now, this conceptual framework has not been applied to studying transnational phenomena. Nevertheless, the proposition to shift the focus from teaching citizenship to learning democracy can be adapted to research in education and social work dealing with political questions of a transnational nature. This is because this type of approach takes into account the democratic quality of environments and the opportunities and conditionings which allow a person to act as a citizen and to be a citizen. Within such an approach, political subjectivity [or better: le sujet politique] (Rancière 2001) is considered as something relational, which is only possible through the presence of others and entails a practical working-through of differences. This allows democracy to be appreciated as a process or an open path whose result is not known in advance: a collective “doing democracy” (Bron 2001; Schugurensky 2003, 613). To sum up, within current mainstream debates, questions of democracy and citizenship are faced with what I call a politics of agency, based on an individualistic notion of agency, which is closely linked to a politics of learning as part of an all-encompassing new educational order (see Field 2006). Nevertheless, educationalists have expressed skepticism concerning the conception of combining citizenship, democracy, and education in what is currently called citizenship education. Against the trend to formulate policy issues into individual learning problems, they make a strong case “for the need to keep the question of citizenship focused on democracy and democratic politics.” (Biesta 2011, 2) Such positions have been rising in response to a supposed trend of “depoliticising citizenship” (Frazer 2007).

3.3 Approaching the “Political” in Citizenship in a Noninstitutional, Nonindividualistic Manner If one wants to find a different approach toward the “political” in citizenship, it is fruitful to deviate from mainstream perspectives. Politics should not be treated as a sort of seamless solution to the question of rule or as a government mechanism wherein citizens agree unanimously on what should be defined as the common good. Politics is an area of social life full of disagreement, contestation, competition, and insufficiency. This is because “at the centre of politics is the partial resolution of conflict, the deferral of problems, misunderstanding (. . .) the public encounter between antagonists, and the continual challenge to governors who might, or might not, genuinely be doing their best but who can expect no thanks either way.” (Frazer 2006, 52; emphasis added) Having depicted the sober reality of politics in this pareddown description, and in spite of all the shortcomings in mainstream citizenship education, one might wonder: What could a “positive” appreciation of democratic politics look like that allows for a deeper understanding of citizenship? This much is clear: there must be a stronger focus on the quality of the engagement bringing about a democratic process and how this

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quality can be achieved. However, social science has to consider this first and foremost as a practical/political question of public concern and collective action. Lately, there have been attempts to find ways to conceive of democratic politics in this novel manner, with an updated understanding of the relationship between citizenship, democracy, and education. For example, drawing on the philosophy of Jacques Rancière (1995, 2001, 2006, 2007), Gert Biesta proposed an educationalist approach viewing politics as “a process of subjectification—a process in and through which political subjectivity is established and comes into existence or, to be more precise, a process through which new ways of doing and being come into existence.” (Biesta 2011, 94f; 2010; Bingham and Biesta 2010) This conception puts an end to any idea that a sort of political subjectivity is needed which has to be constituted before entering into democratic action. In other words, democratic subjects emerge through engagement with democratic processes and practices (Biesta 2011, 97). Thus, learning—or civic learning—can happen as people are exposed to an open experiment called “democracy”. Similar sources of thought have been tapped within sociologically informed contributions within citizenship studies. Also drawing on the seminal work of Rancière, Engin Isin proposed an approach that focuses on “acts of citizenship” (Isin 2008a, 18). Likewise, he puts an emphasis on rupture rather than order, whereas such instances of misrule, or deviance from the established rule, allow for the creation of new (public) scenes. Isin starts from the assumption that what he calls an actor is produced through the act of engagement in which new scripts are written and new scenes are created. Following this, enacting citizenship does not mean primarily obeying the law or following a strict protocol. In strong contrast to this, it refers to being somehow irresponsible toward what has been set up as the stage for action. Rather than reinforcing “political” institutions, enactment then means uncovering “the contingency of categories with which politics is enacted” (Isin 2009, 382). Thus, acts of citizenship are defined “as those acts that transform forms (orientations, strategies, technologies) and modes (citizens, strangers, outsiders, aliens) of being political by bringing into being new actors as activist citizens (that is, claimants of rights) through creating or transforming sites and stretching scales.” (Isin 2009, 383) Following both Biesta and Isin, acts of politics thus articulate the idea that there is something that can be added or brought in by taking part or “part-taking” in contrarieties. In other words, it means reconfiguring space, interrupting the existing order of things, creating scenes, and translating identities. This perspective is therefore consistent with an understanding of democracy as something always “to come” (Mouffe 2005, 8). It fits a notion of democracy that, in John Keane’s words, always “breeds possibility”, because it stretches people’s horizon of what is thinkable and doable (Keane 2009, 83). In this context, it has to be stressed that transnational flows of ideas and people catalyze these processes. Therefore, it can be expected that contrarieties that arise in these transnational contexts entail a

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higher potential incidence to question what is thinkable and doable (see also McNevin 2011; Nyers and Rygiel 2012). 4

CONSEQUENCES FOR RESEARCH AND THEORY

This chapter has brought together two different preoccupations with citizenship: findings in transnational studies and educationalist concerns regarding citizenship education. Arguing from a transnational perspective, the first section of the chapter made it evident that boundary-transgressing phenomena not only raised new empirical questions about citizenship, but also spread productive unease with nation-state-based conceptions of citizenship. Thus, it was contended that the transnational perspective contributed to pushing the limits of the existing conception of citizenship. It emphasized the need to address the very idea of citizenship anew, theoretically and empirically. To achieve this, one direction could be a stronger modeling of citizenship as a practice and a social process within an agency-driven approach toward citizenship and transnational phenomena. This approach takes the irritations in the common understanding of citizenship and its locus that are partly a catalytic effect of the mutations in citizenship as a promising starting point to get involved afresh with questions of citizenship and democracy. As it seems, this requires more than a mere descriptive stocktaking of the multifaceted, multilayered, or multiscalar forms of citizenship being and belonging. Both theoretical and empirical work is needed to push the borders of existing conceptions. One proposal entails the idea of focusing on the more transient moments of doing or acting politically. This perspective links concerns about citizenship to a deeper understanding of political processes and democracy, informed by political and educational philosophy and social theory. This is the point where such endeavors come up against reasoning about citizenship education. In the second part of this chapter, I argued that a number of social changes which are closely connected to both the causes and the effects of such mutations and irritations in citizenship have led to a rise of citizenship education as a discourse and practice. It was concluded that as academic debates and political programs alike have not taken seriously the asserted erosion of democracy, they have strongly contributed to a depolitization of citizenship and to an apolitical concept of democracy. Indeed, in turning citizenship into a learning task, mainstream conceptions of citizenship education tend to expel a great many people from the political scene and individualize the idea of democracy. Here again, reactions subsequently presented to such a reduced and deprived conception caution against uncoupling the idea of citizenship and related learning from a deep understanding of democratic politics or—to be more precise—from engagement in democratic processes and practices. Just as is the case with the irritations in citizenship mentioned in the first part of the chapter, this suggests

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approaching citizenship from within, that is to say from the point and the paths through which it emerges and the ways it is enacted. An approach of this kind does not see destabilization, fluidity, momentariness, and transgression—all inherent in transnational processes—as things that have to be avoided or eliminated from the scene. Rather, such phenomena become the starting point of theoretical and empirical scrutiny to relaunch citizenship and related ideas of learning in theory and research. What is the benefit of all this for theory and research and, in particular, for educational studies and social work? Concerning educational approaches to citizenship on a normative level, it is problematic to turn preoccupations with democracy into a learning task, while at the same time factoring out what it means to become, be, and act politically. With regard to the growing flow of people and ideas across national borders and the establishment of overlapping and multilevel transnational social spaces, the normative approach of teaching citizenship with its nationalist-institutional and individual bias makes it fundamentally problematic to account adequately for transnational experiences and related dynamic and emerging social formations. Our interest in citizenship should take into account the relational and dynamic positioning of people in a broader sense within what is abstractly called “social structure” (Young 2006, 96). That is because citizenship becomes exciting exactly at the point where matters of social difference and, moreover, social inequality and power are contested through their transformation into democratic politics. This is exactly the point where citizenship becomes a key source of tension in the ongoing transformation of social spaces. Borrowing the ideas of Rancière, politics—which for him is always democratic politics (Biesta 2010, 48)—can be conceived of as a set of practices which are driven by the assumption of equality, and test and verify the equality of every human being in order to redefine the predefined order of things. This is because democracy is first and foremost not about domination, but about the equalization of power (Keane 2009, 861). Thus, democratic politics can be defined as the point where processes of equality come up against processes of policing (Rancière 2001, 2006). The approach which is roughly outlined above can provide a fertile basis for an even deeper analysis of citizenship matters, both theoretically and empirically, especially with regard to learning democracy. All of this points toward an antiessentialist, more relational, process-oriented, and situational approach toward citizenship and citizenship education/ learning. With regard to social agency and what I have called the agency-proneness of a transnational perspective on citizenship, this would not just mean taking into account the fact that people’s practices do matter in citizenship or that they make a contribution to changes in citizenship. Rather, it would suggest asking how such social agency is possible and how it can be achieved situationally under certain conditions, including transnational and translocal dimensions. In Isin’s terms, the question “what makes the citizen” is much more interesting than asking “who is the citizen” (Isin 2009, 383; emphasis

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in original). As far as I can see, this perspective becomes particularly vital with regard to transnational phenomena. And, likewise, it might offer a fruitful approach which could bring about new knowledge for transnational research within an educationalist and social work perspective that is interested in keeping a close eye on political issues. Doing so, this view might also contribute more generally to a reimagination of sociopolitical questions with regard to the impact of transnational phenomena for the future organization of education and social work.

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11 Transnational Social Work Communities NGOs Organizing Social Support in International Development Cooperation Nadin Tettschlag1

1

INTRODUCTION

Over the last decade, increasing attention has been focused on transnational perspectives in the field of professional social work (Homfeldt, Schröer, and Schweppe 2008; Negi and Furman 2010). Social work can be seen as a system that provides a theoretical, methodological, and institutional framework based on principles of human rights and social justice in order to promote professional action for the well-being and social inclusion of individuals as social actors at the micro level and social groups at the macro level. Against the background of the increasing transnationalization of collective action, this holistic framework is focusing more and more on the level of communities and lately taking into focus the field of international development cooperation. One major insight in transnational studies is that traditional categories and patterns of thought, for instance, in relation to the nation-state (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002), have to be revised when investigating, analyzing, and acting in border-crossing social spaces. These insights were inspired firstly within political science, in which transnational perspectives are well established, e.g. in analysis of transnational governance (Djelic and SahlinAndersson 2006), transnational social movements (Khagram et al., 2002), and new transnational activism (Tarrow 2006), and secondly, within interdisciplinary migration studies with its focus on the everyday practices of transnational migration (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004; Glick Schiller 2010). All these social scientists investigate new forms of societal regulation. Until now, however, the focus on the organizational (meso) level, which is of particular importance in social work, has rarely been taken into account. The German sociologist Ludger Pries (2008) calls attention to this meso level, which he identifies as a missing link in transnational studies. It can also be called a research gap in social work. The main contribution of this chapter is to present a focus on the organizational level in transnational social work with empirical case material, and use this to discuss the issue

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of the agency of organizational members, which is necessarily complexified by the transnational context. Nevertheless, the transnational scope of social work is increasing, for instance, in relation to transnationally operating development nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) from the Global North and South-South or North-South2, NGO networks are involved in protecting human rights, promoting social development, and supporting and lobbying for socially excluded groups. In this chapter, particular attention is paid to organizational interfaces and interaction in the context of NGO cooperation, which crosscuts national borders on a relatively permanent basis in order to foster social work structures in the Global South. From an agency perspective, a central question in this study is, “How do individual actors and the organizations they are part of maintain their ability to act within the system of international development cooperation with its many contradictions and challenges?” The empirical basis for this analysis is a case study of a German development program operating in Latin America. It is a regional program to combat social exclusion in Latin America, operated by the German development NGO Tedeos Aid3, a Catholic, and therefore strongly value-driven organization. The program is mainly financed by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), with some projects financed by the European Union (EU), UNESCO or by donations from private individuals. Twelve partner organizations in Latin America are part of this program and form a network, which is called LANET (Latin American Network against social exclusion). The Tedeos Aid program aims to create opportunities and infrastructure for community-based social services in neighborhoods with a high percentage of socially excluded populations. These are highly vulnerable groups regarding prostitution, violence, drug abuse, and/or HIV/Aids, and often in multiple problematic situations. Those aims are being accomplished by various strategies: the development of social work concepts in the region, the professional and further training of local participants in practical social work activities, and the lobbying of target groups within various political fields at a local, national, and international level. The latter leads many of the social work actors in the program to be part of social movements in favor of human politics and against the criminalization of socially excluded groups. The program is one of four Tedeos Aid programs in Latin America, all focusing on community-based services but each with a different topical focus: children and youth protagonism, drug abuse, migration, and youth gangs. It is an example of the mixed funding approach used by development NGOs which scaled up their operations when development policy in the industrial nations increased in importance around the millennium. At the time, several world conferences were held and action plans were developed by the UN and global civil society to fight poverty and foster sustainable development (i.e. Millennium Development Goals following the UN Millennium Summit in 2000; Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness following the Paris High Level Forum organized by the OECD in 2005). This was a significant change in

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direction as, just prior to this, transnationally operating development organizations had suffered from a decline in donations, especially toward Latin America, due to the perception of the fast economic growth and improving social development in almost all countries in the region. Nevertheless, social inequality and poverty among a significant cohort of the population in Latin America remain major challenges for governmental and nongovernmental organizations both at national and international levels, as well as being a particular focus for development cooperation between organizations of the Global North and the Global South. A central strategy of Tedeos Aid within their overall aim to foster the development of social work structures and influence state decision-makers regarding welfare projects is to promote South-South networking between local NGOs at a national and transnational level. These aid strategies involving cross-institutional networking fit in very well with developments in Latin American societies themselves, where extreme, wide-ranging social movements have also aimed to promote cooperation between different groups wanting to achieve shared goals and influence politics. This was especially evident in the 1990s (Silva 2013; Tarrow 2006). This case study shows how ideas that have developed and spread in the field of social work, such as community work or approaches involving participation and empowerment, foster social practices based on these ideas at the level of transnational forms of organization and cooperation. Analysis of these emerging transnational social practices and their impact on cooperation in a North-South as well as in a South-South context will be provided below. Both these practices and their organizational structures evolve in an environment dominated by strongly defined learning processes for local NGO participants, values, and cooperative norms, and an awareness that cooperative practices and dialogue are needed in order to meet organizational and societal challenges in a transnational aid context. Such challenges include the development of shared positions in a policy-relevant field as well as joint projects and networks within the international aid system in order to gain resources. The latter is gaining importance as funding agencies increasingly rely on existing cooperative structures and promote South-South networks. Lately, international strategies have evolved more and more into “triangular” or “trilateral” cooperation (North-South-South). Based on the analysis of these phenomena, the transnational networks formed as a result of the projectrelated working relationships and exchanges in the program studied will be described in this chapter as “transnational social work communities”. 2

INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION AND SOCIAL WORK

Cooperative projects that cross the borders of nation-states are growing in importance in several areas, including social work activities (e.g. Homfeldt 2011). New means of communication and transport allow transnational

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cooperation and organization to be carried out in a wide variety of ways. In this process, social actors are creating new ‘transnational social spaces’ by means of relatively long-term interlinked relationships, as defined by Pries (2008). Those relational spaces are no longer congruent with territorial spaces, as is demonstrated in this study. In the system of international development cooperation, resources for economic and social development are provided by national, international, and supranational (EU, UN) institutions originating in the industrialized countries. For providers of social services, participation in this system offers an opportunity to mobilize a wide range of resources (in the context of transnational, national, and local NGOs) for the benefit of excluded populations in developing countries. This institutionalized organizational field (DiMaggio and Powell 1983) represents an enabling structure for NGOs and their staff to gain and expand their agency in order to develop their social services for the marginalized populations in the respective countries of the Global South. In this context, nonstate actors involved in regulating societal interests are currently gaining more and more political power and importance (e.g. cf. Djelic and Sahlin-Andersson 2006). Their governance approaches operate under the premise that, due to the complexity of societies and their integration into transnational dynamics and structures, state institutions have only limited scope for action. At the same time, cooperative forms of action are increasing in the nonprofit, for-profit, and public sectors. Haas (1992) reminds us that social networks of professional experts, what he calls ‘epistemic communities’, are emerging as key mechanisms of (transnational) NGO governance. The evident overlap of social work and international development strategies over the last few decades can be seen when one studies the different stages of development NGOs. Korten (1990) provides a four-generation model of Northern NGO strategies and links this with the paradigm shift in development theory. The first generation of NGOs focused on welfare and emergency relief, based on scarcity: aid was to reach individuals and families. The second generation focused on community development, based on the ‘local inertia’ effect of activating the neighborhood or village population by running projects to get local actors involved and providing them with a training context. In the third generation, strategies for sustainable development came on and took macrostructures into account. These NGOs were seeking changes in specific policies and institutions. This generation involves increasingly large development NGOs working in a catalytic role rather than an operational service-delivery role. Finally, Korten describes a fourth generation of NGOs that is characterized by the emergence of ‘people’s movements’: The main actors are no longer individual NGOs, communities, or institutions, but loosely defined networks of people and organizations to transform the institutions of global society. NGOs take on the role of activists who encourage self-managed networks and connect to

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them. According to Korten, interventions are no longer designed as limited projects; instead they last for an indefinite period. The subject of development is considered to be ‘spaceship earth’, the world’s population, and therefore includes the various levels of development, including the national and global levels. Until now, it has often been taken for granted in social work discourse in the Global North that social services will involve the welfare state and will take place in a state context. But in the so-called ‘developing countries’, state-funded support for socially excluded sections of the population is only provided to a limited extent (Cox and Pawar 2006, 200). In such countries, social services are often provided by church institutions, donor-financed organizations, and voluntary organizations, which are increasingly becoming involved in the system of international development cooperation. These social services are part of the abovementioned fourth generation strategy of NGOs involved in development cooperation. The NGOs from the Global North normally operate as intermediaries “between the local community level and other levels and sectors of society (such as governments, the general public, businesses and other institutions of the market), providing a range of support services that connect these different institutions with each other and with groups that are poor or socially excluded” (Edwards and Fowler 2002, 2). In this context, a theoretical perspective is required that enables the organizational framework of such services and their patterns of action to be investigated not only at the local and national levels, but also at the transnational level. A diverse landscape of actors is involved when it comes to carrying out demanding development projects, as revealed by Kuhn (2005). In this context, it is sometimes difficult to differentiate between actors representing the state, the market, or civil society, and thus distinguish between these spheres themselves. This can be the case when development NGOs channel state funding. Thus, we find crosscutting steering mechanisms that challenge NGO cooperation: whereas contracts with state institutions imply vertical power relations, cooperation between NGOs is more horizontal in nature, even though cooperation contracts might involve partners with unequal resources in terms of power and control. In the context of networks (which are less organized than concrete cooperation and are based on voluntary action), horizontal relationships are even a rule. At the same time, NGOs might be competing with each other in the market for social services, where state or suprastate funding and donations are limited. The dynamics are similar when local NGOs in the South compete for resources from international development NGOs. The NGOs gain agency by acquiring economic resources and expanding their networks when they scale up to become big players as service providers and lobbying agencies for excluded populations, using public funding provided by state and suprastate institutions. At the same time, however, they lose independence as they are forced to apply certain strategies in order to access

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public funds, and they are subject to constraints in terms of accountability, having, for example, to report project results. This simultaneously limits their freedom of action and offers new opportunities for action at the same time. Over the past few years, international development NGOs such as Tedeos Aid have increasingly come to see themselves as facilitators promoting alliances and networks between local NGOs in the Global South (‘South-South networks’), and have themselves become involved in numerous network-like forms of organization in order to represent their own interests better and run complex development projects. Apart from emergency aid during wars and environmental catastrophes, these organizations now see their strategic goals more and more in terms of promoting sustainable developmental efforts for social change (see third and fourth generation of development NGOs by Korten above). Religious development NGOs such as Tedeos Aid have been shifting from a rather paternalistic attitude to more service-orientated, participatory approaches. Their main activities relate to the transfer and exchange of resources through various means (financing, staff, and organizational infrastructures, sharing knowledge and political and/or technical advice, etc.), in cooperation with local NGOs. Lately, they have strengthened their efforts in lobbying for disadvantaged sections of the population in countries in the South by addressing international politics (United Nations4) as well as helping local NGOs to influence national politics by providing consultancy and financial resources. Thus, organizational apparatuses are created across nation-state borders in order to empower actors in the respective countries and to develop sustainable structures. This is the reason why both development NGOs and state or suprastate funding agencies are changing their strategy from supporting individual projects to adopting themed and/or regional program-based5 approaches and networking strategies, such as the one analyzed in this study. When social workers and social managers aim at border-crossing cooperation, particularly involving actors from both Northern countries and countries of the South, such as those in Latin America, they can often base their joint action on common historic pathways, for instance: a) the spread of social work concepts, especially those related to local communities and neighborhoods, which have created shared ‘transnational knowledge’ (see, for example, Köngeter’s chapter in this book); b) the strong international networks for protest and solidarity formed by activists (within social movements) during times of dictatorship in most of the Latin American countries (Silva 2013), with the support of left-wing activists from Europe until the 1990s and beyond6 (many of those activists have become managers in development NGOs); and c) their shared link to Christian religious institutions, which have always been important providers of welfare and local social services in Latin America and Europe. The German development

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NGO Tedeos Aid and its regional program against social exclusion in Latin America is a typical example of this phenomenon. Christian missionary efforts since the ‘discovery’ of the New World have led to common representations and reference points, such as rituals, that foster cooperation.7 Nevertheless, the cruel hegemonic strategies of the European conquistadores to exploit the continent’s resources have left negative traces that manifest in cooperation processes, as will be shown later. However, church structures make it easier for Northern Christian development organizations to search for local partner organizations in the Global South and also help them connect to sources of local knowledge. For these reasons, NGOs in general are recognized as the ‘better’ development providers, in contrast to governmental and other development organizations closer to the state, as they are connected to local populations and infrastructure through alternative ties. 3

RESEARCHING TRANSNATIONAL SPACES

The aim of the case study presented in this chapter is to show how transnational social support8 is organized within a complex and plurilocal field. Taking up the methodological approach of multisited ethnography (Marcus 1995), the study focused on observing and analyzing the interactions that occurred within a program involving the development NGO Tedeos Aid and their local partner organizations, which are spread over Latin America. The author’s prior experience in the field of study, after initially visiting the Tedeos Aid coordination office in a South American capital city as well as partner organizations in various other Latin American cities, was helpful for identifying a range of locations suitable for investigating the transnational organizational processes manifesting at various communication interfaces. Apart from seven formal interviews with Tedeos Aid employees, the researcher concentrated on participant observation as the data collection method. For the sequences presented in this chapter, observations took place within a solid institutional framework: the Tedeos Aid headquarters in Germany, where the program manager and administrative staff are located; and the aforementioned coordination office in South America, run by a German coordinator and a part-time, Latin American assistant. These organizational sites were chosen because they are communication nodes where the various actors in this program coordinate organizational processes within and across the organizations involved. Furthermore, in line with the principle of following actors’ activities (see Marcus 1995), data collection also took place at a conference in Germany, organized by Tedeos Aid for its worldwide partner organizations and other stakeholders engaged in social work and social policy in 2009. The data presented here relate

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to a group discussion between Latin American project partners that took place at the end of the conference, when Tedeos Aid asked each continental group (Asia, Europe, Latin America) to discuss and formulate their ideas for future cooperation. As can be seen in Figure 11.1, the organization of this regional program is complex. Tedeos Aid employs freelancers and temporary staff to augment technical support, due to the time limits placed on the utilization of project funding. The new forms of information technology, particularly the Internet, play an important role in facilitating the long-distance cooperative relationships in this program. Frequent virtual meetings not only strengthen relationships in between the rare face-to-face meetings, but are also fundamental for the facilitation of the coordination processes, which are demanding and complex in transnational organizations. Although various actors in the field claimed that face-to-face meetings had a greater impact on cooperative relationships and on the progress of joint projects and ideas, nevertheless, the use of digital media within the organization offered the researcher a good opportunity to observe and analyze written communications such as e-mail and chat, whenever the Tedeos Aid coordination office was involved.

Figure 11.1 Transnational organization structures and processes in the Tedeos Aid development program to counteract social exclusion in Latin America

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A ‘NEOCOLONIAL DILEMMA’? EMPIRICAL INSIGHTS ON NORTH-SOUTH COOPERATION

In NGOs horizontal relationships based on democratic decision-making processes are part of the normative logic of cooperation, both within organizational networks and within joint projects. Developing relationships between ‘partners on an equal footing’ is often cited as a key aim in NorthSouth cooperation (see citation below) and also, increasingly, in the statefunded system of international development cooperation. In the following section, the argument will be advanced that the coexistence of asymmetrical accountabilities and the aspiration to create symmetrical partnerships9 constitutes the central dilemma for Northern development NGOs. Considering the powerful institutions operating in the system of international development cooperation, the persistence of asymmetrical authority structures seems at first sight to be a restraining factor in the potential for partners to act independently and create horizontal relationships (see Figure 11.1). As a background to this, despite the high hopes, detailed plans, and strategies, results in the fight against poverty have been disappointing and have led to a radical call by activists and economists from the Global North (cf. Easterly 2006) and, increasingly, from the Global South (cf. Moyo 2010) for an end to international aid efforts. Even though much of this literature suffers from oversimplification, it has still had a negative impact on public opinion in both spheres about international development cooperation. The implementation of norms, strategies, and rules in a hierarchical manner from North to South suffers from a lack of legitimacy in the eyes of many, particularly because this field of action is embedded in the context of postcolonial history: The international system of development cooperation emerged as a strategy used by former colonial states not only to support ‘underdeveloped’ states and regions in their social and economic development, but also to gain access to their natural resources and find new markets for the ready-made products of the Western world. Therefore, from an ethical point of view this is a highly sensitive field, connected to social representations of the colonial past of the actors involved. Last but not least, interaction in interorganizational cooperation is always embedded in broader institutional settings that include various stakeholders, such as state institutions. At the same time, the partners cooperating in network-like formations keep their independence, with their own organizational goals, norms, and interests, so the fact that they are acting in a relatively tight framework of the norms and rules of their parent institutions does not mean that their actions are entirely predetermined. In order to analyze the interplay of institutional settings and the specific interests and practices of development NGOs and their staff, insights from institutional theory (Owen-Smith and Powell 2008) have been adopted to analyze the institutional logic of the regional development cooperation program of Tedeos Aid: “Logics constitute the rules and conventions of a particular

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organizational field. In broad terms, an institutional logic is the constellation of beliefs and associated practices (the schemas and scripts) that a field’s participants hold in common. These packages of beliefs and practices are organizing principles and recipes for action. They have instrumental, normative, and cognitive implications” (602). From a relational understanding of agency as proposed in this volume (cf. particularly Köngeter/Smith and Raithelhuber), actors use their existing capacities to take action within social settings. Thus they both influence the given institutional logics and are influenced by them. Therefore, the aim of the following analysis is to investigate the institutional logics that emerge in this field of action as a result of several NGOs cooperating in an organizational field with a postcolonial history. How former colonial structures and current asymmetrical structures influence the actors in development cooperation, creating ambivalence among managers and coordinators can be shown in the following quote from an interview that was conducted with Tedeos Aid manager Michael Heuser10 at the German headquarters:11 And networking [as a criterion for funding] has become an overall issue and we find it somehow difficult, because to give a stimulus and simultaneously be a financier will always put you into this—how shall I say—neo-colonial dilemma. On the one hand you want to give a lot of freedom to the partners, have a partnership on an equal footing, etc., but you also have certain interests.12 (15/07/2009) This ambivalence is especially high because of the aforementioned strategies of fostering cooperation and organizational network structures that go beyond the boundaries of a single partner organization. In fact, ambivalence is a dominant characteristic of the organizational field analyzed in detail below. It will be shown how this ambivalence and the respective strategies to cope with it are reproduced not only by Northern managers in development NGOs, but also by their Latin American partners. Not surprisingly, challenges in transnational organizing arising from the unequal distribution of power, divergent interests, and different institutional logics can take place in both North-South and South-South cooperation, as will be shown in this chapter. The main occasions when asymmetrical structures are reinforced are when one-sided obligations of accountability are requested (e.g. by donor agencies) or when a hierarchical form of decision-making occurs within joint projects and activities. Because reciprocity is a prerequisite in cooperation within networks (Powell 1990), these asymmetrical structures challenge the network strategy adopted by Tedeos Aid’s regional program. This is the root of the paradox, because organizations involved in international development cooperation, which in Germany have only recently changed their designation from that of ‘aid’ to ‘cooperation’, often still operate according

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to the asymmetrical principles that were dominant in the past. At the same time, development NGOs from the Global North are increasingly oriented toward participatory approaches by respecting local knowledge and fostering the exchange and the constitution of networks between local partner organizations (South-South networks). Against this background, this chapter addresses the question of what kind of practices and strategies are deployed considering that value-driven development NGOs are consciously trying to avoid reinforcing postcolonial asymmetric relationships. On the one hand, the international political environment generates support programs for social work actors in ‘weak’ nation-states that offer opportunities for action on a local, national, and international level. Here, the actors’ capacity for action is constrained by these weak states, which fail to protect vulnerable population groups and to enforce human rights.13 On the other hand, the promising possibility of achieving significant levels of agency among partners in the South can be restricted by what are often strict obligations for accountability placed on the members of the Northern organization by state institutions and forwarded to local project partners in the South. Furthermore, the agency of Southern NGOs might be restricted if they have to follow a certain program strategy, such as ‘networking’, which has to be implemented according to the planning in the proposal submitted for the project’s funding. This is also the case when joint projects between network partners are organized in a hierarchical manner, following only the logic and interests of the national and supranational funding agencies of the North, which emphasize certain policies and strict accounting transparency. This is where the importance of development NGOs and the way they manage cooperation come into play. Development NGOs often serve as mediators and facilitators of development projects that aim to improve social support structures for excluded populations. They can be seen as a kind of buffer between those unequal institutions such as Northern (supra)state institutions and local NGOs in the South. Nevertheless, their important role in the field of development cooperation comes with high organizational and communicative challenges. Based on the following analysis, it will be argued that only by providing relatively open organizational structures and by facilitating interaction can ambivalence in this contradictory field be reduced. After all, the way communication takes place in these working relationships helps decide whether all participants can feel a shared sense of belonging to a group with shared interests and values, working together.

4.1

Framing Transnational Social Work Cooperation

Along with the processes of coordination and control required for funded projects, actors at Tedeos Aid create the organizational framework for cooperation in their roles as consultants, program managers, coordinators,

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and administrators. Here they often appear as facilitators and mediators accompanying processes within the program and within transnational SouthSouth networks that emerge from cooperation on the program. It is significant that in order to stop external accounting firms appointed by state institutions in the Global North from taking direct control of participating partner organizations in the Global South, Tedeos Aid takes over those tasks itself (these two options are allowed, at least by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, BMZ, the major source of program funding). For this reason, Tedeos Aid established another financial administration office in Central America and hired local staff who work together closely with the headquarters in Germany. Ruben Torres, a local staff member from the financial administration office, emphasizes the role that he and other financial advisors play in helping partner organizations to meet the sophisticated requirements for accountability in international project management. For this reason, financial advisors frequently visit participating project partners in the program that are spread over Latin America. The interview was conducted during his visit to the Tedeos Aid headquarters in Germany: The main aim is how to solve the problems presented at the visit rather than control. If needed to guide, solve problems and support. That has been the function of all advisors. [. . .] Then the two reports together [A project report and a financial report have to be presented semiannually at Tedeos Aid.], we process, we correct, we support and then inform Tedeos Aid, here in Germany. (09/11/2009)14 Financial advisors within transnational organization structures (see also Figure 11.1) provide an additional ‘buffer’ in terms of power and control between local NGOs in the South, the Northern development NGO, and German state or international suprastate funding institutions; this leads to facilitating mechanisms in favor of local NGOs in the South but also for the Northern NGO. Local project coordinators, who are faced with sophisticated accounting and reporting demands within international development cooperation, get frequent support and advice that ensures the provision of resources. A lack of knowledge and advice in this context could be a reason to be excluded from the international funding system. Nevertheless, advisors certainly control what is going on within individual local projects and report to the headquarters. Tedeos Aid coordinators and financial advisors in Latin America are the local counterparts of the permanent administrative staff in Germany. Their salaries are labeled for project staff. Project staff complement the permanent staff where costs have to be minimal due to a self-commitment as a certificated donation organization in order to apply for the DZI Seal of Approval.15 The German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) refers to the seal when checking whether a NGO may receive public subsidies. As mentioned before, Tedeos

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Aid staff in Latin America also avoid control by external accounting firms who might be more restrictive and provide less support. Moreover, the coordination office in South America (Elisabeth Feist and Ursula Lopez) supports all partner organizations involved in the program roughly once a year by organizing an ‘expert meeting’, a convention between all program partners, that is hosted by one of them in a Latin American country. At those face-to-face encounters, the project leaders share their professional experiences and plan joint projects, such as training workshops, a newsletter, conferences, or the creation of more or less organized networks that form as interest groups in the field of social work and social services. Also, local, national, and international academics as well as politicians, and sometimes representatives of international funding agencies, are invited to these meetings in order to give voice to and utilize practical experience in the effort to influence decision-makers on a national and international level. The freelance consultant Elias Zamboni conducts these expert meetings together with the program manager Michael Heuser from the headquarters (see Figure 11.1). Further, the consultant conducts joint workshops, evaluates the community-based projects that are running, and provides expert advice. The way in which the processes of exchange and agreement are carried out is a key indication of how well the participants (both the partner organizations and Tedeos Aid) work together as members of a social work network and how they overcome the asymmetrical structures. This mainly involves participative democratic processes that are carried out in a relatively professional way, reflecting the benchmarks for practical methods of acting transnationally. The project leader for a Latin American partner organization, Marta Fernández, reveals her view of challenges and failures in transnational networking: You will see that the approach we aimed for [when setting up LANET] was a participatory one where all members needed to be equal, on a horizontal level, and thus build the network together. Having this initial mindset is important, [. . .] And some of us, myself included, have nevertheless failed in the construction or management of LANET. I’m not saying that it is only others who have failed: I am including myself! We have failed to give it a democratic, participatory character in which it is also important to understand that we are different, we have different levels of understanding and approaches. So I think that’s where work needs to be done. (30/01/2009)16 During joint decision-making processes between local partners, Elisabeth Feist, the German Tedeos Aid coordinator at the coordination office in South America, supervises Internet communication (e-mails, chat), checking that they ‘run democratically’ and that enough space is given to joint processes—even though she does not see herself as the coordinator of the

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network that is being constructed by the partners. Furthermore, she acts in an advisory capacity, informing people about funding requirements in her role as the Tedeos Aid coordinator. Communication related to this was observed during the program partners’ joint project, a circular evaluation where representatives of five social work training centers visited each other at the different locations throughout Latin America and finally evaluated each other. Tedeos Aid saw the need for this evaluation of the five projects related to the development of these training centers. As well as an evaluation by an external expert, as is common within international development cooperation, the program manager in Germany finally decided on a participative circular evaluation (an example of the application of ‘both/and’ logic, see below). At the beginning of this process, terms of references had to be developed and the partners chose and gave responsibility to Rosana, one of the local project leaders, to be the coordinator of the circular evaluation. During her coordination period, at different times various comments on the program were made by one of the local partners or by the Tedeos coordinator regarding whether someone was acting democratically or undemocratically. This is illustrated by the following quotation from the author’s field diary: Elisabeth receives a communication (email) from Martin from Nicaragua in which he reacts to yesterday’s message from Rosana. Elisabeth becomes a little worked up about this and immediately tells me about it. Apparently, Martin considers Rosana’s actions to be ‘undemocratic’. The agreements (between the project partners in the program) which had been established in the Chat meeting in November were turning out to be not maintained. (10/12/2009)17 After a few days, the author/researcher notes Elisabeth’s comments after a chat meeting with another partner, José Pacheco from Nicaragua: Then she (Elisabeth) reflects (after speaking with) José, that the Nicaraguan partners put the network in the foreground of their priorities because they sent a representative of their national network NICNET into the (transnational) evaluation team. She asserts “This is a democratic process”. She understands that Rosana is somewhat angry, because Nicaragua took so much time with their critical comments on the terms of reference (for the circular evaluation) which the partners received a long time ago. Now, time is short. Still, she does not like Rosana’s authoritarian tone. (14/12/2009) In this conflict between member partners participating in the circular evaluation, the Tedeos Aid coordinator appears as a watchdog over democratic processes and at the same time as a coordinator, although she herself does not see her role as coordinating the network that is being formed by the partners on the program (this, she points out on various occasions to the researcher). What is most interesting is that her role can be seen as

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that of a social catalyst, fostering collaboration without being directly part of it. As demonstrated by the ongoing organizing process and finally by the successfully completed joint evaluation, a third party that accompanies horizontal network relationships can function to foster collaboration, serve to link different interests, and shed light from different angles on decisions that do not meet with the approval of all actors involved18. The consultant Elias Zamboni in Europe takes on an important role in this context. He was contracted as a freelancer by Tedeos Aid after he had applied for funding for the development of social work concepts together with one of the local partners in the program in Latin America. One of the Tedeos Aid managers called him the ‘father of the program’. He is highly respected within the organization and among all participating partners on the program. He often acts as a mediator in conflict situations, giving advice to the coordinator Elisabeth Feist, as well as to participating partners in the program who ask for his advice via e-mail and telephone. The coordinator and the consultant are important brokers within these working relationships that are promoted by the Tedeos Aid program as a framework. Most importantly, they embody the roles that mainly link Tedeos Aid in Germany with the local partner organizations, and are pivotal in maintaining trustful relations, which fluctuate between support and control. Both of them had already lived in Latin America and know Spanish and the local contexts very well. As the examples above show, actors in more loosely coupled19 and thus facilitative organizational structures develop ways of acting that promote cohesion and support cooperative relationships that are often ambivalent and potentially conflictual. This is frequently the case between the various partner organizations within horizontal network structures, who face major challenges in reconciling their participatory approach (based on democratic processes) with the need for coordination, which always implies a certain degree of control and power. In addition, members of the LANET network represent diverse organizations, which leads to complex structures of social relationships, as project leader José Pacheco sums up: It becomes a very complex process, because we [LANET] have reached a very large size and without it being something planned but rather it is still in process. And then, we have our different histories. So yes, it is a very heterogeneous network, very diverse.20 The following sections describe patterns of action adopted by Latin American project partners and the German development NGO Tedeos Aid to overcome this heterogeneity: the pattern of ‘building community’ and the ‘both/and’ logic.

4.2

Building Community

Community building (Vergemeinschaftung21), which aims to create a common identity for participants in transnationally organized social work, is

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one of the most important sets of practices (other practices are the framing of cooperation and managing in a dualistic logic—see above and below) to cope not only with the complexity of partnerships as mentioned above by Marta Fernandez and José Pacheco, but also with the neocolonial dilemma inherent in the transnational framework. In the context of social work, where community building is a conceptual approach, it becomes clear that there is a need for a self-reflective and professional attitude toward community building by the members of this (expert/social work) community. In the case study presented here, it was observed repeatedly that communitybuilding processes took a central role in promoting cohesion in networklike cooperative relationships. The most significant fact to note here is that the organizational framing, mainly established by the German development NGO Tedeos Aid, did permit and reinforce those interactions by providing adequate space and time, and scheduling relatively open and participative interactions beyond the mere requirements of funding-related project management. The following scene exemplifies the group discussions as one of the abovementioned mechanisms. This discussion took place at the end of a conference meeting in Germany. In 2009, Tedeos Aid invited members of its worldwide partner organizations who were working in the field of drug use, to Berlin. The aim of the conference was first to take a position on the predominant international drug policy, lobbying for populations who live in poverty and suffer not only from addiction, but at the same time from repressive drug policies; and second to present the outcomes of related social work projects within these local communities and share experiences. Tedeos Aid asked the participants of the conference, mainly project leaders from various countries and participants in the development program against social exclusion, to discuss and summarize their ideas for future cooperation between Tedeos Aid and the partner organizations in 30 minutes. Groups were divided into continental groups. Twelve of the members of the Latin American group already knew each other well, as the program and linkages between the local NGOs and an academic expert had been well established (the program based on BMZ funding started in 2001). Furthermore, a representative of the Bolivian government and representatives of two different UN commissions took part. Padre Thomas, a project leader from a Central American country, was chosen by the group to moderate the discussion. Project leader Hernando from Central America had been selected as the spokesman for the Latin American organizations and project leader Octavio from South America entered this sequence. HERNANDO: And what’s our position on funds? [. . .] Co-financing, that’s a point I can add under ‘Network’. OCTAVIO: No, I also believe that Tedeos in Germany is joining through a partner-process.

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PADRE THOMAS:

Right. But Tedeos shouldn’t be seen as Santa Claus, either! (laughter, background discussions) OCTAVIO: Yes, exactly! They should accompany us! We should be walking together, right? (23/01/2009)22

The ideas developed in this group discussion are presented later at the final session of the conference by Hernando, in his role as the spokesman of the Latin American organizations. This example shows that, on the one hand, the partners cooperating on the program deliberately want to construct themselves as ‘we’ along with Tedeos Aid, which is referred to as a ‘partner’ in the above quote. This ‘partnership’ can be explained by the intention of achieving shared and complementary aims. These aims, which tend to be expressed symbolically by using the concepts of ‘partnership’, ‘partner’, and also ‘network partner’,23 overshadow the asymmetric power relationship expressed in the ironic ‘Santa Claus’ metaphor, which is always latent in cooperative relationships between unequal organizations, but takes on a special bittersweet nuance within the context of North-South cooperation. While attending a weekly project meeting at the Tedeos Aid headquarters, the metaphor of Santa Claus is also used by Tedeos Aid managers. When a young manager, new in the field and the organization, expresses doubts about enforcing conditions for the continuation of a project, not wanting to be the ‘bogeyman’, one of the participants insists that, for his followers, it would be better that he is the “bogeyman rather than Santa Claus” (27/10/2009). Again, one aspect of interest here is the organizational framing. In faceto-face working groups, on the one hand, the partners have an opportunity to renegotiate or confirm a shared standard. On the other hand, the outcome for the working group in this conference context stays on a symbolic level. Critical points that were raised by local partners, such as “I think we are already large, we can do a lot on our own”, in an attempt to claim more freedom in strategic decision-making within cooperative South-South projects, were not integrated into the final statement, which officially summarized the outcomes of the group discussion on future cooperation. Another much stronger ‘we’ was constructed at the same time among the cooperative South-South Latin American partners and appeared as a counterpole to the strong institutional power of Tedeos Aid. Their group identity was strengthened by the South-South networking strategy of Tedeos Aid and supported by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). As mentioned before, those networking efforts were transformed into organizational network structures. In the next example, the phrase ‘we Latin Americans’ relates to historical and political developments in the region. One of the project leaders constructs the ‘neocolonial dilemma’ from a different point of view than the Northern perspective shown in the quote from program manager Michael Heuser above. In the following scene, we enter the group discussion already

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mentioned between Tedeos Aid’s Latin American partners during the conference meeting in Berlin. Within this context, one participant urges the others: We Latin Americans are very paranoid, because of our history, because we were used, because we were shoved around, because we were oppressed; that’s why we fall into this trap: that paranoia rises up among us and trips us up. I want to urge everyone, really, the differences, uh, we should know that they [the differences, author’s note] come together to form a whole and they shouldn’t separate us. Because if that’s the case, we don’t have anything to do, compañeros [colleagues/comrades]. (23/01/2009)24 The project partners in the program had been constituting themselves as members of transnational South-South ‘networks’ (more or less formalized interest groups), one Central American and another Latin American network (LANET), with the support of Tedeos Aid and the Germany Ministry funding. There had been conflicts during the formation of the network because of the wide range of projects, organizations, and interests involved. During the Berlin conference, mistrust and competition came up, as Tedeos Aid did not invite all the Latin American partners in the program to the conference. Against this background, the statement above appears as an attempt to foster community building among the partners, by emphasizing cooperation instead of competition. Furthermore, when the partners participating on the program were building the LANET network, they exchanged ideas intensively about working experiences in similar local contexts, possible common projects, as well as common ideas about social change in general and in the contexts of their work (around 2005). Another major topic at this time was the issue of how to ensure long-term funding in order to implement social services and be able to pay local staff. For the research, this communication was observed and analyzed retrospectively using e-mails that were collected by the Tedeos coordinator, Elisabeth. She and the consultant, Elias, based in Europe, took part in this ongoing virtual conversation. The locations of the partner organizations studied suffer from social instability, with violence exercised by both repressive state and police representatives as well as criminal groups. Violence is an almost daily phenomenon in the neighborhoods where social workers operate, especially in the cities of Colombia and Mexico. Community-building processes were observed to help discern the characteristic that distinguish social movements and NGOs from other actors in development cooperation: solidarity—a ‘glue’ that binds the partners together. In the case of the Latin American partners in the program, this is created with reference to their similar social contexts, which are often very different from those of the Northern countries and regions, as one partner stresses the ‘solidarity which arises from our similar contexts of violence’ (la solidaridad que emerge de nuestros contextos similares de

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la violencia). Another partner in the e-mail exchange hopes ‘that the shared dreams become true’ (poder hacer realidad los sueños compartidos) by the formation and collective action as a (transnational NGO) network. Community building based on solidarity is not the only ‘glue’ in what are often contradictory cooperative relationships within a transnational network. Community-building processes are also observed that are based on the joint creation of action plans, which generates a sense of identity and belonging between partners from the South.25 A model for this, COMP (see quote by the consultant Zamboni below), was developed, applied, and improved by one of the partner organizations engaging in professional social work training and by the aforementioned Elias Zamboni (an academic and practicing psychologist who later worked as a consultant for Tedeos Aid), together with other partner organizations in the program, who later applied the COMP model and helped to further develop it. In fact, the development of a community-based working model in the context of aid to highly vulnerable groups was the starting point in the search for international funding possibilities from the perspective of one partner organization from Central America that had already collaborated with Zamboni. The author notes after an interview with him: To overcome the heterogeneity of the projects and to find a common denominator, the meta-model COMP was developed. The model was given its name later by the partners at a workshop with another Tedeos Aid consultant. The cornerstone of the model lies in community work and in networking. To date, the organizations interpret this model differently or only operationalize a part of it. To him [Elias Zamboni] this was fine as long as they knew the model well. He believes it is especially important for the scientific analysis of the projects and the corresponding argument for the use of certain methods. (27/10/2009) As mentioned, the model has not been applied and accepted completely by all partner organizations involved in the program. Nevertheless, the option of applying only parts of the model in their local work and the resultant rather loose coupling of the model to the program fosters a common identity as a professional network and also as a professional community, as the implementation of the working model COMP fosters broad perspectives on social work in terms of the recognition of the complexity of social problems.

4.3

The ‘Both/And’ Logic

For intermediary organizations, managing cooperation within the system of international development cooperation means following a logic that is inherently dualistic. Development NGOs, mediating between the different stakeholders, which are mainly state institutions and local partner organizations, have to find ways of linking their different institutional logics. At the same time, these NGOs follow their own, sometimes different, strategic goals, for instance, when it comes to positioning themselves in a certain

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politically relevant field. On a more daily basis, the challenge entails finding appropriate means of communicating and decision-making in order to meet norms of accountability in this sensitive area of operations. Funding organizations from the Global North (suprastate, state institutions, and development NGOs) need to cope with the contradiction that they request accountability from their downstream partner organizations, yet if they displayed hegemonic disciplinary action, it would be criticized. During participant observation, one specific pattern for dealing with this contradiction could be identified. The institutional logic behind decisionmaking processes in this context was observed to be a ‘both/and’ strategy. This strategy comes into place especially when the development NGO cannot rely on institutionalized norms and regulations in the Global South context similar to what would be found in the Global North, in this case German. Thus it is the way to manage and coordinate stakeholders with differing interests. Individual coordinators, situated between the structures of the formal project regulations and the practical management of relationships where communication is often informal, find their own ways of coping with accountabilities (reports, deadlines, etc.) and different interests: by juggling between ‘discretion’ and ‘enforcement’ in their style of communication. Here, forms of ‘sensitive’ communication play an important role when the aim is accountability. This pattern finds expression in the following interview sequence with a local assistant, Ursula Lopez, from the coordination office in South America, who had German family roots: And I think especially in Latin America, you have to, need a lot of the—como se dice—the suseptibilidad, sensitivity! The Latin Americans are very sensitive and you have to have a lot of tact to have communication, to have good communication, no? And that’s not always easy, no? (08/01/2010)26 What is striking here is the generalized attribution of a sensitivity specific to Latin American culture, which is why one must “have a lot of tact to have good communication”. The emphasis on ‘good’ underlines the struggle to maintain cooperative relations. Good relations are an important qualitative component in cooperation. This struggle seems to be accomplished with extra tact, necessitating a kind of sensitivity. A particular form of communication is obviously required when dealing with ‘the Latin Americans’, in other words, the project coordinators of partner organizations in Latin America. In one case, the Latin American assistant from the coordination office states that she needs to be updated about the activities of the local partners so that she can extend the deadline if it seems necessary. In contradiction to this flexibility, it was observed that, to meet the requirements for accountability (reporting), the Tedeos Aid headquarters were called and asked to send an official letter from Germany urging the partners to send their reports, when friendly and

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sensitive communication did not get any results. Here, the coordination office in South America serves as an intermediary between Tedeos Aid in Germany and local partner organizations that are spread over Latin America. Both logics are applied here: personalized institutional relations based on values such as solidarity and humanity and a bureaucratic logic with defined contract rules and (more or less defined) sanctions. The next example is related to the planning of the project evaluation (see above). Funded projects are subject to standards of accountability and, thus, they usually have to be evaluated to be legitimized, and also for the purpose of obtaining further funding. The form of evaluation in this case does not seem to be determined by the financing institutions. Various institutional logics find their way into this organizational context. For instance, after the Tedeos coordinator had tried for several years to plan an evaluation that would involve an external expert, the program manager in Germany, Michael Heuser, came up with the idea of a circular evaluation: a participatory process among partners on the program. On the one hand, evaluation by experts who are not directly involved in the operational processes of the projects was and still is mostly the common method used in international development cooperation. The external expert is supposed to give a neutral opinion (which is often not the case, but that is a separate issue) about the approach taken within the projects, its achieved goals and impact. On the other hand, within the discourse on development cooperation, participatory processes in the monitoring and evaluation of development cooperation are also increasingly favored by state institutions. This is due to emerging international conventions designed to give more independence and power to partners from the South (i.e. Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness in 2005). In the end, the program manager in this case opted for both methods: an external evaluation by an expert and a circular evaluation that involved the partner organizations. When managers adopt a dual strategy, separate and different institutional logics in a complex institutional field such as this can lead to uncertainty in organizational decision-making processes and increase the complexity of coordination efforts. In contrast to this, hierarchical organizational processes aim at reducing uncertainty, based on reliable norms and guidelines. Yet even though it appears to be inefficient because of the high consumption of resources, this ‘both/and’ logic nevertheless increases the NGO’s opportunity for action, which may arise from the processes and outcomes of the different, juxtaposed methods. 5

TRANSNATIONAL SOCIAL WORK COMMUNITIES— A DISCURSIVE POSITIONING

The case study presented in this chapter investigates the institutional logic of a development cooperation program in Latin America. This institutional

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logic can be described as the establishment of a transnational social work community. Transnational social work communities act beyond national borders and form transnational social spaces, as defined by Pries (2008). Up until now, the profession of social work in industrialized countries has rarely integrated development efforts and social engagement in the South, nor have the participating organizations and applied methods of the South been reflected upon by social workers in the North. And equally, actors in the South who engage with disadvantaged groups rarely reflect on their efforts within a social work context, as social work is not well developed as a profession in many Latin American countries. Instead, concepts of social work developed in the US and Europe, which tend to focus on clinical social work often dominate in Latin America. The transnational perspective on social work highlighted in this chapter can be an opportunity for both sides to systematize models of action at different levels (local social services, the political agenda setting, capacity building, etc.) and find ways forward for collective action where necessary. Transnational social work communities are characterized by personalized institutional relationships, strong learning, and sharing processes on their practices and a high awareness of the need for cooperation (interdependency) in order to achieve aims of social development and social welfare and provide social services for excluded population groups. As has been shown, despite the ambivalence that arises due to asymmetries in power and divergence in interests and approaches, the members of participating NGOs find ways to maintain and even expand their agency. This can be the case when development NGOs provide an organizational framework that facilitates cooperation, provides space for communication, follows a dual managerial strategy (‘both/and’), and thereby fosters processes of community building (Vergemeinschaftung). The emerging communities form their own identity by various means, based on shared values and interests and a sense of belonging. NGO cooperation in the form of project partnerships and (less organized) NGO networks that span national borders can be meaningfully connected with the academic discourse on transnational communities in general. These have been extensively discussed in recent years, but mainly with a focus on migrant and diaspora communities (Al-Ali and Moser 2002; Levitt and Glick- Schiller 2004). In their edited volume, Djelic and Quack (2010) focus on transnational communities related to professional and organizational networks that shape global economic governance. They provide the following definition: Transnational communities are social groups emerging from mutual interaction across national boundaries, oriented around a common project and/or “imagined” identity, which is constructed and sustained through the active engagement and involvement of at least some of its members. (Djelic and Quack 2010, xiv)

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Aiming at promoting strong exchange and learning processes between partner organizations in the context of applied social work concepts, transnational social work communities could also work as communities of practice. Wenger (1999) developed this concept on the basis of empirical observations within organizations and on the Internet. It describes informal communities that exchange knowledge on similar practices in order to improve them. Later, he provided a guide on how to ‘cultivate’ communities of practice within organizations and, finally, he points to the importance of knowledge transfer for international development and the new role that development organizations can take: There is increasing recognition that the challenge of developing nations is as much a knowledge as a financial challenge. A number of people believe that a communities-of-practice approach can provide a new paradigm for development work. It emphasizes knowledge building among practitioners. Some development agencies now see their role as conveners of such communities, rather than as providers of knowledge.27 Cooperation in social work that crosses national borders forms transnational social networks and communities with shared interests, aims, values, and identities. Applying the definition of communities proposed by Djelic and Quack (2010, 13), transnational social work communities can be characterized by the following attributes: Firstly, they are characterized by mutual orientation and interaction toward social change, based on a complex and differentiated understanding of the causes of societal problems. Secondly, their common identity as agents of social change fosters cooperation in common projects. Thirdly, actors within such communities have a sense of reciprocal dependence. Fourthly, at least a minority of members are actively involved and engaged. Their performance goes beyond a preoccupation with accountability toward funding agencies and emphasizes the maintenance of an identity that is based on the social values of solidarity and empathy. Fifthly, and finally, they give one another a mutual orientation, a common identity, and common projects, a sense of dependency and active engagement that translates into and sustains a sense of belonging that goes beyond national, cultural, and organizational boundaries. Actors engaging in social work and forming transnational network structures are probably far from forming one community, although the interconnectivity of knowledge, ideas, people, and values due to processes of globalization (ease of mobility, Internet, etc.) and internationalization (state programs and regulation) facilitate such practices as community building. Also, actors in the South who are providing professional social support often do not identify themselves with the westernized profession of social work that today focuses more on individual casework rather than on community approaches. Nevertheless they are increasingly taking on the role of important leaders for social change in their local, national, and regional

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contexts. They develop innovative social work concepts, which are based on holistic views of social problems and problem solving, and they lobby for socially excluded populations. Cooperating with development NGOs from the Global North can be an opportunity to professionalize social work in specific areas of action, such as community-based social work in neighborhoods. 6

FUTURE PERSPECTIVES

During the organization of joint development projects, structural asymmetries are not necessarily ironed out. As shown in this chapter, these asymmetries remain when one-sided accountability does not allow for a true state of reciprocal relations, or when conflicts of interest arise, for instance, because of the different institutional logic of the stakeholders involved (international development NGOs, local Christian and non-Christian NGOs, state agencies, etc.) and different levels of professionalization (in institution and capacity building). However, actors in relatively open and thus facilitative organizational structures can develop ways of acting that promote cohesion and support cooperative relationships. Within this scenario, actors are relatively loosely coupled to each other, allowing each participant in a network or project partnership to maintain his or her independence. In this respect, the challenge for development NGOs is to create organizational frameworks and communication spaces to support interaction processes enabling community building and the creation of trust—and to be part of those processes. As shown in the case study and theorized by Pries (2008), locations of action are not necessarily congruent with the territories where the actors are located. Thus, social spaces are defined by relationships rather than territories. Locations of action can vary between a virtual chat room, a conference meeting in Europe, or an expert meeting in a Latin American capital city and mean enhanced coordination efforts. Relating to decision-making processes in international project management, a kind of ‘juggling’ is necessary in order to meet the expectations of different institutions and cooperation partners with their different individual organizational logic. Last but not least, models of action for practical application rarely exist in international development cooperation. In this regard, Kuhn (2005) recommends that the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) should respond with innovation and creativity to existing problems of legitimacy toward the public, rather than seeking greater success in mechanisms of control. As intermediary organizations, development NGOs are certainly in a better position to implement this recommendation. However, they should be granted leeway on the basis of their reputations and thereby win the trust of state institutions. This strategy appears to be particularly promising in complex, multilayered development

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projects as demonstrated paradigmatically in the case study of a development NGO program that aims at reducing poverty and social exclusion.28 One task of future research will be to further untangle this organizational web to deepen the perspective on organizations in transnational studies and to extend the transnational perspective within the discipline of organization studies as well as within social work, allowing decision-makers in state institutions and NGOs to reflect on the scope of their own actions. NOTES 1. The author would like to express her gratitude to Andreas Steinert and Professor Wolfgang Schröer, University of Hildesheim, for their support during the research process and in the early stages of writing this chapter. 2. Whereas the division of more wealthy, well-developed countries and mostly poor, less-developed countries into the geographic categories of Global North and Global South (allocated by the UN via the Human Development Index) lacks legitimacy today because of shifting economic growth and the substantial linkages caused by globalization processes, the two categories are still used within the system of international development cooperation. 3. Tedeos Aid is a pseudonym; also described below as a ‘development NGO’ from the Global North, as distinguished from ‘local NGOs’ from the Global South. All names of organizations and individuals in this chapter are pseudonyms, except for names of state and suprastate organizations. 4. However, it remains difficult to be heard and influence UN politics as an NGO beyond agenda setting. 5. A program is defined here as a set of projects. Projects are the main instrument to translate development policy into concrete action programs, placing limits on the time and work available so that resources are transferred in a manageable way. 6. Various international solidarity networks between Europe and Latin America still exist today (e.g. the Zapatista solidarity network that appeared in the 1990s in support of the Zapatista movement (organized as EZLN) in the Southern Mexican state of Chiapas). Oppression by militant government forces was reduced because of the presence of Western activists and the high level of attention the movement received in the European and US media and on the Internet. It is significant that foreign support for this rebellious indigenous group was intense because of a perceived common struggle against neoliberal politics. Tarrow describes those transnational diffusions as outcomes of internationalization and advances in I.C.T. (Tarrow 2006). 7. At various conference meetings of Tedeos Aid and their Latin American partners, it could be observed that the meeting ended with the Lord’s Prayer, conducted by one of the Fathers (Padres) present, who participated in the meeting in their role as project coordinators in the Tedeos Aid program. 8. The research was conducted as part of a PhD project within the research program and training group ‘Transnational Social Support’ at the University of Hildesheim, Institute of Social Pedagogy and Organization Studies, in cooperation with the Institute of Educational Science, Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. (See www.transnationalsupport.de for more information.) 9. The terms ‘partner’, ‘partnership’, and ‘partner organization’ are well established in the field of international development cooperation. They imply the

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10. 11. 12.

13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19.

20. 21.

22. 23.

24. 25.

26.

Nadin Tettschlag normative aim of equality and have a symbolic function within institutionalized relationships. All personal names in this chapter are pseudonyms. The quotes in this chapter are translations either from German or from Spanish. This quote is translated from an interview in German. Those ‘interests’ may be the demand for accountability (in the use of money, projects completed on time, etc.) but are also based on an increasing strategic focus, due to the professionalization of Northern NGOs (as described by the concept of ‘scaling-up’ by Edwards and Hulme (1992)). Certainly, strategic goals may affect operational goals within project cooperation and even more within network-like relationships. A typical statement by NGO networks in Latin America, supported by Tedeos Aid, emphasizes this failure among international decision-makers in politics: “Experts of 21 national, regional and Latin-American organizations and eight networks from Argentine, Brazil, Columbia, Costa Rica, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama and Germany claim that the countries were not able to protect the human rights and dignity of the socially deprived until today” (conference paper, Tedeos Aid, 2009). Translation from German. see http://www.dzi.de/dzi-institut/german-central-institute-for-social-issues/. Interview was conducted in Spanish. These notes were taken in German. According to the concept by Luhmann (2000), a ‘decision’ is an event in which, with the help of distinctions, a selection is made between several existing alternatives. Whether a decision has taken place can only be observed retrospectively. As a result, the nature of decisions is typically mystified when they are described as the result of arbitrariness, charisma, hierarchy, etc. The concept of loose coupling, introduced by Orton and Weick (1990), has received considerable attention in organization and management studies. It describes a form of organizing in which rationality (predictability) and indeterminacy (spontaneity, flexibility, and creativity) are possible simultaneously. Translation from Spanish. The German sociologist Tönnies (1887/1963) differentiates between Vergesellschaftung and Vergemeinschaftung to describe, respectively, the social processes within societies in the broader nation state sense and those within smaller-scale, face-to-face communities or groups, the former being more instrumental and contextual and the latter being more holistic and multifaceted between individuals who interact together as a group in all aspects of social life (i.e. political, religious, economic, and kinship relationships may overlap in the daily life of the community’s members). Translation from Spanish. Meyer and Rowan emphasize that “all organizations are embedded in both relational and institutionalized contexts”. “Managing relational networks involved matters of coordination and control, while more institutionalized settings necessitated efforts at symbolic management” (Meyer and Rowan (1977), cited by Owen-Smith and Powell (2008, 597). Translation from Spanish. In this case study, local partner organizations provide services such as lowthreshold education, psychosocial counseling, street work, and local networking, applying social work concepts of prevention and harm reduction in the context of multilayered personal and social problems (HIV/Aids, drug addiction, prostitution, homelessness, etc.). Translation from German.

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27. see http://www.ewenger.com/theory/, accessed October 04, 2014). 28. The different aims in development projects can relate to operational social work at the local level, organizational development, transnational and national networking, lobbying, capacity building/development, and other fields of action, all at the same time. Success, in terms of the positive impact on societies in general and on specific populations, is hard to measure during short-term projects and, sometimes, on the way to achieving certain goals, particular objectives and strategies might change.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Al-Ali, N., and K. Koser, eds. 2002. New Approaches to Migration? Transnational Communities and the Transformation of Home. London: Routledge. Cox, D., and M. Pawar. 2006. International Social Work: Issues, Strategies, and Programs. Thousand Oaks: Sage. DiMaggio, P. J., and W. W. Powell. 1983. The iron cage revisited: institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. American Sociological Review 48:147–160. Djelic, M.-L., and K. Sahlin-Andersson. 2006. Transnational Governance. Institutional Dynamics of Regulation. Cambridge Univ. Press. Djelic, M.-L., and S. Quack. 2010. Transnational Communities: Shaping Global Economic Governance. Cambridge Univ. Press. Easterly, W. 2006. The White Man’s Burden. Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good. Oxford Univ. Press. Edwards, M., and A. Fowler. (2002/2006). Introduction: Changing Challenges for NGDO management. In The Earthscan Reader on NGO Management, edited by M. Edwards and A. Fowler. Pp. 1–10. London: Earthscan. Edwards, M., and D. Hulme, eds. 1992. Making a Difference: NGOs and Development in a Changing World. London: Earthscan. Glick Schiller, N. 2010. A global perspective on transnational migration: theorising migration without methodological nationalism. In Diaspora and Transnationalism: Concepts, Theories and Methods, edited by R. Bauböck and T. Faist. Pp. 110–129. Amsterdam: Amsterdam Univ. Press. Haas, P. M. 1992. Introduction: epistemic communities and international policy coordination. International Organization 46(1):1–35. Homfeldt, H. G., ed. 2011. Soziale Arbeit als Entwicklungszusammenarbeit. Baltmannsweiler: Schneider Hohengehren. Homfeldt, H.-G., W. Schröer, and C. Schweppe, eds. 2008. Soziale Arbeit und Transnationalität. Weinheim: Juventa. Khagram, S., Riker, J. V., and Sikkink, K. eds. 2002. Restructuring world politics: Transnational social movements, networks, and norms. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Korten, D. 1990. Getting to the 21st Century. Voluntary Action and the Global Agenda. West Hartford: Kumanian Press. Kuhn, B. 2005. Entwicklungspolitik zwischen Markt und Staat. Möglichkeiten und Grenzen zivilgesellschaftlicher Organisationen. Frankfurt am Main: Campus. Levitt, P., and N. Glick Schiller. 2004. Conceptualizing simultaneity. A transnational social field perspective on society. International Migration Review 38(3): 1003–1039. Luhmann, N. 2000. Organisation und Entscheidung. Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag.

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Marcus, G. E. 1995. Ethnography in/of the world system. The emergence of multisited ethnography. Annual Review of Anthropology 24:95–117. Meyer, J.W./Rowan, B. 1977. Institutionalized organisations: Formal structure as myth and ceremony. American Journal of Sociology 83, S. 340–363. Moyo, D. 2010. Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is Another Way for Africa. London: Penguin. Negi, N., and R. Furman. 2010. Transnational Social Work Practice. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. Orton, J. D., and K. E. Weick. 1990. Loosely coupled systems: a reconceptualization. Academy of Management Review 15(2):203–223. Owen-Smith, J., and W. W. Powell. 2008. Networks and institutions. In The Sage handbook of organizational institutionalism, edited by R. Greenwood, C. Oliver, R. Suddaby, and K. Sahlin. Pp. 596–623. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Powell, W. W. 1990. Neither market nor hierarchy: network forms of organization. Research in Organizational Behavior 12:295–336. Pries, L., ed. 2008. Rethinking Transnationalism. The Meso-Link of Organizations. London: Routledge. Silva, E. 2013. Transnational Activism and National Movements in Latin America: Bridging the Divide. London: Routledge Chapman & Hall. Tarrow, S. G. 2006. The New Transnational Activism. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press. Tönnies, F. 1887 (1963). Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Wenger, E. 1999. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. Wimmer, A., and Glick Schiller, N. 2002. Methodological nationalism and beyond: nation-state building, migration and the social sciences. Global Networks 2(4): 301–334.

12 Social Security in Transnational Legal Space Limitations and Opportunities Keebet von Benda-Beckmann

1

INTRODUCTION

Over the past ten years, the interest in social security has received a remarkable boost in social anthropology and development studies. Until the 1980s, social security was almost entirely associated with the welfare state of modern industrial society and only a handful of scholars were looking at social security in developing countries (Benda-Beckmann et al. 1988; BendaBeckmann, Benda-Beckmann, and Marks 2000; Bossert 1985; Elwert 1980, 1991; Hirtz 1989, 2000; Mesa-Lago 1978, 1991; Midgley 1984; Zacher 1988). Today, hardly anyone doubts that it is an issue that concerns the whole world. Western models of the welfare state are no longer forced upon developing countries, as for example in Latin America (Mesa-Lago 1978, 1991). Western industrial states have painfully come to realize that reviewing their own social security systems is necessary in order to keep themselves sustainable. As a result, there is a growing awareness that public social security can only work in connection with private forms of social security and that public care can never fully replace private care. It has become clear that there is no linear movement from private to public social security. Social security is always a complex mixture based on very diverse sources, regulations, financial resources, and services in which different social relations and social networks come together. We have, in short, moved away from a one-dimensional concept of social security. Whereas the mix of resources has had important consequences for social policies, these are not the topic of this chapter. A more fundamental effect has been that we can now look at social security in situations where no social welfare state has developed, where the state is primarily a source of insecurity instead of security, i.e. in developing countries. However, for this examination we need a concept of social security that is suitable for intercultural comparison. Together with Franz von Benda-Beckmann, I started developing such a concept on the basis of our research in Ambon, one of the spice islands in Eastern Indonesia in the mid-1980s (Benda-Beckmann and Benda-Beckmann 2007). The research entailed a study of the mechanisms of social security that operated in a context of a state that offered only limited support and in which people

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had to rely on local forms of support regulated by local normative frameworks, as well as religious notions of care and support; a situation that is characteristic for most developing countries. We have also drawn on the work of a group of PhD students who conducted research on these issues in different parts of the world. 2

AN ANALYTICAL CONCEPT OF SOCIAL SECURITY

Social security in this approach is shorthand for the social provisions catering to situations in which persons cannot care for themselves or are at risk of losing the capacity to care for themselves. The reasons why persons cannot take care of themselves are usually a combination of economic, social, physical, and psychological factors. Social security has to do with problems of loss of income, but it refers in particular to the physical and psychological care in case of illness and invalidity, as well as problems related to the care of children, education, and housing. The concept entails need and the concepts, rules and principles, institutions, and procedures that define how these needs are to be catered for. They define which persons in what social and legal relationships are obliged to provide particular kinds of care. The concept also refers to the material and social resources required for social security. In most societies we find a wide range of potential social solutions for such instances of need. Arrangements are based on family, neighborhood, friendships, local communities, as well as religious and secular institutions, including the state. At the height of the welfare state, the focus had shifted almost entirely to state institutions, state financing, and state regulations specifically designed for social security. Family, neighborhood, and religious welfare did not disappear, but rather obtained a different form and position. Of late, private insurance companies have become prominent as well, but this does not mean that the state has completely withdrawn, because even private social security is heavily controlled by state regulation. By contrast, in developing countries the state plays only a modest role. Under such circumstances, it does not make much sense to adopt the International Labour Organization (ILO) concept of social security, which focuses almost exclusively on institutions that have been specifically developed for social security purposes. In countries with a weak state, we find only a few such institutions and those cater only to a very small section of the population, i.e. the armed forces, civil servants, and perhaps employees working in the small formal sector. Most people typically work in the informal sector and have to rely on other forms of social security that often are embedded in multifunctional social relationships. For example, employer and employee may also stand in a patron-client relationship that provides social security (Scott 1972, 1985). Neighborhood and kinship also, although not

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exclusively, provide social security, but the level and quality may be quite low. Rotating saving and credit associations, or ROSCAs, frequently have a social security function (Hospes 1996). Thus, whereas in principle every social relationship could have a social security function, social relationships vary greatly in the degree to which they serve social security purposes. The focus of this research is on those social relationships that have a more prominent social security component. Social security has to do with resources, with normative conceptions, and with regulations. Normative conceptions can be found at different levels. At the ideological level, in every society there are dominant conceptions as to how citizens and the state relate to each other, what the state’s duties are and, therefore, whether the state has a primary or only subsidiary obligation to care for the welfare of its citizens. There are also general conceptions about obligations among relatives, and so on. These are not necessarily shared by all and usually are, at least to some degree, contested. Legal systems contain a great number of such general ideological conceptions of social security. For example, in Germany, models of a welfare state of secular and Christian provenance coexist with socialist and liberal ideologies pertaining to social security and, recently, ideological ideas based in Islam. These ideologies all have had an influence on the next, more concrete analytical level, that of regulations and institutions. The existing legal system of the state therefore is the result of a long history of political contestation and negotiation. Shifts at the ideological level are not necessarily immediately translated into new legislation and regulations. Old ideologies linger on while new ones may arise. The analysis of social security has to move beyond the levels of ideology and regulations. A proper analysis also includes concrete legal relationships between parents and children, among members of a church organization, between ‘street-level bureaucrats’ (Lipsky 1980) and the clients of welfare institutions, and so on. And finally, it includes the social practices in which such legal relationships play out and are performed. Here we may see, for example, what kind of care or support is being given, and who refuses to provide support and why. An analysis of social security that looks at all these levels provides a deeper insight than the more conventional opposition between law and practice, between law in the books and law in practice. This scheme is basically an analytical approach for the study of the social working of law, which we apply here to the issue of social security and have previously used in a similar way for the analysis of property relationships (Benda-Beckmann, Benda-Beckmann, and Wiber 2006). Such an approach is particularly relevant for the analysis of social security in contexts of legal pluralism as is characteristic of developing countries and transnational networks of social security. The institutional legal frameworks of support and care are informed by several ideologies and in turn inform but do not fully determine actual social and legal relationships.

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CIRCLES OF SOLIDARITY IN TIME AND SPACE

The second element of our concept concerns ‘circles of solidarity,’ i.e. circles of persons within which resources are being mobilized, exchanged, and put into use for care and support. Well-functioning social security requires a variety of different resources. In Germany this entails, first of all, financial resources, such as unemployment benefits, pensions, or social assistance. However, money alone is not sufficient and other resources are required. Money often has to be converted into care, but this does not happen automatically. It requires knowledge and, above all, labor, people who actually carry out the caring tasks, or who have the time for psychological support. In contexts that lack a market for care, people depend on social relations and networks of support that can be mobilized in case of need. This is especially the case in developing countries, but social relationships seem to become increasingly important in the classical welfare countries in which the state is reducing social security. Thus, some resources have to be in the immediate vicinity of the person in need of care to be effective, whereas other resources can be made available over longer distances. Social security has both a spatial and a time component. Not all resources are used immediately for support and care. Resources are put to use in order to build up claims so that in a distant and often unpredictable future these claims can be transformed into actual support. We are used to claims being built up by financial means, by contributions paid that allow us to claim financial benefits at a later point in time, as allowances or pensions, or benefits in the form of caring labor. In social security systems not organized by the state, one does not build up claims by paying contributions into funds, but by investing into social relationships, by helping out, by financial support in case of need by someone belonging to the circle of solidarity, or even by taking part in rituals such as weddings and funerals. Despite the differences, all social security mechanisms span over long periods of time. Past, presence, and future are linked by social security systems. Individuals are tied into long term social networks, but structurally they may have a quite different time horizon within these networks. Person A may help kinsperson B because B needs help now, by putting A’s social network to work in order to provide B with the necessary care. Among other reasons, A does so in order to keep the possibility open so that in the future, when he will be in need of care, he will get B’s support or the support from B’s relatives or clients. For example, the Dutch historian and legal anthropologist Mulder (2000) has shown how Javanese rituals in Surinam served to link the social security needs of persons with very diverse time perspectives. The security or insecurity is a reflection of the extent to which this linkage holds or does not hold at the time one might require support, because the resources are depleted or not present at the place where they are needed. Security is a relative quality; it has an objective and a subjective side and the

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two do not always coincide. A social security system like the German one that has been relatively stable over a long period of time can nevertheless be experienced subjectively as insecure, for example, because of a rapid series of administrative changes or because of an ongoing discussion in the media about dismantling the system. On the other hand, a relatively fragile system does not necessarily engender a sense of insecurity. Some experience too much security as suffocating and thrive on the knowledge of an uncertain future. The psychological factors of security and insecurity perception in relation to social security are as yet underresearched. 4

UNDERSTANDING ‘ORDINARY LIFE’ AND ‘NEED’

Social security refers to those social mechanisms that apply when a person cannot care for him or herself. This conceptualization presupposes an evaluation of what an ordinary person is; of what he or she can be expected to suffer as ordinary adversity, and of what is considered need for which others have to provide support. A notion of need cannot exist without an understanding of ‘the ordinary.’ But what is considered ordinary and what establishes need are highly variable. Normative understandings about these issues change over time, as we know from the history of the European welfare states over the past 150 years. These understandings are also gender, age, and class specific. What was considered perfectly normal for a working class boy twelve years of age one century ago would be considered a sign of need in contemporary Europe. Most people do not look beyond the social security system within their own country and do not reflect on the different standards for child labor that figure in the world economy. Those buying cheap products are unaware at best, and more often indifferent to the conditions under which the products are being made. The few voices criticizing unhealthy and dangerous child labor in the industrial centers of developing countries are smothered under the attractions of cheap products. It is silently acknowledged that the standards for need that apply here may not apply elsewhere. The core concepts of social security need and support are particularly interesting for anthropologists as they provide insights into the way individuals relate to their social surroundings. For many realms of social life, cooperation with others is both necessary and normal. In fact, people depend on chains of collaboration (Giddens 1979), although not all cooperation is considered help or support in the sense of social security. When a husband ‘helps’ his wife cooking, this is generally not considered social security, but if a grandfather cooks for his grandchildren so that the mother of the children may keep her job, this may be seen as social security. Likewise, a woman who is caring about grandchildren on the Indonesian island of Ambon does not regard this as help, but as part of ordinary life. The anthropologist has to sort out the right terms that

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capture the kind of care one is looking for, and to grasp what kinds of things are locally understood as help, as support. Thelen (2005) conducted research on social security in Germany and reported similar experiences with grandmothers who vehemently denied helping even though they were clearly taking care of their grandchildren while their son or daughter went to work. When asked, the response would be: “That is not helping, that is what one does.” Thus, some cooperation is naturalized and is not perceived as help, whereas other cooperation is seen as help, depending on the underlying concepts of ordinary and extraordinary cooperation and division of labor. Some cooperation is perceived as part of what ordinary people do and as having nothing to do with helping, even though there is no reward or compensation. Other cooperation falls within the category of help. These concepts are class, age, and gender sensitive and reveal fundamental understandings of what it means to be a human being (see also LeutloffGrandits, Peleikis, and Thelen 2009; Read and Thelen 2007; Thelen, LeutloffGrandits, and Peleikis 2009). They also help us understand that what is commonly called ‘individualization’ often does not entail an atomizing of social life, but rather a narrowing of the circles in which naturalized cooperation occurs (Biezeveld 2002). This usually coincides with a narrowing of circles of solidarity as well, i.e. circles of persons who are responsible for each other not in a naturalized manner, but on the basis of recognized claims for support. 5

SOCIAL SECURITY UNDER CONDITIONS OF LEGAL PLURALISM

Different legal systems entail and engender different social security systems, as these are embedded in property regimes, kinship, and other social and economic regulations. Persons living under conditions of legal pluralism typically have to use a variety of mechanisms for social security. Stateprovided and traditional social security systems differ from each other and from religiously oriented social security mechanisms. Research conducted in Ambon (Benda-Beckmann and Benda-Beckmann 2007) revealed the absurd contradictions resulting from legal pluralism for social security. The Muslim population had a kinship system that was patrilineally organized, but inheritance was predominantly bilateral. Land was relatively abundant and there were only a few landless families. The rural population lived on a combination of subsistence gardening and fishing and the production of spices for the world market. Men and women usually had their own garden and trees for coconut, cloves, nutmeg, and recently also cocoa. A widow would not automatically become in need, although her life would become more difficult. Widows as such were not a category for which social security arrangements had to be put in place. Only if a widow

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was unable to work her land or had no land at all would she be considered in need and be entitled to receive help. During that period, the Indonesian state set up a number of social projects on the basis of internationally recognized categories of persons in need (Benda-Beckmann 1988b) and initiated three projects: one for invalids, one for orphans, and one for widows. A number of participants to the widows’ project were well-to-do widows, who were not considered needy at all according to local standards. One of them explained to me why she participated: “If the state offers such a project, you cannot simply refuse to participate. Besides, this way I can help widows who are truly in need and who have to rely on the support this project offers.” There were other mechanisms of social security for widows based in religion that had yet other definitions of neediness. Widows are one of the categories of people who, according to Islamic law, are deserving recipients of zakat fitrah, religious alms to be paid at the end of the fasting month. In practice, they received zakat fitrah from relatively close relatives in order to keep the money within the family. Every person may decide for him or herself to whom to give this zakat fitrah, which is paid in the form of one kilo of rice. Often the members of a household sat together and decided among themselves who would give his or her zakat fitrah to whom, e.g. a widow, an orphan, the keeper of the mosque, or a recently converted person; for example, a Christian teacher who had come to live in the village and met a Muslim spouse. Children at the age of learning to read the Quran may decide to give their zakat fitrah to their Quran teacher. For children below three, it was customary to give the zakat fitrah to the traditional midwife who helped with the birth of the child. She did not belong to any of the categories of legitimate recipients of zakat fitrah according to the official, scriptural interpretation of Islamic law, but according to local interpretations of Islamic law, this was perfectly legitimate. In 1980, villages in Indonesia were required to set up zakat committees that were to collect zakat fitrah and distribute it to the needy. The rural population of Ambon, with their deep mistrust towards the corrupt practices of state institutions, did not believe that the state could guarantee a just distribution and that the money would actually reach the needy. They simply continued to keep it within the village (Benda-Beckmann 1988a). This example shows that persons in developing countries often have to compose their social security into a complex web of very diverse regulations and mechanisms. The state usually plays only a minor role, whereas kinship and neighborhood dominate. In addition, people may rely on patron-client relationships and other social networks, such as the village cooperatives. The Dutch-Swiss anthropologist De Jong (2005) speaks of ‘patchwork’ social security, put together from very diverse sources with different circles of solidarity and different criteria for inclusion and exclusion, as well as different notions of need. The example also shows that legal systems may get entangled in these processes, resulting into hybrid legal forms.

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MIGRATION AND CHANGING CIRCLES OF SOLIDARITY

Against this background, I will now discuss what happens when people migrate. The reasons why people go away vary: some seek adventure or education; others go because of dire economic conditions which do not offer a viable future; or they flee from violence and hunger. Migration always has to do with resources, but sometimes people decide to migrate because of lacking resources, whereas in other situations the presence of sufficient resources allows for migration. In most cases, social security considerations play an important role in the motivation to move away, but the time perspective can be quite diverse. Moving away may be motivated because of current lack of resources, or because it is expected that the necessary resource basis can be enlarged at some time in the future. Migration changes the composition of circles of solidarity at the place of origin, for demographic reasons first of all. Migrants are usually young men and women between the age of 17 and 35. Only in exceptional cases of war and hunger do older and younger persons also move away, but even then this age category dominates. For the rural population staying behind, life becomes more difficult because the available labor is reduced, although sometimes it might also mean a relief because there are fewer mouths to feed. Elderly people and children stay behind and this means that the circle of solidarity becomes smaller and changes in composition. There are relatively more persons in need of support compared with persons capable of providing support. Moreover, in most cases migration draws on the available resources because the migrant initially needs money to move away, which means that the material basis for social security contracts. This is often accepted in the hope and expectation that the sacrifice will eventually pay off, as the migrant will receive a better education or employment that might provide access to more resources in the future. It is further expected that this will then allow the migrant to send money home and to mediate jobs, education, or proper medical treatment to which their relatives would have no access otherwise. But in order to reach that goal, it may be initially necessary to sell or lease a plot of land to be able to pay for the travel expenses. In Ambon, people primarily use the returns from the spices for this purpose and rarely need to sell land or trees, but in other regions people do not have such a resource, and they often have to sell land that used to support subsistence. Whether or not and when the investment will pay off is uncertain. It may take a long time for a young person to reach a position with an income that allows him or her to help his or her relatives back home. Rural families in Indonesia tend to be quite strategic in this. It is one of the most desired aims for a family to have at least one child in state service, because that is deemed the most secure position offering both official and unofficial material benefits and possibilities to acquire access to important services. However, a young teacher at the beginning of his or her career does not stand on the provider side of social security arrangements. Quite the contrary, with his

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low salary he will be in need for help for quite some time, especially if he does not teach in his village of origin. Teachers therefore often are taken up into a family where they have the position of a foster child. Only civil servants in higher positions are able to provide support for relatives. The strategy to provide children with a good education may not be successful, and under certain unfavorable conditions, this can have quite disastrous effects, as was the case in the Moluccas, a group of islands in Eastern Indonesia, at the end of the century. The civil war that started in 1999 and raged until 2002 was generally depicted as a religious war among Christians and Muslims. In fact, however, it was also a result of the dramatic contraction of the labor market as a result of which an increasing number of well-educated youngsters had to compete for an increasingly smaller number of jobs. The strategy of their parents, who had hoped their children would be absorbed by the state and would later be able to care for them during their old age, was failing. The civil war, then, had as much to do with competition on the labor market and the related social security expectations, as with ethnic and religious factors and competition over land (Adam 2010; Bartels 2003; Benda-Beckmann 2004, 2007). Under conditions of migration, it is not only the social security situation of those staying behind that changes. Even more happens at the other end of the network. Usually, migrants initially choose relatives or people from the same village who migrated earlier as a first place to go to and hope they can find a place to stay and possibly a first job. Many researchers have shown how much migrants are on their own and how small and fragile the networks that might serve as social security are during the initial stage of their migration (Anders 2002, 2004; Glick Schiller 2005, 2009; Jong et al. 2005; Leliveld 1994, 2000; Rohregger 2006, 2009). Over time these networks become somewhat more robust as young single migrants find a spouse or tap into alternative networks, e.g. religious ones. In Malawi, where funeral rituals are of particular importance, urban migrants have set up funeral societies from which the expensive rituals can be paid if there are no relatives around that might finance them (Anders 2002). Rotating savings and credit associations often have a social security component. Urban migrant communities tend to develop a great diversity of networks and organizations that provide them with security but at the same time may reduce their ability to send money back home. These networks are typically organized on a purely horizontal basis and are based on strict reciprocity. Direct reciprocity becomes more dominant at the expense of the balanced reciprocity characteristics of more traditional kinship relationships. The new religious networks in which migrants participate often show asymmetrical features, whereby the claims for support and the obligations to provide support are no longer seen as two sides of the same coin. This is the case, for example, when support for the poor is seen as a religious obligation towards God or Allah, which means that there is no place for a reciprocal right to receive support; caritas takes its place. This leads to entirely different dependency relations between

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providers and recipients of support. Whether one will receive support no longer depends on investment in the network, but on good moral conduct. 7

MOLUCCAN TRANSBORDER SOCIAL SECURITY NETWORKS

Apart from institutional innovations that occur in the diaspora, there are also other profound changes that I will illustrate with examples from my research on Moluccan women in the Netherlands. Dutch Moluccans are a somewhat atypical migrant group. As members of the Dutch colonial army, they were shipped to the Netherlands together with their families at the end of the Indonesian independence war, as it was expected that they would face considerable violence if left in independent Indonesia. The Dutch government, which had hoped to establish a federal Indonesian state, promised them return to an independent Moluccan state as soon as such a state was established. However, the independent Moluccan state never materialized. Within a period of a few months in 1950 and 1951, approximately 10,000 Moluccans arrived in the Netherlands. Initially they were put into camps and were prohibited from working. The labor unions wanted to keep the jobs for the Dutch population that was still trying to recover from the Second World War. They negotiated with the government that the Moluccans would not enter the labor market and that they would be fully supported by the government (Bartels 1989). Later on, when it became clear that they were not going back to Indonesia, they were not only allowed but forced to work. The government built neighborhoods at the outskirts of small towns throughout the country, where Moluccans could live among themselves. Job opportunities were limited for a predominantly unskilled group, and they remained strongly dependent on the government for a long time. For decades it was impossible for Moluccans to travel to Indonesia and written communication with relatives back home remained difficult. Thus, the Moluccan community that developed in the Netherlands was exceptionally uniform, due to a uniform migration past, long interruption of communication outside the group, and strong dependence on the state. Some characteristics that one finds among all migrants are more extreme among Moluccans. For instance, they developed an exceptionally idealized image of “home, where the entire village takes care of its population.” They also developed social relationships of substitute kin. ‘Boat relatives’ were very important during the first phase: people that had together travelled to Holland and who had established close friendships on board became godfather or godmother for each other’s children later on. They also often promised to give one of their own children in traditional adoption should the other not be able to get children, promises that were actually fulfilled in a number of cases. The Moluccan neighborhoods became central networks for social security with dense relationships of support.

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In addition, the institution of pela, a form of ritual kinship, obtained a remarkably central position in social security as well as in identity formation (Bartels 1989; Strijbosch 1985). Several developments affected the notions of need and the associated rights and obligations for care and support. The image of how life was in the inaccessible place of origin became more and more idealized, particularly because many Moluccans had left their home village at an early age when entering the army. Some had even been born in the camps of the Dutch army and had only second hand knowledge of what they considered their home village. Pela originally denoted ritual kinship among two far apart villages where one could expect a secure place to stay when travelling. The institution was established during a dangerous period of warfare in the pre- and early colonial period. When asked for help, one was obliged to support a pela, and marrying a pela was prohibited as pela were considered to be kin. Within the Indonesian context, this rarely caused problems because pela typically lived far apart. In the Netherlands, however, pela often lived in close proximity within the same neighborhood. In addition to this, people started to define their pela not only through the father’s line, but also through the mother’s line. Pela were not only those of the village of one’s father, but also of the village of one’s mother. In short, one had more pela than in the Moluccas and they lived in closer vicinity. There were more situations in which it was tempting to ask a pela for help. The Moluccan population therefore designed strict conditions for the help that could be asked from a pela. The proximity also raised the number of cases in which young people fell in love with a pela, which led to disputes within the respective families. The institution of pela thus obtained a totally new meaning and content from what it was in the Moluccas. Over time, notions of need and support also changed due to other developments. Without noticing, the Moluccan population adjusted to their Dutch surroundings. This became particularly clear in connection with child care and child education. It no longer was ‘natural’ or even acceptable to give a child in adoption or as a foster child to a couple that was unable to have children of its own. To care for one’s children implied more than feeding and clothing them; it was increasingly considered necessary to guide them through the school system and to provide psychological support. That is, the obligation to care for one’s children remained equally strong, but what it meant to fulfil this obligation changed profoundly over time. This had serious consequences for the time available for supporting elderly parents and other relatives. During the initial phase, adult children who lived with their parents would hand over their wage to their parents who would then give them pocket money. Later on this no longer was deemed natural and children insisted on keeping control over their wages. Some would contribute on a regular basis to their parents’ household, but this was not always the case and many youngsters would keep their entire wages to themselves. The middle generation, who had small children and ageing parents, had to divide their time between them and increasingly opted for

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their children. Some parents went along with this change, but others could not accept that they, as the oldest persons in the family, had lost their primary position to their grandchildren. They were deeply disillusioned, but often did not dare to talk openly about it. Their children, on the other hand, were frustrated because they could not live up to all the expectations of their parents, whether just or unjust. They still felt a strong obligation to support, but what this meant in practice had changed and was silently or explicitly contested. The so-called third generation, that is, those whose parents had been born in the Netherlands, adjusted to the dominant Dutch norms and values in yet another respect. They stuck to the obligation to help their parents and grandparents, but they made sure that there would be no doubt about who made the decision as to when and how to do so. They probably supported their parents and grandparents more than is usual among the autochthonous Dutch population, although I am not aware of any comparative studies that have looked into these matters. However, young Moluccans take meticulous care that their support never becomes a natural thing to which their parents or grandparents can lay a claim. Thus, they would pay for a new laundry machine if the old one needed replacement, and they would often pay for the weekly shopping, but not on a regular basis. This third generation also had the most complete set of kin relations locally responsible for each other. Persons of the first generation may still have sisters and cousins in the Moluccas, but most relevant relatives of the third generation lived in the Netherlands. That had implications for the way they related to the Moluccas. As mentioned, the image of how social security was organized in the Moluccas had become highly idealized during the period in which travelling to the Moluccas was impossible. Young people grew up with the idea that all was well organized and that indeed the whole village community took care of each other. They also grew up with the idea that they thought and felt like Moluccans in the Moluccas. As travelling became more common from the 1970s on, they discovered a totally different reality. They met grandparents that were poorly cared for, that had grown lonely because their children had left the village. And although these children generously sent money, they could not provide the actual necessary care, because that required physical proximity. These youngsters also discovered that it was not at all the whole village community that was taking care of those in need. Instead, care and support beyond the circle of very close relatives was based on strict reciprocity and had to be negotiated. They found the ways in which these negotiations took place strange, and often tough. They learned the hard way that they thought and reacted differently from their relatives in the Moluccas and that the stories they had grown up with were myths that had little to do with the reality of life in the Moluccas. For many this came as a great shock from which they recovered only slowly. When I talked with them during my research in 1990, several confided to me that it was the first time they could speak about these matters. They

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were confused, often angry, and full of shame. These experiences had implications for the attitudes towards help and support for the Moluccas, especially in the second and third generation. First generation Moluccans were still focused on direct support for specified relatives. The younger made their contribution, but they usually followed the lead of their elders. Other Moluccans were also heavily involved in providing financial aid for church and mosque renovations or for the building of a new church or mosque. But younger Moluccans who had those shocking experiences started to reconsider their relation with the Moluccas. Some turned away in disillusionment, while others looked for new ways of providing help and support. The sense of obligation remained, but took new forms, particularly as structural support that would sustainably improve the situation of their relatives in the Moluccas, e.g. development programs for drinking water, irrigation, and fishing. In doing so, however, they hit upon other unexpected limitations, as they were confronted with frictions in organized, decision-making, and accountability. It turned out that Moluccans had become more Dutch than they had expected and not only their notions of support had changed, but their socialization in the Netherlands also had affected their understandings of the ways by which support was to be provided. These programs were still at their very beginning when they came to a sudden halt when violence started in January 1999 in Indonesia. Once again it was hardly possible to visit the Moluccas. Development projects were no longer possible, but individual support to relatives had also become problematic, for people in the Netherlands realized that the money they would send might be used for weapons, which most Dutch Moluccans rejected. The shifts in modes of support that I have described for the transnational Moluccan support network is typical for migrant networks in that different generations design different modes and relationships of support and the modes of support depend on the perceived needs in the places of origin as well as the political conditions under which support can be provided. 8

CONCLUSION

The specific history of the Dutch Moluccan population gave us a particularly clear view of the shifts in ideologies, organizations, and normative conceptions of social security that occur under conditions of migration. In a fundamental way, migration disrupts the links between past, present, and future that are entailed in social security arrangements. Yet migration itself is a strategy with a strong social security component, even though the strategy does not always turn out to be successful. Despite the fact that migrants tend to retain their own notions of need and care, these are affected by the dominant conceptions and legal system of the recipient country. Similar changes occur among other migrant communities that have developed over a longer period of time, although the details differ depending upon the

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specificities of place of origin and the place of new domicile. Changes occur at the ideological level, the level of legal regulations, and of legally defined social relationships, as well as in social practices. However, these changes do not necessarily run parallel, and the Moluccan example has shown that the pace of change may vary according to the age groups and generations. In these processes, circles of solidarity and the position migrants take within these circles change over time, and the various networks that serve social security become entangled while others get disentangled. The circle of persons for whom support is naturalized usually contrasts with that of migrants, who tend to organize their social security in relations of strict reciprocity. Thus, the social security mixes and patchworks people make change fundamentally and generally become more complex. Under favorable conditions, migration may widen the resource basis for some parts of the networks; but for other sections of the network, the resource basis contracts and some fall out of almost all networks of support. One of the reasons for this is that not all care and support can be provided across long distances, and it is easier to withdraw from obligations when claims are made over long distance rather than face-to-face. What is perhaps most important is that an ideology saying that all has remained the same as ‘back home’ cannot hide the changes brought about by migration in terms of notions of what is ordinary life and what constitutes need, and ideas of the kind of support that has to be provided, by whom, and in what manner. By living amid the different dominant set of values, norms, and legal institutions of the recipient country, migrants tend to absorb these even if they ostentatiously stick to their ‘traditional’ values. In these processes, past, present, and future are linked in a new manner.

REFERENCES Adam, J. 2010. Post-conflict Ambon: forced migration and the ethno-territorial effects of customary tenure. Development and Change 41(3):401–419. Anders, G. 2002. Freedom and insecurity: civil servants between support networks, the free market and the civil service reform. In A Democracy of Chameleons: Politics and Culture in the new Malawi, edited by H. Englund. Pp. 43–61. Uppsala, Somerset, N.J.: Nordic Africa Institute, Transaction Publishers. Anders, G. 2004. Like chameleons—Civil servants and corruption in Malawi. In The Governance of Daily Life in Africa: Public and Collective Services and Their Users/La gouvernance au quotidien en Afrique: les services publics et collectif et leur usagers, edited by G. Blundo. Pp. 119–142. Bulletin de l’APAD. Bartels, D. 1989. Moluccans in Exile. A Struggle for Ethnic Survival. Socialization, Identity Formation, and Emancipation among an East-Indonesian Minority in the Netherlands. Leiden: Centrum voor Oderzoek naar Maatschappelijke Tegenstellingen. Bartels, D. 2003. Your God is no longer mine: Moslem-Christian fratricide in the Central Moluccas (Indonesia) after a half-millennium of tolerant co-existence and ethnic unity. In Proceedings of the 5th Maluku Conference, Darwin, Australia, July 1999, edited by S. Pannell. Pp. 128–153. Darwin: NTU Press.

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Contributors

Keebet von Benda-Beckmann is Professor Emerita in Legal Pluralism at Martin Luther University, Halle/Saale, Germany. As a former head of the Project Group Legal Pluralism at Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale, she is now an associate at that institute. She has conducted extensive research in Indonesia on land, dispute management, social security, and decentralization with a focus on the plural legal context. She also conducted research on the emancipation of Moluccan women in the Netherlands. With the late Franz von Benda-Beckmann, she recently published (2013) Political and Legal Transformations of an Indonesian Polity. Heidi Dahles (PhD in Social Sciences, 1990, Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands) is Professor and Head of Department of International Business and Asian Studies at Griffith Business School, Griffith University, Australia. Her research interests include Chinese business networks, small-scale and micro business, and the informal economies of Southeast Asia. Heidi has published in peer-reviewed journals such as Asia-Pacific Business Review, Culture & Organization, East Asia—An International Quarterly, the Journal of Entrepreneurial Communities, the Journal of Small Business and Entrepreneurship, and Journal of Contemporary Asia. Among her recent co-edited volumes are Capital and Knowledge, Changing Power Relations in Asia (2003), and Multicultural Organizations in Asia (2006). Kari Gibson is completing a Masters in Clinical Psychology and is currently a PhD student at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her research explores climate change and distress among citizens of low-lying coral atolls in the Pacific. Kari’s research interests lie at the intersections of cultural studies, anthropology, and clinical psychology. Her current clinical work focuses upon the recovery of individuals and families from refugee backgrounds following experiences of torture and trauma. Stefan Köngeter is Professor for Social Pedagogy at the School of Education, University of Trier, Germany. His recent research focuses on the

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transnationalization of social work and, particularly, on the transnational production of knowledge in social work and social policy. He has co-edited two special issues of the journal Transnational Social Review on “Transnational Social Policy: Families and Care” (2013) and “Researching Transnationalism in Social Work” (2012). Naomi Lightman is a PhD candidate at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. Her thesis focuses on the implications of an increasingly transnational student milieu in the Greater Toronto Area secondary schooling context. Her research and teaching interests include: immigration and transnationalism, research methodology (quantitative and qualitative), social inequality, education policy, and sociology of education. Her academic work has been published in International Migration Review, Social Inclusion, Canadian Ethnic Studies and the Transnational Social Review—A Social Work Journal. Lenore Manderson is Professor of Public Health and Medical Anthropology in the School of Public Health at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, and Professor of Anthropology in the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society (IBES), Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, in the United States. She is a medical anthropologist and has contributed to sociology, the social history of medicine and public health, undertaking field research, training, and publishing extensively across these disciplines in Australia with immigrant, indigenous, and Anglo-Australians in Southeast and East Asia, Ghana and South Africa. Her most recent books include Surface Tensions: Surgery, Bodily Boundaries, and the Social Self (2011), Technologies of Sexuality, Identity and Sexual Health (ed., 2012), Reframing Disability and Quality of Life: A Global Perspective (ed. with Narelle Warren, 2013), and Disclosure in Health and Illness (ed. with Mark Davis, 2014). She edits the international journal Medical Anthropology: Cross-Cultural Studies in Health and Illness. Eberhard Raithelhuber, PhD, is Assistant Professor for Social Pedagogy at the Department of Educational Science, University of Salzburg, Austria. During the last ten years, he has published on life course transitions, agency in social theory, social support and social intervention, youth and young adults, regional development and networks, citizenship and democracy, and transnationalism and migration. He co-edited a special issue on “Linking Migration and Social Policy” (2014) in the journal Transnational Social Review: A Social Work Journal. Wolfram Schaffar is Professor for Development Studies and Political Science at the University of Vienna. He was formerly a Research Fellow at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies

Contributors

265

(KITLV) in Leiden. He has taught in the Department of Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Bonn, the Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, and the Department of International Relations at Yangon University, Myanmar. In his research, he focuses on state theory, constitutionalism, social movements, and democratization in the Global South—with a regional focus on Thailand and Myanmar/ Burma, but with strong, albeit layman’s, interest in Egypt, South Africa, and countries in Latin America. Wendy Smith is an anthropologist in the fields of management, religious, and Asian Studies. She formerly lectured in management and Japanese Studies at Monash University, Australia, and was the Director of the Centre for Malaysian Studies, Monash Asia Institute. She has conducted extensive research on Japanese management transfer to Malaysia, globalizing Asian new religious movements, and Islam and social protection in Turkish migrant communities. She recently co-edited (with Lenore Manderson and Matt Tomlinson) Flows of Faith: Religious Reach and Community in Asia and the Pacific (2012) and has published in the Journal of Global Mobility, Journal of Contemporary Religion, Journal of Studies in International Education, and the Asia Pacific Business Review. Nadin Tettschlag is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Social Work and Organization Studies at the University of Hildesheim, Germany. She was a member of the research training group “Transnational Social Support”, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). For her PhD project, she conducted research on transnational NGO cooperation between Europe and Latin America. She works as a research fellow at Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research in Braunschweig in the context of Diversity Education. Elisabeth Tuider is Professor of the Sociology of Diversity at the University of Kassel. She is a sociologist and educational scientist whose research encompasses gender studies and queer theory, social movements, cultural studies, and migration and border studies. She has conducted extensive field research in Latin America, particularly in Mexico. She has published several book chapters and journal articles on transnational practices in the borderlands of Mexico and the US, recently co-edited Frauen (und) Macht in Lateinamerika (2013), and has published frequently in the journal Transnational Social Review. Katie Vasey is an anthropologist who specializes in migration studies. She is currently a contract researcher at the Institute for Human Security and Social Change, La Trobe University, conducting research on migration and universal health coverage in the Greater Mekong Sub-region. She was formerly a research fellow in the School of Social Sciences, Faculty

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of Arts, Monash University. She has conducted research into refugee well-being and resettlement, immigration and parenting among Iraqi communities, and emotional experiences of early parenthood. Ma. Lourdes Veneracion-Rallonza is a feminist political scientist and is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Ateneo de Manila University. She has conducted extensive research on women in armed conflict and peacebuilding in the Philippines and has served as consultant for the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP) on the implementation of the Philippine National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security and for UN Women and the Office of the Philippine Representative to the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) on a project to explore human rights protection mechanisms for women and girls in Southeast Asia. She currently serves as the senior gender advisor to the Transitional Justice and Reconciliation Commission in the Philippines.

Index

accountability: as constraint for NGOs 222, 227; meeting requirements for in international project management 228, 236–7, 239, 242; one-sided obligations of 226, 237, 240 Act Up 140, 143 Africa 44–5, 51, 53 agency 1–17, 33–7, 44, 46–7, 55–6, 58, 60–1, 68, 71, 78, 80, 109–11, 125–6, 148–9, 154, 159, 164–5, 167–8, 195–204, 206–7, 209–10, 218, 220–1, 227 (see also transnational agency); and citizenship 196–8, 200–1, 210; as individual agency 204, 206–7; and migration 24–5, 33, 35; of NGOs and their staff 220–1, 227, 338; as politics of 207; relational 2, 6–7, 12, 226 Ambon 250–1 anthropology 1, 3–7, 245 Australia(n) 2, 8, 44, 46–8; migration policies 46–8; and multiculturalism 46 Baba see Shiv Baba Beijing Conference 113, 116, 120 Beijing Platform for Action 123 Benda-Beckmann, Keebet von 245–61 Biesta, Gert 206–8 BKWSU see Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University border(s)/boundaries 3, 12, 14, 16, 24, 154; crossing 1–3, 6, 8, 23, 149, 168–9 Bourdieu, Pierre 9–10, 68, 70–1, 75 Bourne, Randolph 177, 192 Brahma Baba 150, 153, 159, 166, 169

Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University (BKWSU) 149, 151–9, 161–4, 166–8, 169–70 Brahmins 156–7, 159, 166, 170 brain drain/waste/gain/trust 67–8, 77 Buddhism 149, 151 business 67–8, 70, 76–8; Chinese 68–9, 74; as ethnic business 69, 73–4 Cambodia 72, 79 Canada 13, 15, 27–8, 89, 91–6, 98–105, 121, 177–87, 190, 192 capital(ism) 1, 5–6, 9–11, 46, 52, 61, 67–80, 90, 131–2, 136, 149, 198, 203; business-entrepreneurial 68; cultural 10, 70–1, 73–7; economic 10, 70, 73–5, 90, 191; global 1, 5; social 46, 52, 61, 67–8, 70–1, 73–7, 149, 184, 204 care 1, 5, 16, 31, 35, 51–2, 60, 182, 245–8, 250, 255–6 Catholic Church 4, 149 celibacy 153, 157–9, 166, 169–70 ceremonies 151–2, 159, 162–3 China 74, 79–80 citizenship 2–3, 15, 17, 72, 79, 195–210; conventional understanding of 196–7; as practice and acts of 201, 208, 210; transnational perspectives on 197–8 citizenship education 196, 203–4, 206–7; critique on 206; as depolitization of 209–10 civil society 69–70, 112–14, 117, 119, 134–5, 142, 199, 218–19; see also transnational civil society Coalition for an International Criminal Court (NGO Coalition) 113

268

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communication 4, 8, 12, 16, 30, 44, 49, 114, 150–51, 155, 162–3, 167, 223, 230, 236–8, 254 community/ies 2, 8, 16–17, 32, 36, 44–6, 51, 54–7, 61, 67–71, 74, 76, 80, 105, 148–9, 154–5, 158, 160, 168, 197, 217–21, 231–2, 234–5, 239; -based social work 219, 235, 240; building (Vergemeinschaftung) 231, 242; business 68, 77; development 67, 70, 220; epistemic 220; ethnic 71; of practice 239; social services/projects based on 218, 229; transnational 148, 237–9; transnational social work 219, 237–9 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), 114–15, 120, 122–3 conversion 148–9, 152, 154–5, 157, 164–5, 168 cooperation 7, 14, 16, 69, 71, 110, 135–7, 217–28, 233–40, 249–50; international development 217–21, 225–6, 228, 230, 235, 237, 240–1; interorganizational 225; North-South/SouthSouth 233 Cornille, Catherine 149–50, 157, 169 cultural: distance 148, 150, 152, 158, 167–8; system 148–9, 168 culture 2, 8, 12, 14, 33, 58–9, 74, 80, 148–50, 152, 155, 159, 166–8, 204; corporate 150; global 163, 168; of origin/socialization 148, 161, 167; organizational 14, 162, 166; transculturation 169; transnational 148, 165–8 Czarniawska, Barbara 88, 91, 103, 107 Dahles, Heidi 67–84 daily life 149, 150–4, 157–60, 162, 168 Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women 123 Demirović, Alex 131, 134–44 democracy 15, 97, 142, 195–8, 202–10; critiques on individualistic view of 195, 206, 210; as democratic politics 197, 207; as erosion of 195, 204–5, 209; and learning 206, 210 development cooperation 6–7; see also cooperation

diaspora 9, 17, 67–8, 70, 72–4, 76–80, 167, 238, 254 diet (food and drink) 151–2, 155, 156–7, 166, 169–70 Divine Light see True Light drafting 117–19 dress 150–2, 155–6, 166 Dristhi (divine gazing) 153, 158–9, 163–4 drugs 130–1, 134; anti-retroviral (HIV drugs) 134–5, 138, 141; Buyers’ Clubs 135–6; generic/generic production 141–4 economic(s)/y 2, 5–6, 8–11, 17, 24–7, 33, 35–7, 47, 51, 67–80, 90, 100, 131–3, 151, 157, 191, 20; global(ization of) 1, 5–6, 12, 131, 139, 149, 238 education 2, 7, 9, 14–17, 31, 34, 47, 52, 54, 57, 59, 67, 71, 77, 87, 98, 114, 177–84, 195–6, 202–5, 252; and citizenship 204; cultural sensitivity of 182–3; and curriculum 183, 185, 188; and eurocentrism 180, 192; public versus private 180, 187–8, 190; socioeconomic differences of 180, 187–8 embeddedness 7, 69, 76, 80 employment 160–61, 163, 165, 167 empowerment 8, 23–4, 32–3, 35–7, 110, 135, 165, 219 entrepreneurship 8, 68–70, 73, 77–8, 80; returnee 68–9, 71, 73–6 ethnic/ity 2, 31, 45, 47, 69, 71, 73, 79–80, 96–8, 101, 149, 154, 165, 168, 179, 187, 189, 203, 253 ethnography 5, 14, 150–1, 223 exploitation 8, 24, 32–4 family 45, 54, 57, 153–4, 157–62, 164, 168; see also transnational families framing 122, 124 Free Trade Agreement (FTA) 130–1, 142–3 gender 6–9, 24–5, 27, 36–7, 45, 72, 109–11, 113–15, 120–6, 155, 159–60, 165–6, 168, 199–200, 250; balance 121–2; and gender-centric principles 110,

Index 115, 125; and gender justice 120; and job market 8; roles 6, 8, 155, 159–60, 165–6, 168; studies 7, 17 Gibson, Kari 44–66 Glick Schiller, Nina 1, 3, 5–6, 9, 14, 17, 25–6, 90, 96, 198–200, 206, 217, 238 globalization 5–6, 11, 180; see also economy God see Shiv Baba (BKs); Su God (Mahikari) Granovetter, Mark 69–70 healing 150, 152–3, 165 Hendry, Joy 157, 160, 169 Hindu/ism 153–4, 156–7, 159, 166, 169–70 home/homecoming 148, 153, 157, 160, 162, 164–6, 185–9, 191 Howell, Julia 152–4, 164, 169 hybridity 150, 156, 165 identity 1, 6, 16, 61, 104, 110, 148–9, 154–6, 164, 178, 185, 197, 203, 206, 231, 235, 239 immigrant(s) 1–6, 8–10, 16–17, 177–9; see also migration; transnational migration immigration laws/system 75, 178–9, 182 inclusion 48, 55–6, 93, 122–5, 217, 251 India 76–7, 79–80, 148–9, 151, 153, 156, 158–9, 166 industrialization 88, 94–6 institution (building) 220, 222, 225, 240 institutional logic/theory 225–6, 235–7, 240 integration 1, 8, 44–6, 48 International Criminal Tribunal: for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) 112, 116, 123, 125; for Rwanda (ICTR) 112, 116, 123–5 International Humanitarian Law/ International Human Rights Law 116, 118, 122, 124 internationalisation of the state 133–4 Isin, Engin 201, 208 Islam 45, 47, 51, 155, 247, 251; zakat fitrah (religious alms) 251 isolation 56–67

269

Japan/Japanese 148–9, 151–2, 157–60, 169 knowledge 8–10, 12, 13, 17, 67, 70, 74–7, 88–92, 102–5, 183, 191, 204–6, 222, 239, 248–9 Köngeter, Stefan 1–20, 87–108 Latour, Bruno 88 law 2, 6, 13, 16, 17, 29, 35, 70, 75, 111–13, 115–18, 121–7, 135, 138–40, 143, 247, 251 leader(ship) 150, 152–4, 156, 159–60, 165–6, 169, 170 legal pluralism 250–1 Lightman, Naomi 177–94 lobbying 114, 117–19, 123–4, 218, 221–2, 232 McVeigh, Brian 150 Madhuban 151, 153, 155, 157–8, 161 Mahikari see Sukyo Mahikari Main World Shrine (Suza) 151–2, 162 management 7, 17, 74, 150, 153, 160, 166, 228–9, 232, 236, 240 Manderson, Lenore 44–66 Maquiladora/Maquila work 23, 27, 29–30, 33; Ciudad Juárez centre of the Mexican maquiladora Industry 23, 27; as (post-colonial relationship of) exploitative work 28–9, 33–4; as form of dignity and freedom 34; as modern slavery 29; as opportunity to work and the prospect of a better life 30, 33; and women 28 Médecins sans frontiers (MSF) 135–6 meditation see raja yoga methodological nationalism 3, 9, 14, 17, 25, 90, 96, 103, 197 Mexico 2, 8, 23–43, 78, 180–1, 183–4, 234 migration 1–3, 5–6, 8–11, 13, 16–17, 23–31, 33, 36–7, 46, 67, 72–6, 89, 96–8, 149, 152–3, 155, 191, 217–18, 252–4, 257–8 (see also transnational migration); and agency 24–5, 33, 35; and industrialization 96, 100, 104 (see also industrialization); labor 23–5, 27, 29–30, 89; as a social problem 89, 97–101, 104 (see also social problems); studies 3, 5, 7, 17, 25, 133, 217

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Ministries of Public Health 141; Thai Ministry of Public Health 137, 141, 143–44 miracles 152, 164–5 Moluccan: civil war 253; diaspora 254–7; pela (ritual kinship) 255 multiculturalism 46, 178–9, 188–9 multinational corporations/enterprises 1, 4, 9, 14, 150, 165, 168; see also organizations Murli 153, 156–8, 162–4, 166 Muslim(s) 45, 49; see also Islam nationality 131, 149, 155, 165, 170, 177; see also transnationality national society/culture 154, 166, 168 nation-state(s) 1–7, 10, 12, 14–17, 72–3, 90–1, 101, 104–5, 110, 134, 144, 149, 151, 155, 198, 200–3, 209, 217, 219, 222, 227; as an assemblage 90–1; as a container 2, 198; as an imagined community 91, 104 neoliberalism 1, 27, 45, 136, 178–80, 200 network(s) 1, 4, 7–8, 11, 16, 24, 26, 30–3, 35, 52–4, 61, 80, 105, 109–11, 131–5, 149, 154, 218–25, 226, 229–35, 248, 253–4, 258; community 56; (North-)South-South 219, 222, 227–8, 230, 234; organizational 131, 225–7; of professional experts 220; social work 229; solidarity 222, 241; strategies of 222, 226–7; transnational 7, 61, 239 New Religions Movements (NRMs) 148, 154–5, 168; Asian 148; global 149, 151; transnational 148–9, 151, 164, 167 non-governmental-organization (NGO) 2, 8, 48, 51, 53, 67, 109, 112–14, 117, 119, 130, 218–23, 225–6; development NGO/ Northern 218, 220–3, 226–8, 231–2, 235–6, 238, 240–1; local NGO/ Southern 219–22, 227–8, 232, 241; (normative) logic in/ aim of 225, 230–2, 235–7, 241–2 norm(s) 8–9, 12, 16, 36–7, 45–6, 52–3, 61, 109, 140, 155, 159, 183–4, 197–200, 205, 210, 219, 225–6, 236, 246–7, 249, 257–8;

entrepreneurs/entrepreneurship 110–11, 120, 125 Nuremberg Tribunal 112 occupation see employment organizational field 225–6 organizations 2, 7, 12–14, 48, 70, 74, 113, 115, 139, 182, 189, 217–18, 253, 257 (see also non-governmental organization (NGO); school(s)); international 115, 126; multinational/multilateral 72, 150; religious 14, 149–50, 152–4, 159, 162–6, 168, 202, 247; transnational 4, 131–33, 135, 144, 149–51, 168 parenting see family, transnational families participation 4, 15, 35, 47, 51, 59, 112–15, 119, 178, 197, 200–1, 203–6, 219–20 People Living With HIV and AIDS (PLHA) 130–1, 135–7, 140 pilgrimage 148, 159, 162–3, 166 playgroup 52, 55, 59–60 political: opportunity structures 115, 117, 125, 144; science 2, 6, 7, 11, 17, 217 politics 4, 8, 119, 151, 168–9, 207 Poulantzas, Nicos 133, 140 Preparatory Commission 112, 124 Preparatory Committee on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court (PrepCom) 112–13, 117–21 Presbyterian Church 92–4, 96, 98–105 Pries, Ludger 2, 4, 9, 24–6, 37, 131, 133, 198, 217, 220, 238, 240 purity/purification 150, 152–3, 156–58, 161, 163, 165–6, 170 Putnam, Robert D. 71, 204 Raithelhuber, Eberhard 195–216 Raja yoga (meditation) 153, 156–8, 162, 164, 166 Ramsay, Tamasin 150–51, 153, 156–7 Rancière, Jaques 207–8, 210 rape 115–16, 122; as genocide 124–5; as humiliating and degrading treatment 123–4; as torture 116; as war crime 123

Index refugee(s) 2, 8, 16, 44–50, 52, 61, 67, 72–3, 78, 179, 182, 184 relationship(s) 149, 151–2, 157–9 religion 6–7, 13–14, 16–17, 26, 47, 87–108, 148–68, 202–3, 229, 246, 250–3; see also Brahma Kumaris; Catholic Church; Islam; Presbyterian Church; Sukyo Mahikari; transnational religion supra remigration/return migration 67–80 remittances 3, 6, 9, 24, 32, 67–8, 71, 74–5, 77, 180 return of innovation 68, 79–80 returnee 67, 69, 71–80 ritual 14, 26, 32, 130, 150–2, 154, 156–9, 161, 163, 165, 223, 248, 253, 255; see also Moluccan Pela Rome Statute 112, 114–15, 121–2, 124–5 Schaffar, Wolfram 130–47 school 15–16, 51–3, 55, 59, 177–194, 203, 205, 255 self-employment 75–6 service 161, 166 Settlement Movement 87–105; in Canada 89, 91–6, 98–105; St. Christopher House 92, 98–102; in England 92–4, 97 (see also Settlement Movement; Toynbee Hall); Hull House 88, 96–8, 101, 103–5; Toynbee Hall 87–8, 93–6, 98, 104; in the United States 88–9, 91–2, 96–101, 103–4 sexual and gender violence 121–3 Shinto 152, 157 Shiv Baba/Baba (BKs: Supreme Soul, God) 153, 157–8, 161–3, 169 Smith, Wendy 1–20, 148–73 social: change 8–9, 15, 67–71, 78–9, 99, 203, 209, 222, 234, 239; class 11, 13, 26, 39, 79, 87–8, 92–3, 95, 97–8, 134, 138, 165, 168, 178–80, 187, 190, 249; service 8, 95, 182, 218, 220–2, 234, 238 (see also social work); spaces 217, 220, 238, 240 social capital 9–10, 46, 52, 61, 68–71, 74, 76–7, 80, 149, 184, 204 Social Gospel movement 94, 98–100, 102, 105

271

social movements, 2–4, 11, 149, 159; see also transnational social movements; Settlement Movement social problems 12–13, 70, 235, 240; construction of 88–9, 95, 98–100, 103–5 social security 16–17, 48, 131, 144, 246–51, 254, 257 social support 50, 56, 58, 61, 227, 239; see also transnational social support social value 68–70, 239 social work 2, 14–17, 54, 56, 87–108, 217–23, 227, 229–32, 235; see also transnational social work socialization 58, 71, 148, 154–5, 167, 257 sociology 7, 88, 90, 131, 133, 208 sojourner students 181–3, 192 solidarity, 2, 28, 32–3, 54, 57, 80, 110, 196, 222, 234–5, 237, 239, 241, 248–50, 258 Somali(s) 48, 52 subaltern(ism) 4, 17, 24, 29 Su God (Mahikari) 152, 160 Sukuinushisama (Great Savour) 152, 160 Sukyo Mahikari 149–60, 162, 164–70 Taiwan 77–80 Tettschlag, Nadin 217–44 Tokyo Tribunal 112 translation 10, 12, 88–93, 95–6, 102–5 transmigration 1, 24–7, 30–1, 36–8, 200; see also migration; immigrants; transnational migration transnational: advocacy networks 109–10; agency 1–3, 12–14, 110–11, 125 (see also agency); civil society 199–200 (see also civil society); culture 148, 165–8; feminist networks (TFNs) 109–10, 113, 117, 125; -ity 3, 17, 24, 30, 131, 148, 155, 164, 166–7, 177; migration 8–9, 68, 100, 217; organizations 4, 26, 131, 133, 223–4, 226, 228; religion 148, 168; social fields 1, 5–6, 9–11; (social) movements 4, 11, 109, 131–2, 140, 143, 217; social support 2, 3, 7–8, 14–15, 223, 241; social work (communities) 16, 217–18, 227;

272

Index

social worlds 7–11, 16–17; theory 5, 181; women’s movement 115 transnational families/familyhood 1, 7–8, 15–17, 24, 26, 30, 32, 36–7, 39, 183; and alternative child rearing models 27, 31; as idea of belonging and sense of togetherness 26, 32; as networks of caring 35–6; and skype-mothering 32 transnationalism (from below) 3, 5–6, 17, 19, 68, 73, 132–3, 168, 177–78, 180–3, 190–2 transnationalization (of the state) 2, 8–9, 15, 17, 25–7, 32, 37, 102, 133–4, 140–1, 143–4, 203, 217 transnationals 181–2 transnational studies 2, 6, 7, 9, 15, 25, 90, 195–8, 200, 202, 209 True Light 149, 152, 156–62, 164–5, 169–70 Tsing, Anna 2–3, 9, 17, 20 Tuider, Elisabeth 23–43

United Nations (UN) 109, 112, 114, 116–17, 119, 125, 151, 218, 220, 222, 232, 241 values 150–2, 155, 167 Vasey, Katie 44–66 Veneracion-Rallonza, Ma. Lourdes 109–29 Vertovec, Steven 17, 73, 90, 155, 196 Vienna: Conference 115, 120; Platform for Action 123 violence against women 121, 123, 125 welfare state 246–7 West 148, 150, 152, 157 Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice (in the International Criminal Court) 111, 113–14, 117–19, 122–6 worker(s), care/domestic 1, 5, 8, 200 World Trade Organisation (WTO) 130–1, 139; and intellectual property rights 138–40, 142–3; stalemate of the 132–3