Transnational migration: a view from Colombia

Abstract

This article presents the preliminary results of an ongoing research project on US-bound Colombian migration from the cities of Cali and Pereira. The project identified a dense web of economic, political, and socio-cultural transnational relations connecting migrants and their places of origin. These relations are heterogeneous and differentiated; what some scholars refer to as transnational communities are, in fact, fragmented by class, regionalism, ethnic cleavages and dominant stereotypes of Colombians as drug traffickers. We observed a complex transnational field of action, but not the formation of a transnational community.