Transnational urbanism revisited

Abstract

This article revisits the research optic proposed in Transnational Urbanism to take stock of the field. Social relations ‘from the middle’ are conceived in two distinct ways in the field. Transnationalism ‘from in-between’ refers to actors who mediate between transnational actors ‘from above’ and ‘from below’. ‘Middling transnationalism’ refers to the transnational practices of middle-class social actors. Both are useful and potentially complementary. Research on transnational urbanism is aware of the socially situated subjectivity of human agents while also providing a way to study spatially distanciated social relations. Research has begun to attend to the emplacement of mobile subjects and the embodiment of their everyday practices and mobilities. Future studies need to attend to the power-knowledge venues by which states, institutional channels and other actors broker mobile subjects’ cross-border interconnectivity.