Differences Between Transnationalism And Asimilationist Approach To Immigration

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Our world is constructed of countries that are absolute and singularly naturally occurring. Our identity is partially constructed upon the socio-political image of a national identity; people are often categorized based upon a stereotypical image of their national identity, instead of, a personal experiential relationship. In this essay, I am going to discuss the differences between transnationalism and assimilationist approaches to immigration. In the TedTalk, which we watched in lecture, the speaker emphasized locality over a concept of nationality. She believed that one’s experiences are what shape one’s origin. She asserted that questions demanding what one’s “real” place of origin is, are essentially asking “why” one is in the country. …show more content…

Transnationalism and diaspora have ‘fuzzy boundaries.’ While transnationalism applies to migrants’ durable ties across countries, a diaspora refers to religious or national groups living outside an imagined homeland. One of important features of the diaspora is the refusal to assimilate. Assimilation, on the other hand, is believed to equalize with the melting pot ideology, according to Randolph Bourne. He saw new immigrants that entered the US as an antidote to what he feared was the petrification of national culture. He asserts that immigrants were necessary to save us from our own stagnation. This assimilationist approach to immigration implies the loss of past identity and immigrants’ links with a single nation state. This approach prioritizes a nation state as the main scale of analysis. Migration has never been a one-way process of assimilation into a melting pot or a multicultural salad bowl, but one in which migrants, to varying degrees, are simultaneously embedded in the multiple sites and layers of the transnational social fields in which they live. This is also not a new phenomenon, but has shown signs of intensification in recent years due to globalization which allowed it to develop more easily than previously due to advancements in technology and

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