Geographies of Belonging: The Transnational and Local Involvement of Economically Successful Migrants

If scholars of migration had to pick one word to describe the nature of contemporary migration flows and immigrant populations, many of them would probably choose terms like “diversified,” “differentiated,” or “fragmented” (e.g. Alba and Nee 2003: 213; Castles and Miller 2003: 8; Engbersen et al. 2007: 399). It is often said that diver-sity itself is diversifying, creating a situation of “super-diversity” (Vertovec 2007) in most countries of immigration and particularly in their urban areas (cf. Amin 2008: 6). Migrants do not only differ with regard to their ethnic background or country of origin, but also in terms of their labor market position, legal status, immigrant gen-eration, religion, age, and spatial distribution. An important variable that adds to this super-diversity, and in which I am particularly interested in this study, is mi-grants’ transnational involvement, defined as the total of individuals’ transnational activities and identifications (cf. Snel et al. 2006: 288). In the rapidly expanding field of transnational migration studies, it has been demonstrated that much variety exists in the nature of the transnational ties of different migrant groups, depending on in-dividual factors as well as characteristics of the sending and receiving countries (cf. Morawska 2009: 175). The cross-border practices of, say, highly skilled second-generation Chinese in the US differ from those of retired Turkish former guest workers in the Netherlands.

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