Leaders associatifs migrants et mobilité transnationale

The leaders of international migrant organizations are a privileged research subject in scientific literature about mobility and transnationalism. However, our fieldwork reveals that their trajectories are rather characterized by breaks and immobility than continuous movements across borders. The creation of transnational development organizations for hometown communities initiates a new kind of mobility. These transnational movements take part in a process of reaffiliation to the “country of origin” and both indicate and contribute to the acquisition of mobile capital. While our results confirm the undisputable link between transnational mobility as social practice, and migration as experience, they also show that this link is a social construct. Transnational mobility becomes the culmination of the migratory path and migrant associative commitment leads to upward social mobility.