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Transnational lives on the move: Looking beyond binational sedentarism
Author(s) -
Mavrommatis George
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
population, space and place
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.398
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1544-8452
pISSN - 1544-8444
DOI - 10.1002/psp.2408
Subject(s) - transnationalism , refugee , mobilities , ethnography , economic geography , sociology , political science , gender studies , media studies , geography , social science , anthropology , law , politics
Transnationalism and the mobilities paradigm are important theoretical contributions to have emerged during the last three decades in social sciences. However, they have not been meaningfully integrated within migration studies. Rather, analysis of transnational phenomena has focused on two distinct places (country, society, city etc.); back and forth movement between them; and the flows that create the social fields that link them. This article attempts to disrupt that binational/bilocal view by understanding transnational lives as part of a continuous yet fragmented mobility. It does so through an ethnography conducted in 2016 of refugees at a camp at the Port of Piraeus in Athens, Greece, during the so‐called European refugee crisis. The findings show that although spatially stranded in Greece, the refugees maintained dreams of getting farther into Europe while relying on, and being aided by, information and communication technology. Theirs were transnational lives not between just two places but on the move.