In this chapter, I outline three key concepts derived from transnational migration studies and use them in the following chapters to expand on existing notions of subjectivity and personhood derived from static ontologies. As a starting point, transnational migration studies derives from migration studies, which is a field of inquiry examining the multiple ways individuals move between/among places and nations to engage in various kinds of social, cultural, economic, and political activities (Levitt et al., 2003; Levitt and Glick Schiller, 2004; Vertovec, 2009; Kretsedemas et al., 2013; Waldinger, 2013). Following seminal contributions by Portes (1997) and Portes et al. (1999) that examined transnational dimensions of migration research and concurrent with the mobility turn in social sciences, a transnational approach to migration studies has now become an important analytic lens for the study of mobility, people, and social inequalities (Faist, 2013).

By considering the contours of society and the social, cultural, economic, and political activities taking place across borders (Waldinger and Fitzgerald, 2004), a transnational lens allows examination of the mechanisms through which nations are defined and particular people, histories, and cultures become normalized as part of the nation while ‘Others’, inclusive of their histories and cultures, become marginalized or erased. Moreover, it allows reconsideration of existing categories of analysis related to people, specifically in relation to race and ethnicity. Transnational migration studies challenges static notions of identity and derived categories of subjectivity based on race and ethnicity as these concepts reflect fundamentally reified social groupings and racialized power relations (see for example DuBois, 1903, 1940; also Bonilla-Silva, 2006; Gilroy, 1993; Hall, 1994). Consequently, this approach challenges existing categories that have been used to study and define people and communities and, by extension, society (this topic is further expanded on in Chapter 6). Transnationalism provokes consideration of how societies take shape over time and continue to function given that notions of societal replication are problematic—no longer are the members of society homogenous and static; rather, they are constantly in a state of becoming and relationality.