engleski

Memories as Constituents of Transnational Social Spaces

Contemporary conceptions of transnational social spaces (TSS) include pluri-local frames of reference (Pries, 2001 ; 2008), sustained multiple ties across the borders of nation-states (Faist, 2000) and sets of multiple inter-locking networks of social relationships through which ideas, practices, and resources are exchanged, organized, and transformed (Levitt and Glick Schiller, 2004). Regardless of their paradigmatic preferences, the authors who deal with TSS emphasise relations between actors in multiple, scattered localities and durability of these relations. They accentuate either the social mechanisms such as reciprocity, exchange and solidarity or structuration of daily practices in different locations as an explanation for the sustainability of TSS. However, they oversee the role of memories as underlying mechanisms which enable the working of pluri-local frames of reference, mutual obligations and solidarity. Memories, as composites of sensual impressions, particularly images and emotions, related to actors and their environment enable meaningful references, orientation and action. We shall argue that the intensity of memories as such composites enable the sustainability of TSS rather than the contemporary communication technologies and instant time resulting from them. Those TSS which are constituted by actors who do not share memories of localities and rituals in them are much more fragile than those which are constituted by actors who share strong memories of joint rituals in bounded and meaningful settings. TSS are consequently sustained despite the physical distance, political obstacles such as borders and mobility regimes because the memories insure the durability of ties regardless of temporal and spatial ruptures in social relations. Our claims will be supported by the empirical examples of TSS constituted by Albanian, Bosniak and Chinese immigrants in Croatia.

transnational social spaces; memories; Albanian; Bosniak; Chinese immigrants; Croatia

nije evidentirano