Transnationalism in the Post-Soviet World

Gothenburg.
The next AoIR 2010 speaker is Irina Shklovski, whose interest is in transnationalism – defined as either migrant practices that establish or maintain links between the two countries or origin and destination, or as cosmopolitanism or a broadly defined non-culturally specific world identity. But what is the value and meaning of such long-distance ties as they are primarily maintained through online communication?

More specifically, what forms of transnational belonging may exist here: what does investing energy into maintaining such relationships mean for the people engaged in it, can such transnational contact open new horizons beyond the scope of daily existence, and can there be a kind of virtual transnationalism that is conducted purely through electronic media, without direct personal ties?

Irina examined this in the context of the post-soviet world, where there have been substantial popular displacements that were not expected to result in continuing transnational relationships. The people engaged in such transnationalism were mainly middle class and had little international mobility; they had strong proximal and interdependent strong ties that supported their existence.

High levels of outmigration from Russia and Kazakhstan resulted in many transnational connections, and they have resulted in recent years in many patterns of reconnection through social networking sites; indeed, they have been a major driver of social media uptake. Such connections are about nostalgia for a lost nation, and about remembrance; about reconnection, but with little hope of meeting in person; and about maintaining relatively weak ties with former acquaintances.

This is a kind of virtual transnationalism which happens because of the ease of reconnecting through social network sites; it doesn’t require much commitment, and enables emotional nostalgic reminiscence – but it doesn’t result in new strong ties which become indispensable, but rather in a revived set of dormant relationships.