THE IMPACT OF PAST AND PRESENT IMMIGRANTS TRANSNATIONAL ENGAGEMENTS ON THEIR HOME-COUNTRY LOCALITIES: EXPLORING AN UNDERINVESTIGATED ASPECT OF TRANSNATIONALISM-MIGRATION RELATIONSHIP

Although the interaction and the resulting interdependence of the involved parties on different sides of a state-national border is the constitutive component of the accepted understanding of the concept of transnationalism, the impact of immigrants’ transnational engagements on the home-country side of interconnection created by this phenomenon has thus far remained largely underexplored. This essay addresses this issue in a comparative-historical assessment of the effects of transnational engagements of past and present immigrants in America on the economies, civic-political affairs, material and symbolic culture, and social relations of their home-country localities. The transformative effects of immigrant transnational engagements on their home countries are treated in terms of glocalization understood as the process of simultaneous homogenization and heterogeneization of economic, political, and sociocultural forms.