Some immigrants are more transnational than others: transnationalism as differential factor of integration

Carmen Lamela, Universidade da Coruña

Transnational migration has been a popular academic topic since the 80’s, but is still an ambiguous concept, specially from a macro-historical point of view. Basically, it seems evident that time must pass before we can decide whether the so-called phenomenon is qualitatively or quantitatively different from past experiences. However, if we limit our analysis to the present time, transnational migration seems a useful concept to describe different patterns of migration. The demographic signs of this transnational character are found within the history of each migratory movement across the world. This perspective suggests interesting hypothesis on causes as well as effects of migration. The purpose ot this paper is to explore this perspective and hypothesis with recent data on international migration in Spain.