Translocal

Translocal is currently in momentum to challenge boundaries and to invent new methodologies in studies of place and mobility, which engage with various disciplines for geography, history, area studies, cultural studies and anthropology. Translocal is one of the new terms that suggest different scales to imagine socio-spatial relations along with transregional, transpacific, and intraregional dynamics to extend the theories on transnationalism and overcome its methodological limitation.

Even though a wide range of scholarship debate on whether translocal should be under the rubric of transnational studies, translocal attempts to bring new directionality beyond the discourse based on the national. Transnatioanlism carries a long tradition on scholarship to study migration, but it was emphasized in the 1990’s with the influence of globalization and the growing mobility of people as well as cultural and economic exchange beyond the national boundaries. In spite of the attribute of de-territorialization by re-thinking on the preexisting notion on nationhood and citizenship as well as critiquing nationalist histographies, “transnational implies a ‘translation’ of national cultures which, however, are difficult to locate since most states are –at least to some degree- composed of many cultural groups.”[i] Translocal is a framework to encompass spatial interconnectedness between local to local without filtering through the national borders or institutions.

While the previous theories on transnationalism focused on de-territorialization by the economic exchange and networks crossing the national states, translocal gives emphasis to the everyday movement and the embodied experience of migrants including mobility between the locals, urban and rural spaces. Translocality intentionally blurs the dichotomy between “the global” and “the local”, “the core” and “the periphery” which embedded on the notion of transnationalism. Rather, translocality is “intermediary arrangements, fluidity and intermingling processes.”[ii] In opposition to the distinguishable hierarchy, translocal seeks on spatial interconnectedness through the movement of humans, ideas, symbols and knowledge that reveal “situatedness in mobility.”[iii] To examine “situatedness in mobility” translocal frameworks employ empirical research and trace visualization of the processes of mobility. It acknowledges the place of the local, but also consider multiple scales that spatially bounded beyond the local and recognize temporal dynamics.

In comparison to notion of uprootedness and traveling in the theories of transnationalism, translocal methodologies propose, “grounded transnationalism”[iv] which calls attention to the importance the migrant agencies that formulate complex identities based on a place and extend it further than in relation to other locales. Therefore, “localities need not necessarily be limited to the shared social relations of local histories, experiences and relations, but can connect to wider geographical histories and processes.”[v] By looking at the aspect of ‘groundness’ of the migrant agencies, translocal geographies construct possibilities to examine everyday mobility, rural-urban, inter-urban, inner-regional movement and even ‘immobile’ population who do not fit into the category of transnational migration. Non-transnational or internal mobility was neglected even though it takes large part of global migration dynamics.[vi] For example; in most African countries “international migration sometimes involves relatively shorter distances and less social heterogeneity (…) and fewer barriers than internal migration.[vii] However, these local-to-local relations simultaneously expose the spatial interconnected with other sets of places, which exercise ‘global ethnography of place.’[viii] Therefore translocality is a  “space in which new forms of (post)national identity are constituted”[ix], “sum of phenomena which result from a multitude of circulations and transfers”[x], “Being identified with more than one location”[xi], “simultaneous situatedness across different locales”[xii] “localized context and everyday practices” through “material, spatial and embodied.”[xiii]

[i] Hoerder, Dirk. "Transnational-transregional-translocal: transcultural." ''Handbook of Research Methods in Migration''. 2012, p70.

[ii] Verne, Julia. ''Living Translocality: Space, Culture and Economy in Contemporary Swahili Trade''. Franz Steiner Verlag, 2012, p17.

[iii] Brickell, Katherine, and Ayona Datta, eds. ''Translocal geographies: Spaces, places, connections''. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2011, p3.

[iv] Ibid.

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Trager, Lillian, ed. Migration and economy: global and local dynamics. Rowman Altamira, (2005): p1-45

[vii] Kok, Pieter, ed. Migration in South and Southern Africa: dynamics and determinants. HSRC Press, 2006, p28.

[viii] Burawoy, Michael, et al. Global ethnography: Forces, connections, and imaginations in a postmodern world. Univ of California Press, 2000.

[ix] Mandaville, Peter. "Reading the state from elsewhere: towards an anthropology of the postnational." Review of International Studies 28.01 (2002): p204.

[x] Freitag, Ulrike, and Achim Von Oppen, eds. ''Translocality: the study of globalising processes from a southern perspective''. Vol. 4. Brill, 2009, p5.

[xi] Oakes, Tim, and Louisa Schein, eds. ''Translocal China: Linkages, identities and the reimagining of space''. Routledge, 2006. p8.

[xii] Brickell, Katherine, and Ayona Datta, eds. ''Translocal geographies: Spaces, places, connections''. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2011. p4.

[xiii] Ibid., p13.