Dual citizenship or dual identity? Does ‘transnationalism’ supplant ‘nationalism’ among...

Global Networks 8, 4 (2008) 373–397. ISSN 1470–2266. © 2008 The Author(s) Journal compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd & Global Networks Partnership 373

Dual citizenship or dual identity?

Does ‘transnationalism’ supplant ‘nationalism’

among returning Trinidadians?

DENNIS CONWAY,* ROBERT B. POTTER† AND GODFREY ST BERNARD‡

*Department of Geography, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA [email protected]

†Department of Geography, School of Human and Environmental Sciences, University of Reading, Whiteknights PO Box 227, Reading RG6 6AB, UK

[email protected]

‡Sir Arthur Lewis Institute for Social and Economic Studies, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine,

Trinidad and Tobago [email protected]

Abstract In this article we focus on the dual identities of relatively young Trinidadians who have decided to return to the island of their birth, or of their parents, while still in their thirties and forties. Highly-educated professional transnational migrants mostly make up our sample of 36; 26 possess dual citizenship. We focus on our informants’ narratives about their transnational experiences, self-appraisals of their dual identities and how they value dual citizenship. More generally, we ask, does transnationalism supplant nationalism among our returning informants? Unsurprisingly, the diverse responses we document do not support the commonly held explanatory relationship between return adaptations, ‘national belonging’ and the expected dominance of ‘transnational belonging’. Family relations intervene significantly, both to encourage transnationalism and to strengthen nationalism. Feelings of national belonging often accompany trans-nationalism. Notably, we view dual citizenship strategically and pragmatically as advantageous to the continuation of transnational practices.

Keywords DUAL CITIZENSHIP, TRANSNATIONALISM, RETURN MIGRATION, TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO

Dennis Conway, Robert B. Potter and Godfrey St Bernard

374 © 2008 The Author(s)

The onset of globalization, and its apparent associations with the growth of trans-nationalism, dual and multiple nationalities, and threats to the sovereignty of the nation-state, have sharpened current debates on dual citizenship. Many scholars who examine the increasing incidence of dual citizenship among international migrants in North America and Europe are interested mainly in immigration and assimilation. They tend to focus on the political implications of dual citizenship for the host society’s naturalization rates, and other related ‘receiving country/society’ political and social problems (Bloemraad 2004; Castles and Davidson 2000; Cordero-Guzmán et al. 2001; Escobar 2004; Faist 2001; Faist et al. 2004; Jones-Correa 2001). The transnationalism literature shows the same geographical focus, with primary consideration given to the dual-nationality and dual-citizenship concerns of the global North’s receiving societies, irrespective of what generalizations they reach (Bauböck 1994; Portes et al. 1999; Vertovec 2001).

Different nation-states have different protocols and rulings about single or dual citizenship and naturalization. The mix of options facing contemporary transnational migrants will depend on what particular bi-national or multinational affiliations an individual or couple is entitled to claim in terms of his or her birthplace or cross-border nationality. The legal frameworks governing citizenship are constantly in flux as polities wrestle with troublesome categories in which the rights, obligations and interests of residents, citizens, migrants, visitors, asylum seekers and refugees are continually being negotiated against the obligations and powers of state governments (Bauböck 1994). That said, the post-1980s era of globalization has witnessed an increase in and a more widespread acceptance of dual citizenship, though nation-states still differ in the extent to which they resist or recognize it (Hammar 1985, 1990). However, there is a dearth of research on how dual identities, dual citizenship and transnationalism influence people’s lives in the ‘sending societies’ of Latin America and the Caribbean rather than in the immigrants’ ‘host societies’ of North America and Europe. We begin to address this unevenness in this article.

Research perspectives

We focus specifically on the dual or multiple identities of a sample of relatively young1 returning Trinidadians (including two Tobagonians). Many of them were already living transnational lives, but they decided to return to the island of their birth, or of their parents’ birth, while still in their thirties or forties. The original sample consisted of 40 respondents identified via a ‘snowball sample’ as being returning ‘citizens by descent’, or ‘second-generation’ returnees, ‘one-and-a-half-generation’ returnees (having migrated abroad as a child), and ‘prolonged sojourners’ (having migrated in their youth to acquire further education, or professional skills and stayed away for more than twelve years). One important deciding factor in the selection of our sample was to avoid interviewing returnees, such as US deportees, who had no option but to return. We also ruled out ‘first-generation’ returnees who had emigrated from Trinidad and Tobago to Britain, Canada and the United States during the 1950s


© 2008 The Author(s) 375

and 1960s, and who had returned on retirement as elderly returnees no longer seeking employment ‘back home’. Since there are no formal, institutional records of such an ‘invisible sub-population’ in Trinidad and Tobago, snowball sampling using local primary informants known to the authors, was the only means to access this particular cohort of returnees.

In this enquiry we are interested in these young returnees’ views on their transnational experiences, self-appraisals of their dual identities, and how they value (or do not value) dual citizenship and the possession of two passports – their Trinidad and Tobago passport, and their British, European, Canadian or US passport. Over and above a Trinidad and Tobago passport, a couple of respondents had claimed another Caribbean nationality as a birthright as well as an extra-regional passport. It turns out that 26 informants in our sample had dual citizenship and possessed two passports, while ten offered reasons for possessing only a Trinidad and Tobago passport, even though they had spent a long time abroad, as circulating transmigrants. Four of the original sample of forty did not comment specifically on their dual- or single-nationality citizenship statuses, so our working sample ultimately totalled 36.

Our sample is also primarily made up of highly-educated, professional trans-national migrants (see Table 1), whose average age at the time of interview was 40 years, with many acquiring bachelor degrees (41 per cent), advanced degrees (49 per cent), as well as professional training and experience while they were abroad. The small sample size, however, does not allow us to seek generalizable ‘explanations’ of our informants’ points of view, their identities, life and migration histories and socioeconomic standing. Ours is a qualitative exploration to understand better the variety of meanings that dual identity, dual citizenship and transnationality have among these young returnees.

In our analyses, the emphasis is very much on the narratives our informants provided. In particular, we employ their words to build up a qualitative picture of their most salient experiences following their return, for these pertain to their own identity or identities, their transnational experience abroad and issues concerned with retaining their dual citizenship. We seek to clarify the role of dual citizenship in our informants’ lives now that they have returned to the island home of their birth, or that of their parents. We want to gauge whether transnational migrants can sustain a traditional national identity, either individually or with partners and children. An important transnational ‘practice’ we wish to assess in this respect concerns the possession of two passports and the dual citizenship they legitimize, how they view value and utilize this institutional ‘package’, and how the resultant dual identities influence our informants’ decision-making, risk-taking and national, bi-national and multinational allegiances. Specifically, we ask if dual citizenship is a pragmatic strategy that facilitates ‘strategic flexibility’ in transnational livelihood options and adaptations. Based on earlier theoretical arguments (Conway 2005, 2007; Conway and Potter 2007), we expect the answer to be positive.

We also seek answers to other related questions that underlie the primary focus highlighted in the title of this article. For example, having returned at a specifically advantageous juncture in their life cycle, are these returnees still living transnational



Table 1: Occupations of Our Young Trinidad and Tobago Returnee Sample

Occupations Number

Insurance salesman 1 Teacher 1 Social worker 2 Book Press representative 1

LOWER MIDDLE CLASSES 5

Human Resources/Administrator/Manager 3 Graphic Artist/Architect 3 Research/Policy analyst 2 Town planner 1 Lawyer 1 Banker/Accountant/Statistician 3

MIDDLE CLASSES 13

IT Professional 2 Operations manager 2 Project manager 2 Private consultant 4 Psychologist 3 Medical doctor 2

UPPER MIDDLE CLASSES 15

‘Home-makers’ 3

TOTAL (N) 36

Source: Authors’ Survey 2004/2005

lives and do dual or unitary loyalties prevail? What roles did transnational ties and dual nationality play in facilitating their return? Have transnational experiences and practices influenced national sentiments, or vice versa? What roles will transnational ties, dual citizenship and the possession of two passports play in determining the returnees’ plans to remain on the island, to remigrate, to re-return, or to remain flexible in their future migration options? (For more ideas on ‘flexible citizenship’, as applied to the overseas Chinese, see Ong 1999, 2006.)

Globalization, nationalism and transnationalism

With the post-Westphalian world order commonly defined in terms of ‘a nation-state order’ in which several nation-states (including their colonies and colonial subjects) featured as subordinate territories of ‘quasi-citizens’, the onset of political indepen-dence after the Second World War for most of the latter (including Trinidad and



Tobago in 1962) substantially enlarged the family of nation-states. It also, at least until the more recent post-1980s era of globalization, failed to challenge a key feature of the existing geopolitical order, namely that the status of individuals was determined by their national citizenship.

Such a traditional notion of citizenship gave people legal standing vis-à-vis their rights and obligations with respect to the state or government, but it also signalled that acquiring a nationality or national identity affiliated them to a subjective community (Hobsbawm 1992). It was a widespread, albeit ambiguous, condition for social and political membership (Brubaker 1989). Geopolitical power relations have of course all too frequently imposed fealty; subordinated national minorities or ‘nations’ to state authority; encouraged or enforced naturalization on immigrant minorities; and generally designed the societal rules and obligations citizens might ‘enjoy’ to favour the ruling elites and central state (Nietschmann 1994). The social history of nation-states and the roles native minorities, immigrants (or emigrants) played in contesting or acquiescing to state power was always going to reflect internal and external social negotiations, territorial struggles, boundary disputes, expansions and contractions. Furthermore, imperialism, colonialism and neo-colonialism differentiated between the world’s core and periphery nation-states and their dependent territories, which added unevenness and inequality to global geopolitical and geo-economic power relation-ships and contributed indelibly to territories’ distinctive socio-cultural milieux (Ghosh 2001; Taylor 1996). The post-1980s era of globalization, however, appears to have changed the migration and citizenship ‘playing fields’ for good (Castles and Davidson 2000; Falk 2000).

Contemporary globalization has rapidly increased rates of international mobility (Conway 2006). As Castles and Davidson (2000: vii–viii) explain:

The heterogeneity of cultural values and practices grows exponentially, so there is no time for processes of acculturation and assimilation. The boundaries of the nation-state are being eroded: millions of people have multiple citizen-ships and live in more than one country. Millions more do not live in their country of citizenship. The idea of a citizen who spends most of his or her life in one country with a single shared common identity is losing ground.

Indeed, several nation-states have adopted multicultural policies of integration and liberal legislation on dual citizenship (Hammar 1990), which they now believe to be less divisive and problematic than earlier thought. Scholarly arguments have waxed and waned on the pros and cons of dual citizenship, but nation-states still matter; nationalism and the territorial loyalties that accompany national citizenship are still important to individuals and their governments, while a growing proportion of the former also embrace and practise transnationalism as their right and privilege (Castles and Davidson 2000; Gustafson 2002).

Scholars of transnationalism, on the other hand, stress that immigrants build ‘cross-border’ lives that transcend the spatial constraints of one nation-state and widen their political, economic and social affinities to more than one sovereignty or



territory (Glick Schiller 1995; Levitt 2001; Portes et al. 1999; Vertovec 1999). Stressing the fundamental political nature of dual-citizenship in transnational or trans-state spatial interactions (and with explicit reference to the European experience), Faist (2001: 20–1) argues that: ‘dual citizenship is not a separate form of membership in political communities such as national citizenship in sovereign states or suprastate citizenship in multi-level governance systems. Rather, dual citizenship is essentially a form of political membership complementing national citizenship when life world ties of citizens overlap state borders.’ Bloemraad (2004: 394) explains how ‘dual citizenship is both a cause and effect of transnationalism. Dual citizenship can facili-tate transnationalism – multiple passports provide easy access to and rights in different geopolitical spaces – and it designates dual identities, reflecting attachment to both sending and receiving countries.’

When insisting on a connection between transnational migration, ‘transnational belonging’, transnational identities and dual citizenship, both in European and in Latin American and Caribbean contexts, there is often an implicit assumption that not only does the acquisition of two passports facilitate the migratory experience of crossing borders, but also that immigration facilitates dual citizenship. This is because it is an individual immigrant’s choice whether or not to assimilate and naturalize while retaining the citizenship of his or her source or home country (Bloemraad 2004; Jones-Correa 2001; Joppke and Morawska 2003; Levitt and de la Dehesa 2003). Going some way towards qualifying such sweeping generalizations, Levitt (2003) suggests that transnational ties and related affinities, as well as transnational practices and assimilation strategies, can vary over the course of a life. In other words, the transition to a single national identity or a decision to retain multinational ties (with dual citizenship implicitly included) might be expected to vary according to whatever social influences happen to be in play at the time and that these can be relatively independent of the migration histories immigrants are experiencing. That said, because the emphasis in much of the existing research is on the transnational iden-tities and dual citizenships of immigrants in the source societies of the global North, such a ‘reductionist’ perspective on single or dual citizenship as an ‘either–or’ option is rarely questioned, or qualified beyond Levitt’s (2003) cautionary concern.

‘Post-nationalist’ claims that transnationalism and dual citizenship contribute to a deterritorialized vision of ‘multinational belonging’ among the immigrants in question (Basch et al. 1994), in which they exchange their national allegiances and identities for an ‘imagined’ multinational community, are also open to question (Conway 2000). Rather, the empirical record is insufficient (Potter and Phillips 2006; Vertovec 2001). Our lack of understanding of notions such as ‘transnational belonging’, multiple nation-state membership patterns, or of the interlinked trio of ‘dual citizenship’, ‘dual identity formation’ and ‘dual nationality’, is in large part due to a lack of empirical data and suitably focused research (though some progress is underway; for example see Bloemraad 2004 and Jones-Correa 2001).

With the nature of global migration changing so much, ‘lost in translation’ is a more inclusive explanation of dual citizenship, and how this non-unitary political identity and multinational affiliation can be acquired without necessarily crossing



borders or becoming an immigrant. For example, marriage to somebody of another nationality can give dual citizenship rights and privileges to both partners, regardless of their place of residence or whether one or the other is a native or immigrant. The more conventional case is when marriage to a national of the receiving country comes after immigration, so that through their birth ties both qualify for dual citizenship to their respective homelands, assuming spousal sponsorship follows and that residency as well as other legal requirements for permanent immigrant status are met.

On the other hand, since ‘qualifying’ for dual citizenship is not the same as acquiring, wanting or needing it, bi-national marriage partnerships can reflect a wider range of citizenship affinities than is customarily assumed in the immigration literature. Children of bi-national parents can acquire the citizenship of the country of their birth, as well as of their dual-citizen parents, with the possibility arising of them being eligible for three passports, or at the very least two. Divorce, separation and remarriage of partners can further increase the multinational mix of citizenship affinities, both for the adults concerned and for any resultant children.

While commonly seen as ‘a nation-state meets globalization’ conundrum, dual citizenship still remains a weakly constructed or oversimplified logistical partner to transnational identity formation. Geopolitical and political debates still focus on how dual citizenship intersects with international mobility, but concerns over assimilation, immigrant adaptation and the political involvement of ethnic communities now predominate in the literature. Rarely even questioned, let alone thought of as an intervening factor of varying value and importance, are social and familial values and people’s evaluations of them. This is largely because there is a dearth of micro-level empirical examinations of individuals, marriage partnerships, nuclear families, extended families, and transnational family network formation and consolidation.

Background to Trinidad and Tobago

As we shall empirically demonstrate in this article, Trinidad and Tobago’s particular multicultural society exemplifies several of the aforementioned transnational and multicultural ‘mixed-marriage’ caveats (Allahar 2005; Baronov and Yelvington 2003; Premdas 1998). Peopled by immigration over five centuries, Trinidadian society is a heterogeneous mix of Afro-Trinidadians, Indo-Trinidadians or East Indians (from South Asia), Chinese, Venezuelans, French Creoles, UK expatriates, Syrian-Lebanese, Portuguese Madeirans and British West Indians from Grenada, St Vincent, Barbados and Guyana. Its multi-ethnic, plural society is in direct contrast to Tobago’s predominantly Afro-Caribbean societal base, though in recent times small but sig-nificant numbers of Trinidadians and European expatriates have relocated to this island dependency (St Bernard 2006). Culturally diverse, with considerable ethnic and racial intermarriage and inter-ethnic and inter-racial births occurring outside wedlock, Trinidad’s ethnic groups are commonly divided into five categories – East Indian 40 per cent; African 37.5 per cent; mixed 20.5 per cent; other 1.2 per cent; unspecified 0.8 per cent (according to 2000 census estimates). The ‘mixed’ group is a collectivity of smaller ethnic minorities, mixed-race offspring, multi-ethnic families,



and multiple-category ethnic identities – indeed, those who self-identify as ‘not East Indian’ and ‘not Hindu’, or ‘not Afro-Trinidadian and ‘not black’. It is part social class ascriptive and part mixed phenotype, but it is mostly made up of middle-class professionals and well-educated citizenry (Jelly-Shapiro 2005). Along with ‘other’, which is an alternative designation for the ‘white/European/Syrian stock’ category, these two minority groups are found at the top of the social stratum of Trinidadian and Tobagonian society, both in terms of power and financial wealth (Potter et al. 2004; Reddock 1998; Ryan 1991).

Although several West Indian colonies experienced high levels of emigration to the UK after the Second World War, the Trinidadian exodus to the colonial ‘mother country’ was relatively modest at 9610 people leaving between 1955 and 1961. This was only 2000 more people than the outflows from several of the smaller Windward and Leeward Islands, and much lower than emigration to the UK from Barbados (18,741) and Jamaica (148,369) (Peach 1968). On the other hand, the exodus of Trinidadians to the United States and Canada after the Second World War was considerably larger. Between 1971 and 1980, approximately 62,000 Trinidadians emigrated to the United States and approximately 32,000 to Canada (Guengant 1985). By 2000/1 the Trinidadian emigrant populations enumerated in the respective cen-suses were 197,400 in the United States and 65,145 in Canada, while the UK had an estimated 17,127 in 1991, a foreign-born presence that had been stable since 1971 (being 17,135 at the time) (Peach 1996).

The extra- and intra-regional spatial reach of the Trinidadian diaspora has led to the development of transnational social networks and transnational family support systems. These networks provide contemporary migrant families with multi-local sites, or ‘transnational spaces’, in which members can find numerous opportunities for educational advancement and skill acquisition, among other ‘overseas experiences’ that build up the stocks of ‘human’ and ‘social’ capital (Conway 2005; Jackson et al. 2004; Levitt 1998). Emigration, temporary circulations, return visits and returns for good are all part of these well-entrenched transnational networks. They link Trinidadians with family, kin, partners, friends, ‘aunties’ and other extended family (often across generations) in various intra-regional and extra-regional nodes of this diaspora in Barbados, Grenada, Jamaica, Canada, the USA, the UK and places farther afield (De Souza 1998, 2005, 2006; Ho 1991, 1993).

Field methodology and qualitative analysis

Returning to the specific objective of our research, we draw on the ‘narratives’ of 36 informants, of whom 26 have dual citizenship, to seek answers to a range of concerns that touch on our leading question of whether transnationalism supplants nationalism among our returning informants. The interviews were semi-structured in that they sought to cover all major areas associated with transnational migration, citizenship and national identity, family and professional experience and adaptation to return.

The interviews, which a trained Trinidadian female assistant and we three authors conducted, took place between October 2004 and July 2005. We usually held them in



people’s homes, except in the few instances where informants preferred to meet in bars in central Port-of-Spain. Most of our informants were in mid-career, in the mature age cohorts of their thirties and forties, with some at the stage of immediate family formation, so their transnational life histories were by no means over. Rather, in our interviews we were ‘intercepting’ them mid-point in their life trajectories. All those interviewed were happy to let us tape our semi-structured interviews and continuing discussions, which we transcribed after the fieldwork stage. We primarily carried out the analysis of the informants’ narratives manually, namely by reading and searching for themes and notable passages. Using Microsoft Excel, we manually carried out the analysis of the survey data spreadsheet of the 36 informants’ socio-economic and demographic profiles.

The quotations we selected represent our informants’ commonly held and alter-native views on dual nationality and dual citizenship. While most informants reflect on their present situation and concerns about their transnational experiences at home in Trinidad and Tobago, some also comment on their senses of duality, or unitary identities in their recent lives overseas and some interesting comparative insights are elucidated as a consequence. Cases where the narratives express idiosyncratic views are clearly indicated.

Narratives on ‘dual citizenship’ and ‘belonging’

In this examination of our informants’ wide range of dual-citizenship relationships, we group responses into what we regard as the most informative categories, based mainly on the common viewpoints expressed in their narratives. Thus, an essentially inductively-derived categorization of transnational perspectives and lifestyles pro-vides order to the following presentation, but there is no implied hierarchy of importance or significance in the resultant ordering.

I ‘Classic’ transnational belonging – dual-citizenship relationships

The notion of ‘transnational belonging’ is at the heart of post-nationalist thinking on the ‘deterritorialization of nation-states’, while dual or multiple citizenship is an essential aspect of the political threat that transnationalism poses to nation-state integrity and sovereignty (Basch et al. 1994; Besson 2002; Premdas 2002). The former implies an interim step to a borderless world in which citizenship allegiances to one nation-state become progressively meaningless. With rights and responsibili-ties invested in people regardless nation-state boundaries, global rules, obligations, institutions and logistical systems will supplant the legal contractual relationships between people and the nation-state in which they reside sooner or later (Bauböck 1994; Jacobson 1996; Soysal 1994). In such an abstraction, people belong simul-taneously to two worlds in a transnational social field characterized by its inter-connectivity. As Levitt and Glick Schiller (2004: 1003) see it: ‘Simultaneity, or living lives that incorporate daily activities, routines, and institutions located both in destination country and transnationally, is a possibility.’

Some of our informants echo this notion of simultaneity in their feelings about



dual citizenship and the social advantages it confers on them, rather than through their daily lives. Catherine’s2 bi-national birthright reinforces her sense of ‘transnational belonging’:

I think it is a very strong advantage people have when they always know they have a choice. For me, I don’t have to consider it so much. I am a citizen of Trinidad; I am a citizen of Canada by birth. So I don’t need to work at obtaining visas. I don’t need to make particular plans to organize for sponsorship or anything to leave the country. I can go back and forth freely because I have the two passports.

Much as I said before, my aspiration is you shouldn’t have to take one foot out of either country. I am born Canadian and Trinidadian. Trinidad is as much my home as Canada. In many ways it is more primarily my home. I am more comfortable here in many levels but my identity has always been … my mummy is from Canada, my daddy is from Trinidad. So I’ve always considered myself to be as much Canadian as I am Trinidadian. This does not conflict with the idea of being Canadian at all. A large part of the Canadian identity is the fact that it is a cosmopolitan country; people come from all over and they are still called Canadians. That is the nature of being Canadian … that you come from around the world but you share values.

With regard to the future, Catherine, views her ‘transnational advantage’ as increasing her flexibility and freedom to circulate:

So my long-term goal is I should be able to call Trinidad home and call Canada home; keep a home in both places and have the freedom to go back and forth as work allows us. Take some work in Canada, take some work in Trinidad. I never want to say goodbye, but I can’t tell you I am not inflexible.

Joseph, another child of bi-national parents, also remarks on the flexibility and security dual citizenship (and two passports) provides:

My mother being born in Canada and so on, when I was born, immediately before I was a couple years old I had two passports. So, I grew up like that, moving with that flexibility. I believe it is important to maintain that, because in the event, or in the unlikely event of anything catastrophic happening, you always have somewhere else to go.

‘Transnational belonging’ can also be cultivated through bi-national marriage and sharing transnational experiences. Lisa’s acknowledgement of her American hus-band’s influence on their decision to return to her homeland, and leave his, illustrates how their sense of ‘transnational belonging’ incubated over a protracted period, until a major disaster in her husband’s life brought about a change in everything:



Alfred, my husband, is who really wanted to move here. We came here when we married, about eighteen years ago, and fell in love with Trinidad and Tobago. He fell in love with the family; he fell in love with the island; he fell in love with the whole way of life and always said when he retired he would like to move to Trinidad and Tobago. Of course, at that point we did not expect to have twin boys, so panic changed the equation and we kind of put it on the back burner. We actually bought land in Tobago 17 years ago, with the hope of building a house in Mount Irvine, which was going to be the dream home. Who knew that we’d be coming here?

And then the World Trade Center fell and my husband had been so instrumental in building the World Trade Center and running the World Trade Center: he was head of marketing for the World Trade Center. … So when that fell and he lost something like 12 personal friends, let alone all the other people who passed away, I think it was again the catalyst.

And I have come to a conclusion that everything is preordained because each time that I’ve had a major move in my life, there has been a catalyst to do it. It hasn’t been me saying, ‘I am going’. Neither time – and I have moved other times too. So that’s what brought us here.

When asked about whether she and her husband maintained their dual identity and/or retained their transnational ties Lisa was adamant, but at the same time, very positive about their joint ‘flexibility’:

Absolutely, absolutely, completely! You know, we are viewing our stay in Trinidad as part of our journey. We don’t know where we are going to pitch up next. I know Alfred loves it here and I wouldn’t be surprised if we remained with a base here for the rest of our lives. I really believe in a former life he was here. This man just loves it here, loves it. He can just assimilate it, happy as can be. Who knows where we will pitch up next, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this remains our base.

II Global citizen-West Indian identities – ‘post-nationalism’ it is not!

Another of our dual citizens, Roger, thought of himself as a Trini-Canadian but was most comfortable with the idea of being a ‘global citizen’. Indeed, he admits to being initially a Trinidadian: ‘first and foremost … yes, two months ago, but today, um, I love Canada. Yes, I love it.’ He then reflects further:

In addition to all of that, I feel that global issues are important. I’m interested in what happens all over the world, and, uh, and I see myself less in nationalistic terms or in national terms, more as a citizen of the world. And in fact, young people, probably feel more and more that way.

This admission and its changing set of allegiances as circumstances in his family life



and in his work experience appear to have altered Roger’s viewpoint on his trans-national identities and he does not follow a ‘post-nationalist’ rationale on how transnationalism will encourage individualism and freedom from ties, or allegiances to nation-states (Bloemraad 2004; Soysal 1994). Rather, the altruistic feeling that liberal/socialist-minded, concerned people can interpret their global interconnections in terms of societal obligations and social responsibilities, seems to underline Roger’s sense of his ‘transnational place’ in a new world order that is both inter-regional (Trinidadian and Caribbean) and extra-regional (Canadian).

One other informant, Ernest, echoes Roger’s world citizenship claim, but it turns out that his frame of reference is quite different. Holding British and Trinidadian passports, and at the urging of his Trinidadian mother who still lived there, Ernest eventually moved back to Trinidad with his Trinidadian wife and two children, after emigrating as a boy to London, growing up, playing cricket, starting a family, and living a relatively comfortable life as a British-Caribbean. It took him several visits, and eight years of deliberation before making the decision, in large part because his ties to Britain were deep and strong, and yet his ties to his mother were to prove the strongest. When asked about his national ties and feelings, Ernest offered this response: ‘Yeah, I think I’m West Indian before I’m anything else. West Indian before I’m Trinidadian. I don’t suppose many people say that?’

At first hearing, this would appear to have the same connotation as Roger’s world citizenship claim, except that Ernest feels a regional affinity and allegiance. However, as our interview continued it became apparent that Ernest had always been an avid supporter of West Indies ‘national’ cricket teams, going to matches in Britain during the ‘heyday’ of West Indies cricket’s supremacy in the English-speaking world. It emerged that it was his extremely strong and passionate feeling of support of his cricket team that led this British Caribbean returnee to consider himself a West Indian rather than either a Trinidadian or a black-British citizen.

III Dual citizenship – ‘ambivalent’ transnationals (unsure of staying, or re-migrating/re-returning)

Dual citizenship is commonly assumed to facilitate and strengthen transnationalism while challenging nationalism, to foster multi- and bi-national affiliation and to foster transnationalism (Bloemraad 2004). There is an unchallenged finality about dual citizenship’s role in this global restructuring of people’s ties to their ‘home’ and ‘away from home’ territories. A prevailing conventional wisdom holds that dual citizenship threatens to replace one sovereign association with a responsive govern-ment, with ‘cross-border’ options that avoid national allegiances and obligations. Another alternative is that it provides a new and improved flexibility to live within a transnational social field in which simultaneity of social action and activities characterizes daily life and life choices (Conway 2007; Goulbourne 2002). Although risk reduction and strategizing may underpin such agency explanations, the relation-ship between dual citizenship and transnational behaviour may be less clear cut or determining.



The position that one of our returning informants, Laura, took towards her dual citizenship was hesitant and fraught with ambiguity. She later judged her decision to make a clean break of all ties with her metropolitan country of adoption, the USA, a mistake and regretted it. She was unclear about how she saw herself as identifying with both countries and later reflected on how she might have done things better. She also obviously struggled over accepting her transnational identities. Significantly, part of Laura’s narrative reflects how she viewed herself and how she perceived that people in the USA viewed her, and part reflects how she saw herself as a returning transnational adjusting to Trinidad, her birthplace. First, she explains her US experience:

I am a Howard graduate so I went away to study and opportunities arose after graduating, so I continued to live there and eventually the visas changed. I got permanent status, and left with citizenship. So now I am a US citizen.

I always used to say that I am always a Trinidadian. For example, I never lost my Trinidad accent even though I spent so many years abroad, and people have been quite amazed that I still sound like a Trinidadian because I never gave up my roots, and I never became an American in any real sense of that word, when I lived abroad. So I cannot say from my experience here that I have been treated any differently because I lived so long abroad.

Most of my friends were Trinidadian or other Caribbean people, and a few from Jamaica and so. So, when interacting with them, socializing or whatever, you were a Trinidadian, you were from the Caribbean, especially in the work-place when interacting with other Americans, you have to act a little differently, throw out the Trinidad roots a little bit, maybe speak slowly. I have never had an American accent but I would speak a little slower and so on, so that they would understand me, and certainly certain conversations that I would have with a fellow Trinidadian, I could never have in front of an American and so forth.

Contrasting her life ‘up there’ with Trinidad, Laura was quick to point out that she played up her transnational identity to her advantage:

So I have tried to settle down, play a little bit of my US background in order to mix better, socialize better in Trinidad. How it has helped me though is career-wise, because what I have found is that certain companies really prefer to work with individuals who have spent some part of their professional life abroad – whether it is the US [or] Canada. So, from a career standpoint, I have built up the fact that I have spent part of my career in the States, and therefore I am that much more marketable. And from that standpoint it has helped me considerably.

Now follows Laura’s admission that she regrets some of her decisions about renouncing her dual nationality and not using those ties to better advantage:



I shut down everything in the United States. I sold my car, I shut down my job; I didn’t take leave without pay, for example. I closed down everything, gave up all my credit cards, etcetera.

I think that was a mistake. I think again it had to do with the fantasy of returning and thinking that – this is where I was going to stay, we are going to be perfectly happy, and I would have no problems. I think it is important to someone who has spent a significant amount of time abroad, to come back and go through an adjustment period, and be sure that it is really where you want to be, where you really want to live. Because you have shut down everything, wherever you may have been, it becomes more difficult to return and make that move.

Thus, having restricted her options, Laura says she regrets having jeopardized her ability to remigrate, but then resignedly (or pragmatically) reverses her logic to agree finally that since circumstances ‘forced’ her to stay, then it appears to have turned out for the best anyway. However, Laura does have a piece of advice to share with other transnationals and dual citizens who might be contemplating a return:

I think if I had not shut down everything, I probably would have returned within a year to be quite frank. But because I did, and there was nothing to go back to per se, is one of the reasons that I was forced to get out, good or bad. I think now it is a good thing, but at that time I certainly did not think so. So I would not recommend to anyone who has lived abroad for a long time to shut down everything, and say that I am returning to stay. I think you need to main-tain certain things and spend some time here, working and living here, not just vacationing, having to interact with the banks, and the telephone company, cable company, living and having to buy groceries.

IV Transnational-multicultural identities through Trinidadian mixed-parent lineages

Earlier, we raised the possibility that children of bi-national, or of ethnically and racially diverse, parents can acquire transnational multicultural identities without having to go through a transnational migration experience per se. Two of our informants fall into this category, Celeste and Angela. Celeste, a ‘one-and-a-half generation’ migrant, had a West African father and Trinidadian mother, spent her childhood in France, but after her parents’ divorce returned to Trinidad with her mother. She returned to France for her higher education, but then came back to Trinidad, where we interviewed her in December 2004. Two months later, she left for France again, this time to acquire a higher degree. She made the necessary adjust-ments to these transnational spaces with their distinctly dissimilar cultures and languages and, after believing she was French throughout her childhood, claimed her Trinidadian heritage on her return, considerably influenced by her mother’s national consciousness. Celeste, however, had firm convictions about the unsuitability of Trinidadian men as potential marriage partners and admitted that one of the prime



reasons for going back to France was to seek a French or other European partner, ‘because her biological clock was ticking’.

Angela, on the other hand, viewed her creolized, ethnic parental mix as her Trinidadian identity, when she migrated to the Isle of Man, and London, UK to complete her secondary and post-secondary education abroad. Commenting on her situation as a ‘white Trinidadian’ in Britain, Angela had this to say:

I think most of the time they didn’t know what I was. They had no clue, because my background is … my mother, my grandmother was Portuguese, and my grandfather was French and father is English, so I’m a Trinidadian … I’m a European. … And people never knew where I’m from. I mean, I’m so mixed that Americans think I’m American. I tend to be a bit of a chameleon, I suppose, I just fit in wherever I am. I don’t know if that’s the benefit of being sort of mixed up.

V Transnational belonging – pragmatic dual identity through marriage

‘Transnational belonging’ and dual citizenship do not necessarily go ‘hand in glove’ to facilitate international movement in a couple’s ‘transnational space’. Such ‘states of mind’ can be part of a family’s life-course trajectory, or joint decision-making, in which pragmatic considerations take precedence over ‘senses of place’, emotional nationalistic affiliations, family traditions, or territorial attachments. Sonora is a ‘one-and-a-half generation’ returnee who, with her American husband, visited Trinidad many times to acclimatize to the country so that they would be well prepared when they eventually returned. Sonora, expressed it this way:

We are pretty much both pragmatists. So we kind of knew what we were coming back into, because we have relatives who came back. They came back; they retired and they had this fantasy of coming back and fall back on the retirement money from the States and build their house. … And we didn’t put our eggs in one basket either. We just felt we’ll come back; we’ll give it a couple of years and after that, if we stay, we stay. If we didn’t want to stay, we’d leave. So, no real commitment. It’s now been six years later and we’re still here and still not committed one way or the other. We just stay because we love it.

When asked about whether she was keeping her future migration options open and flexible, Sonora again reiterated that pragmatic considerations prevailed in her spouse’s and her joint decision-making:

Absolutely. I think if I was here and my husband was not a foreigner, I probably would not have held onto my US papers, but because he is I feel we need to maintain his options and now I am part of his options and our children are part of that option. So, yes, we have to maintain our options because at the



end of the day, that’s his home and my second home and because it has been such a great experience over there. … When you think about it, we didn’t run away from there, we ran to here. We love here, but if we have to go back tomorrow for whatever reason I will embrace that as well, because we need to maintain those options.

Following on from these reflections, when Sonora then goes on to talk about her dual identity and transnational ties with America as well as Trinidad, she admits she does not have dual citizenship. Instead, she maintains her dual nationality through her marriage and through her children’s nativity. Following one among a set of common practices utilized by other Trinidadians (and West Indians) whose US-based family, or US-citizen spouse, has sponsored relatives in their applications for US residency, Sonora was sponsored by her citizen husband and uses her US ‘green card’ as her entry visa to go back and forth. Concerning her dual nationality, she is adamant:

Absolutely, yes. As a matter of fact we are going away for Christmas to Vermont. We haven’t been in a couple of years. So we are going this Christmas, hopefully there’ll be snow … So we’ve maintained ties.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get the dual citizenship. My family, of course, still curse me for not doing that! … I always said I would come back to Trinidad and serve some political purpose, so I never wanted to give up my citizenship. And now I am here and my husband is American and my kids are dual citizens, I am thinking that was not a good idea, because now with the green card I have to go back to the US ever so often to maintain that. I mean I am happy that I have my green card, it still gives me that freedom.

VI Dual citizenship – national belonging

Could the transnational experiences of returning Trinidadian (and wider Caribbean) migrants serve to strengthen rather than weaken their sense of ‘national belonging’? After all, migration and ‘leaving to come back’ have long histories of mutual asso-ciation in Caribbean societies, with movement ‘off the island’ being one part of the territorial mission, and retaining roots in island homelands its mutual partner (Besson 2002; Conway 1989; Fog Olwig 1999; Marshall 1982; Mills 2007; Richardson 1983). Transnational backgrounds, especially if they enhance human and social capital, provide migrants with extremely valuable assets, including increased confidence, maturity and self-reliance (Levitt 1998, 2003). Transnationalism need not necessarily supplant national affinities and ties to the original homeland, and it does not neces-sarily mean that migrants have to split their nationalistic ties between the two nation-states in which they have dual citizenship. Return to the homeland is, in a practical sense, a realization of many of our informants’ ‘intention to return’, but as a number of their responses indicate, some do exhibit a ‘transnational belonging’ in which their territorial loyalties are shared or split. Here we find that the alternative is also true,



that lasting and deep senses of national belonging can accompany the return for some of our transnational dual-citizen respondents. For example, Charles expresses it this way:

Growing up in a foreign country, first of all, you know, well, it is not really your country. Originally you have attachments like brothers and sisters – even though I have a brother in Canada; yes he was successful and was doing well; yes, health care and all other things and schooling and opportunities in terms of education, you say yes it is there and your children can benefit from it. But still, there is an attachment. You feel, well, the woman that you would want to live your life with finally would be somebody within your country in a situation you are more familiar with. … So raising the family, yes, my family, where they would be around the other relatives, you know. So I think that feeling of ‘belongingness’ was much more prominent in how I was thinking about making up my decision with respect to Trinidad and Canada. So Trinidad really stood out as my final destination.

When asked whether he had maintained his dual identity and kept his ties with Canada, Charles replied: ‘Yes. I have maintained. … No, I have to say it the next way: I kept my ties with Trinidad because I have never given up my Canadian; yes, I have my dual citizenship.’ On the other hand, a ‘second-generation’ returnee, Indira, was much more forthright about her chosen national identity as a Trinidadian:

The fact is that not very many people know that I am a foreign born national, because I don’t have an accent of any of the countries that I have lived in, other than Trinidad, so very few people know that I am a foreign born national and I do no publicize the fact.

Well, first of all I do not think that I ever had a dual identity. I always had a very singular identity and that was Trinidadian. … But in terms of values and identity and norms and right choices in terms of what is considered right and wrong for me as an individual, those things were developed here.

Kyle, although having dual citizenship – with Trinidad and the USA as his bi-national pairing – was equally adamant about his singular national identity:

Dual identity? I don’t think so. I think I could adjust to living abroad, but I am from Trinidad and being born in Trinidad and growing up in Trinidad, as I said, the only thing that changed it is the way how I view life now, but I don’t think there is dual identity – I could adjust to living abroad. And as I said, I may go abroad for a better life, so I can adjust to the States, but my identity is Trinidad and Tobago.

Although he came from a transnational family, in which his siblings made different choices both to stay away (two siblings) in the USA and return (three, including



himself) to Trinidad, Elton likewise, retained a firm intention to return, and a strong sense of national belonging, which he attributed to his closely-knit family bonds:

The thing with me, I was always a Trinidadian. Even while in school, my accent never changed. Actually, in presenting, I used to use it to my advantage, because some people used to find that we speak so fast so they didn’t understand. So that when I present and I say any questions, there are no questions, because they don’t understand what I am saying. So sometimes I use it to my advantage. Some people say: ‘I love your accent’. So if they love my accent I don’t see why I have to change. I mean you pick up one or two little slangs, but basically … then too, some of my family who live there for years, I mean they still talk normal. So I didn’t see the need to Americanize.

When asked if he had any future plans to remigrate, Elton was positive about his decision to return for good, and give up his dual citizenship:

Nah, nah, I ain’t going nowhere. I had a green card and all that kind of thing and I chose to give it up … well, because of the stipulations when you go in, they want to know why you was out so long, you know. Coming back home and getting a visa – a ten years’ VISA and all of that – and recognizing like with the [US] embassy you get a visa for the life of your passport, so you could go and come when you want; I opted for that. I didn’t want the hassle of them questioning you; why you out so long? I just choose to give it up.

Vera, another of our informants, has to deal with a more complex family history when discussing her transnational background and multinational identity. Her sense of ‘national belonging’ was as much family related and multiculturally contextual as it was derived from her transnational experiences in Trinidad and the UK. Her story shows how complicated ‘senses of place’ and territorial affinities can be in Trini-dadian and Eastern Caribbean societies, which have long traditions of inter-regional migration as well as extra-regional diasporas.

Vera’s reception in Trinidad very much relied on the social and family networks she was able to access when she returned. Vera explains it this way:

I have to tell the truth and say yes. And I say that because I came with my British passport and I had lost my Trinidadian passport, but I was able to get that sorted. So a lot of things that would have taken somebody who didn’t have those contacts and so on, longer, took me a reasonably short time.

I was born in St Vincent but my parents left there when I was ten months. So I can’t relate to St Vincent, you know, I feel I am Trinidadian. But ultimately it comes back to where you were born. They still don’t see me as Trini, you know, in terms of being a full Trinidadian because … Although I am not UK born, I am foreign born.



With reference to her attachment to the UK, where she had acquired some (trans)national traits, Vera had this to say:

Well, because my mother was Jamaican and because mummy actually lived here when she was at the Adventist Hospital in St Clair, they just assumed that we were Jamaican. So I still get the label of Jamaican, you know, which I vehemently deny. Yes, there are a few people who say ‘English woman’, but I think it’s because sometimes I lapse. Because in the UK, sometimes if you say something they might not understand – because I did a lot of counselling, I had to not put on a British accent, but speak in a way that they will understand. So sometimes here, especially if I am going into counselling mode, I might lapse into that kind of accent and so, somebody who hears that would say, you know, ‘English woman’ or you know stuff like that, but not in an exclusive way.

You remember I mentioned my British passport and my Trinidad passport? The only reason I didn’t have it is that it was misplaced in my marital home and I left quite in a hurry, you know, it was declared lost because I asked my ex-husband to find it and he said he couldn’t find it. I don’t know if he destroyed it or what. But I have always kept my dual citizenship … for both UK and Trinidad.

I haven’t kept hold of property but I still do my banking online and I still have my bank accounts and so on. And I think it’s that whole thing we spoke about before, about not really knowing how things will work out. So if I go back I don’t have to open a new bank account. I don’t think I’m going back, to be honest, but I think when I close them I’ll know: well, okay, it is now settled.

Conclusions

Dual citizenship, dual nationality, ‘transnational belonging’ and ‘national belonging’ all seem to be ‘part and parcel’ of transnationalism, but no straightforward deter-ministic relationship or causal link was evident between these concepts among the returning Trinidadians and Tobagonians we interviewed. Dual citizenship is a ‘cross-border’ institutional and legal right that many cherish because it facilitates their trans-national practices, and legitimizes and widens their mobility options. Pragmatic considerations strongly influence its evaluation by our returnee informants. Familial national identities also influenced some of our informants’ sense(s) of allegiance, with bi-national mother–daughter relations strengthening feelings of transnational belong-ing, while Trinidadian mothers influenced both their sons’ and their daughters’ senses of national belonging.

While dual citizenship certainly facilitates transnational migration, among many of our informants it does not appear to supplant national affections, or sever personal and family ties to one home territory over the ‘away from home’ other territory. In at least one case, a woman acquired the logistical advantages of dual nationality through marriage and the parentage of children; in fact, the birth mother could use her



husband and children’s national citizenship to enable her to move easily between Trinidad and the USA. In two other cases, our informants acquired dual nationality and dual citizenship through their parents’ bi-national marriages, with transnational experience following rather than leading the mobility options; in other words, these young returning Trinidadian women inherited their dual nationalism.

These young transnational Trinidadians decided to return even although they were able to remain abroad, could continue to lead a transnational life from a base in North America or the UK, and could continue to use their dual citizenship to facilitate recip-rocal movement while maintaining their connections with their Trinidad and Tobago home territory. That they chose to return to Trinidad in mid-career and often still in the family formation stage of their lives means that their adaptation experiences in this particular locale in their transnational social field or space definitely influenced the narratives upon which we have drawn (see Potter et al. 2008). One should not, however, expect these narratives and views on dual citizenship and transnational or national belonging to reflect the same adaptation concerns they might have done had our informants been interviewed as immigrants residing in North America or Britain, though some of them reflected on their home and away-from-home feelings and commented on the differences between them.

One could expect firmly held convictions about national belonging to counter transnationalism given that return might have been intended for a long time, but the diverse responses we have documented do not support such a simple cause and effect relationship between return, ‘national belonging’ and the dominance of trans-nationalism. Family relations intercede both to encourage transnationalism and to strengthen nationalism. At the individual level, another factor intervenes that seems to have power and authority in deciding some of our informants’ senses of national belonging. This is the desire to make a difference and to contribute positively to the societal development of their twin-island home (see Potter and Conway 2008).

One informant, Sean, maintained that his dual identity kept his dual citizenship and retained his ties with England. When asked about his property and business arrangements in England and Trinidad, Sean responded thus:

I have maintained some finances there, yes. And I maintained business ties – I have tried to initiate business ties – establishing new ones. I left without having any sound business with any particular – the idea now is to establish new ones with people I knew before.

Well, I certainly want to stay here, and I want to be part of the develop-ment. I certainly believe that part of that development is like for all of that is recognizing that you are also part of the world. And if it is that through whatever kind of relations that I had before, I am able to capitalize on connections that I have had and to talk about engaging countries, other disciplines, and other professionals and so outside. And if I am the conduit to do it by many other people, I think that’s what I have to do.

Another dual citizen, Graham, also reflected on this influential factor:



My mother sees herself as American. … I see myself as Trinidadian, but I think at the same time that I’m aware that a lot of people see me as not being Trinidadian. So it’s kind of a funny place. I see myself as being both. But I see myself as Trinidadian because I know my contributions are towards building Trinidad. And I think, you know, that’s OK.

It’s interesting, because one’s nationality, I think, largely comes out of feeling … where you feel that you’re contributing. And I never really thought about that. But I think, um, yeah, I probably started becoming a Trinidadian right before I moved back.

To conclude, ‘moving back’ and maintaining transnational links and identities are neither inseparable nor problematic for these young returning Trinidadians. Indeed, dual citizenship appears to be an essentially pragmatic strategy, which, once acquired, individuals, marriage partners and even children utilize to advantage because, among other things, it facilitates ‘strategic flexibility’ (Conway 2007; Conway and Potter 2007). On reflection, our findings concur with one of Ong’s (1999) findings on the ‘flexible citizenship’ of transnational Chinese. This is that in the contemporary era of globalization, transnational individuals do indeed develop flexible notions of citizenship and sovereignty as strategies to accumulate capital and power.3 Trinidadians also ‘respond fluidly and opportunistically to changing political economic conditions … practices produced within particular structures of meaning about family, gender, nationality, class mobility, and social power’ (Ong 1999: 6). Transnationalism does not appear to supplant nationalism irrevocably, but rather to accompany it for some, to strengthen it for others, and to constitute a favourable experience for most. The flexibility that transnational mobility affords, therefore, is viewed as advantageous in just about every case we have assessed, regardless of the relative strength or weakness of sentiments of ‘national belonging’.

Acknowledgements

The generosity of the National Geographical Society’s Committee for Research and Exploration (NGS-CRE) and Indiana University’s Office of International Programs financially supported the research described in this article. The Leverhulme Trust supported earlier work, and Indiana University’s Institute for Advanced Study in Bloomington provided additional support for this project. Our sincere thanks go to the young returning Trinidadians who gave freely of their time to talk to us about their transnational practices and experiences, views on dual citizenship, dual identities, national ties to ‘home’ and for some, transnational ties to two homes – one in Trinidad and Tobago, the other ‘away’.

Notes

1. More commonly, research has focused on the ‘return on retirement’ of first-generation West Indians in their late fifties, sixties or seventies. The return of the younger cohorts we examine here is an emerging phenomenon; we refer to their relative youthfulness to emphasize their still active, mid-career, life course stage.



2. The names of informants cited here are pseudonyms. 3. Ong’s (2006) more challenging notions concerning neoliberalism as exception and her

conceptualization of associated ‘technologies of self-governing’, ‘self-enterprising values’, ‘movable social entitlements’ and ‘mobile entrepreneurial subjects’ who can claim citizenship-like benefits in multiple locations, do not appear to have transferrable relevance to the transnational lives and livelihoods of our Trinidadian informants, nor would we expect them. Her ‘cultural logics’ are not our referent.

References

Allahar, A. L. (2005) ‘Class, ‘race,’ and ethnic nationalism in Trinidad’, in A. L. Allahar (ed.) Ethnicity, class and nationalism: Caribbean and extra-Caribbean dimensions, Lanham: Lexington Books, 227–57.

Baronov, D. and K. A. Yelvington (2003) ‘Ethnicity, race, class and nationality’, in R. S. Hillman and T. J. Agostino (eds) Understanding the contemporary Caribbean, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner & Ian Randle Publishers, 209–38.

Basch, L., N. Glick Schiller and C. Szanton-Blanc (1994) Nations unbound: transnational projects, postcolonial predicaments and deterritorialized nation-states, Langhorne, PA: Gordon & Breach.

Bauböck, R. (1994) Transnational citizenship: membership and rights in international migration, Aldershot: Edward Elgar.

Besson, J. (2002) ‘Land, territory and identity in the deterritorialized, transnational Caribbean’, in M. Saltman (ed.) Land and territoriality, Oxford: Berg, 175–208.

Bloemraad, I. (2004) ‘Who claims dual citizenship? The limits of postnationalism, the possibilities of transnationalism, and the persistence of traditional citizenship’, International Migration Review, 38 (2), 389–426.

Brubaker, R. (1989) ‘Introduction’, in R. Brubaker (ed.) Immigration and the politics of citizenship in Europe and North America, Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1–27.

Castles, S. and A. Davidson (2000) Citizenship and migration: globalization and the politics of belonging, New York: Routledge.

Conway, D. (1989) ‘Caribbean international mobility traditions’, Boletin Latino Americanos y del Caribe, 46, 17–47.

Conway, D. (2000) ‘Notions unbounded: a critical (re)read of transnationalism suggests that US–Caribbean circuits tell the story better’, in B. Agozino (ed.) Theoretical and methodological issues in migration research: interdisciplinary, intergenerational and international perspectives, Aldershot: Ashgate, 203–26.

Conway, D (2005) ‘Transnationalism and return: “home” as an enduring fixture and an anchor’, in R. B. Potter, D. Conway and J. Phillips (eds) The experience of return migration: Caribbean perspectives, Aldershot: Ashgate, 263–82.

Conway, D. (2006) ‘Globalization of labour: increasing complexity, more unruly’, in D. Conway and N. Heynen (eds) Globalization’s contradictions: geographies of discipline, destruction and transformation, London: Routledge, 79–94.

Conway, D. (2007) ‘Caribbean transnational migration behaviour: reconceptualizing its “strategic flexibility”’, Population, Space, Place, 13, 415–31.

Conway, D. and R. B. Potter (2007) ‘Caribbean transnational return migrants as agents of change’, Blackwell Geography Compass, 1, 25–45.

Cordero-Guzmán, H. R., R. C. Smith and R. Grosfoguel (2001) Migration, transnationalization and race in a changing New York, Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

De Souza, R.-M. (1998) ‘The spell of the Cascadura: West Indian return migration’, in T. Klak (ed.) Globalisation and neoliberalism: the Caribbean context, London: Rowman & Littlefield, 227–53.



De Souza, R.-M. (2005) ‘No place like home: returnees R & R (retention and rejection) in the Caribbean homeland’, in R. B. Potter, D. Conway and J. Phillips (eds) The experience of return migration: Caribbean perspectives, Aldershot: Ashgate, 135–56.

De Souza, R.-M. (2006) ‘Trini to the bone: return, reintegration and resolution among Trinidadian migrants’, in D. Plaza and F. Henry (eds) Returning to the source: the final stage of the Caribbean migration circuit, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 74–104.

Escobar, C. (2004) ‘Dual citizenship and political participation: migrants in the interplay of United States and Colombian politics’, Latino Studies, 2, 45–69.

Faist, T. (2001) ‘Dual citizenship as overlapping membership’, Willy Brandt Series of Working Papers in International Migration and Ethnic Relations, School of International Migration and Ethnic Relations, Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden.

Faist, T., J. Gerdes and B. Rieple (2004) ‘Dual citizenship as a path-dependent process’, International Migration Review, 38, 913–44.

Falk, R. (2000) ‘The decline of citizenship in an era of globalization’, Citizenship Studies, 4, 5–17.

Fog Olwig, K. (1999) ‘Caribbean place identity: from family land to region and beyond’, Identities, 5, 435–67.

Ghosh, B. N. (2001) Dependency theory revisited, Aldershot: Ashgate. Glick Schiller, N. (1995) ‘From immigrant to transmigrant: theorizing transnational migration’,

Anthropological Quarterly, 68, 48–63. Goulbourne, H. (2002) Caribbean transnational experience, London: Pluto Press; Kingston:

Arawak Publications. Guengant, J.-P. (1985) Caribbean population dynamics: emigration and fertility challenges,

(with D. I. Marshall) Report prepared for the Conference of Caribbean Parliamentarians on Population and Development, 14–15 June 1985.

Gustafson, P. (2002) ‘Globalisation, multiculturalism and individualism: the Swedish debate on dual citizenship’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 28, 463–81.

Hammar, T. (1985) ‘Dual citizenship and political integration’, International Migration Review, 19, 438–50.

Hammar T. (1990) Democracy and the nation-state: aliens, denizens and citizens, Aldershot: Gower.

Ho, C. G. T. (1991) Salt-water Trinnies: Afro-Trinidadian immigrant networks and non-assimilation in Los Angeles, New York: AMS Press.

Ho, C. G. T. (1993) ‘The internationalization of kinship and the feminization of Caribbean migration: the case of Afro–Trinidadian immigrants in Los Angeles’, Human Organization, 52, 32–40.

Hobsbawm, E. J. (1992) Nations and nationalism since 1780: programme, myth, reality, second edition, New York: Cambridge University Press.

Jackson, P., P. Crang and C. Dwyer (2004) ‘The spaces of transnationality’, in P. Jackson, P. Crang and C. Dwyer (eds) Transnational spaces, London: Routledge, 1–23.

Jacobson, D. (1996) Rights across borders: immigration and the decline of citizenship, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Jelly-Shapiro, J. (2005) ‘“Are we all creoles now?” Ethnicity and nation in a heterogeneous diaspora’, in A. L. Allahar (ed.) Ethnicity, class and nationalism: Caribbean and extra-Caribbean dimensions, Lanham: Lexington Books, 23–55.

Jones-Correa, M. (2001) ‘Under two flags: dual nationality in Latin America and its consequences for naturalization in the United States’, International Migration Review, 35, 997–1029.

Joppke, C. and E. Morawska (2003) Toward assimilation and citizenship: immigrants in liberal nation-states, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.

Levitt, P. (1998) ‘Social remittances: migration driven local-level forms of cultural diffusion’, International Migration Review, 32, 926–48.



Levitt, P. (2001) ‘Transnational migration: taking stock and future directions’, Global Networks, 1, 195–216.

Levitt, P. (2003) ‘Keeping feet in both worlds: transnational practices and immigrant incorporation’, in C. Joppke and E. Morawasa (eds) Toward assimilation and citizenship: immigrants in liberal nation-states, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 177–94.

Levitt, P. and R. de la Dehesa (2003) ‘Transnational migration and the redefinition of the state: variations and explanations’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 26, 587–611.

Levitt, P. and N. Glick Schiller (2004) ‘Conceptualizing simultaneity: a transnational social field perspective on society’, International Migration Review, 38, 1002–39.

Marshall, D. I. (1982) ‘The history of Caribbean migrations’, Caribbean Review, 11, 6–9, 52–3. Mills, B. H. (2007) ‘“Leave to come back”: the importance of family land in a transnational

Caribbean community’, in J. Besson and J. Momsen (eds) Caribbean land and development revisited, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 233–41.

Nietschmann, B. (1994) ‘The Fourth World: nations versus states’, in G. Demko and W. B. Wood (eds) Reordering the world, first edition, Boulder, CO: Westview, 225–42.

Ong, A. (1999) Flexible citizenship: the cultural logics of transnationality, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Ong, A. (2006) Neoliberalism as exception: mutations in citizenship and sovereignty, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Peach, C. (1968) West Indian migration to Britain, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Peach, C. (1996) ‘Black-Caribbeans: class, gender and geography’, in C. Peach (ed.) Ethnicity

in the 1991 census, volume two: the ethnic minorities of Great Britain, London: Office of National Statistics, 25–43.

Portes, A., L. E. Guarnizo and P. Landolt (1999) ‘Introduction: pitfalls and promise of an emergent research field’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 22, 217–37.

Potter, R. B., D. Barker, D. Conway and T. Klak (2004) The contemporary Caribbean, London: Pearson/Prentice Hall.

Potter, R. B. and D. Conway (2008) ‘The development potential of Caribbean young return migrants: “making a difference back home …’’’, in T. van Naerssen, E. Spaan and A. Zoomers (eds) Global migration and development, London: Routledge, 213–30.

Potter, R. B., D. Conway and G. St Bernard (2008) ‘Transnationalism personified: young returning Trinidadians, “in their own words”’, Tidschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, (in press).

Potter, R. B. and J. Phillips (2006) ‘Both black and symbolically white: the “Bajan-Brit” return migrant as post-colonial hybrid’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 29, 901–27.

Premdas, R. (1998) Identity, ethnicity and culture in the Caribbean, St Augustine, Trinidad: The University of the West Indies/St Augustine, School of Continuing Studies.

Premdas, R. R. (2002) ‘Self-determination and sovereignty in the Caribbean: migration, trans-national identities and the deterritorialisation of the state’, in R. Ramsaran (ed.) Caribbean survival and the global challenge, Kingston: Ian Randle & Lynne Reinner Publishers, 49–64.

Reddock, R. (1998) ‘Jahaji Bhai: the emergence of dougla poetics in contemporary Trinidad and Tobago’, in R. Premdas (ed.) Identity, ethnicity and culture in the Caribbean, St Augustine, Trinidad: University of the West Indies/St Augustine, School of Continuing Studies, 185–210.

Richardson, B. C. (1983) Caribbean migrants: environment and human survival on St Kitts and Nevis, Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press.

Ryan, S. (1991) Social and occupational stratification in contemporary Trinidad and Tobago, St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago: Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of the West Indies.

St Bernard, G. (2006) ‘Episodes of return migration in Tobago: a phenomenological study’, in D. Plaza and F. Henry (eds) Returning to the source: the final stage of the Caribbean migration circuit, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 188–213.



Soysal, Y. N. (1994) Limits of citizenship: migrants and postnational membership in Europe, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Taylor, P. J. (1996) The way the modern world works: world hegemony to world impasse, Chichester: John Wiley.

Vertovec, S. (1999) ‘Conceiving and researching transnationalism’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 22, 447–62.

Vertovec, S. (2001) ‘Transnationalism and identity’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 27, 573–82.

Dual citizenship or dual identity? Does ‘transnationalism’ supplant ‘nationalism’ among...

Documents

Transcript of Dual citizenship or dual identity? Does ‘transnationalism’ supplant ‘nationalism’ among...