BORDERS MAKE THE DIFFERENCE: MIGRANTTRANSNATIONALISM AS A BORDEREXPERIENCE

摘要

This paper tries to accomplish cross-fertilisation between border studies and transmigrationstudies, research fields which exist almost separated from each other. It claims that the concept ofborder can contribute to the theoretical growth to maturity of the relatively young field oftransmigration studies, and especially to a deeper understanding of the in-between lifeworldsof transmigrants (migrant transnationalism). In transmigration studies, borders are usually con-sidered as boundaries, the physical lines on the ground, and therefore are seen as beginnings andendings of migrant transnationalism. In this paper, it is argued that borders can also have aconstitutive role in migrant transnationalism. This constitutive function of borders has beenthoroughly theorised in border studies in the last two decades. Contemporary border scholarsregard borders not as passive lines, but as active and polymorphous social constructions which arethe outcome of people's need to make differences. By bringing this broader notion of borders tothe transmigration debate, it is argued that migrant transnationalism is about experiencing theborder, or experiencing the difference. This broader sense of borders might help to bare the soulof migrant transnationalism, namely the condition of being continuously between here and there.