Introduction

For the last three decades we have been witnessing the emergence of a plethora of political and cultural practices that are collectively opening up the possibility of redefining ‘locality’ beyond local and national boundaries. In the context of debates on globalisation and transnational migration, Appadurai almost two decades ago put forward the argument that locality can no longer be considered as a given social reality placed in a bounded site. Rather, it should be seen as being in constant motion, and he suggests that one should ‘focus on the question of how locality is in fact produced and circulated in a distant place’. Translocal politics are a dimension of globalisation that expand beyond the borders of states but at the same time are being shaped by the political practices and institutions of a particular nation or region. They are translocal in the sense that they are impacted by even the minutest currents within the political intricacies and specificities of certain places, yet are increasingly felt, identified and consumed in other areas.

Mandaville proposes the concept of ‘translocality’ as an increasingly important form of political space. He considers the ‘translocal’ as an abstract category denoting sociopolitical interactions that fall within bounded communities, that is, translocality in which people and culture flow through space rather than about how they exist in space. Translocality here is not just about recognising forms of politics situated within the territorial spaces of sending or receiving countries but rather what is configured across and in between such spaces. Briefly put, translocality disrupts traditional notions of political space and gives rise to novel political and cultural spaces. Translocal political spaces therefore emerge as a result of new forms of political delimitation that reach beyond national boundaries. They become the new sources of identification and action within specific local and global reference systems.

Examining multiple ties and interactions linking people and institutions across the borders of nation-states, Vertovec uses the term ‘transnationalism’ to refer to the ways in which new and contemporary transnational practices of migrants are fundamentally transforming social, political and economic structures simultaneously within homelands and places of settlement.