%0 Journal Article
%T Transnationalism of Burundian Refugees in The Netherlands: The Importance of Migration Motives
%A Peter Mascini
%A Alfons Fermin
%A Hilde Snick
%J International Journal of Population Research
%D 2012
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2012/962327
%X It is equivocal whether the transnationalism of refugees differs significantly from that of labor and family migrants. On the basis of a strategic case study of Burundian refugees in The Netherlands we demonstrate that migration motives undeniably matter for transnationalism. Transnationalism is not self-evident for Burundians, as they are driven by a motive of flight. Moreover, transnationalism is not automatically oriented towards compatriots and manifests itself differently in The Netherlands than in Belgium. Therefore, we conclude that the study of refugees is an essential complement to the prevailing research on the transnationalism of settled labor and family migrant communities. 1. Introduction Transnationalism has become an important field of research within migration studies since the 1990s. However, soon after the initial enthusiasm, skepticism followed: phenomena gathered under the denominator of transnationalism appeared to be anything but new, and the spread of these phenomena seemed largely overestimated. According to Portes [1, page 182] this overestimation was due to the fact that researchers investigated transnationalism in contexts renowned for it; in other words, the abundance of transnationalism was a direct consequence of how the dependent variable was selected. This bias emerged in at least three ways in studies on transnationalism. Firstly, research was mainly carried out on transnationalism among settled migrant groups, first in the United States, and later also in other Western countries. Examples are Mexican migrants in the United States, Kurdish migrants in Sweden, and Indian migrants in the United Kingdom [2, 3], [4, pages 130-131]. Members of settled migrant groups can more or less automatically utilize networks of family, acquaintances, and transnational institutions for the arrangement of their voyage and stay in the country of destination, for developing transnational activities, and for arranging the eventual (temporary) return to the country of origin. Hence, transnationalism is easily available for members of settled migrant groups. However, this is not the case for members of ˇ°newˇ± migrant groups and for dispersed migrant groups [5, page 880]. Secondly, much of the research on transnationalism selected respondents among members of associations and clubs in settlement countries with a clear predilection for the country of origin [3]. According to Jansen [6, page 185], this selective attention given by researchers to transnational institutions could explain why he did not find intensive transnationalism among Bosnian
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijpr/2012/962327/