Paradigms of Migration: From Integration to Transnationalism

This article provides a critical analysis from the viewpoint of social anthropology of the different theoretic approaches that also set the tone of current debates on immigration in Europe and elsewhere. We begin by retracing the models developed and popularized since the 1960s to discuss the integration theory and Marxist reflections on the rise of class consciousness in immigrants. The article illustrates the paradigm shift that occurred in the 1990s that takes into account the role of the immigrants’ culture in their society of origin, whereby immigrants appear to act in conformity with two cultural systems of reference, i.e., of their society of origin and of the society of residence. This theoretical model highlights the transnational aspect of migration phenomena. In this article, we analyze the social organization of transnationalism starting from two fundamental types of aggregation: diasporas and social networks. The centuries-old Chinese immigration in Malaysia provides evidence that diaspora and social networks are not opposite forms of social organization, but rather coexisting and interacting ones. By means of an historical perspective, we will show that the social networks of the Chinese in Malaysia gradually became a national diaspora in which not only economically but also politically powerful clan-like social networks are still in action.