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Political dynamics around the globe have been transformed by globalization, new patterns of human mobility, and the development of innovative transnational social networks. Processes of globalization have provided openings for new actors and issues to rise to prominence and for novel forms of political action to gain salience. These new political processes are rooted in communities and networks that are not restricted by geographic location. As a result of increased human mobility and new forms of communications, the relevant constituencies engaged in a specific political process or issue often live in different locales or move between locations. Networks of activists and supporters are less bound by the need to work in close proximity or to accept notions that actors outside a state or territory are not members of communities rooted within a specific location.
While politics has been delinked from territory with regard to processes and actors, this does not mean that transnational politics generally focuses on universal issues or global approaches to social justice. Rather much of the new transnational politics is intensely focused on specific locations, identities, and issues. Politics remains fundamentally about local issues even while political processes are increasingly globalized.
These patterns may be seen in the new roles of diasporas in politics, where accelerating and expanding patterns of human mobility have resulted in significant populations that identify with a particular community and remain politically engaged in issues related to that group but are not resident in the “homeland” of that community at any given time. In other cases, the body politic may mobilize around issues that are not
tied to a particular territory but are transnational by nature. Political thinking and strategies developed by populations that are mobile and located in multiple locations around the world shape how issues are framed and resources mobilized.
This paper sketches out a conceptual framework to investigate some of questions relating to the impact of global migration on transnational politics. Scholarly consideration of migration is well established and there is considerable research on issues relating to remittances and homeland development, the impact of new communications and information technology, international law and governance of global migration, and
on immigrant integration and patterns of participation in politics in their new host countries. What is less studied is the question of how politics has been transformed by new forms of participation by increasingly mobile, transnational populations. Globalization has generated new means for transnational populations to influence and for homeland governments and social movements to seek to co-opt pressures from constituencies abroad. Particular, specific political campaigns and strategies are in part the product of complex interactions between political and social leaders in multiple locations, with diaspora and other transnational networks serving key linking roles.