[1][2][3][4] The term "trans-national" was popularized in the early 20th century by writer Randolph Bourne to describe a new way of thinking about relationships between cultures.
Multinational corporations could be seen as a form of transnationalism, in that they seek to minimize costs, and hence maximize profits, by organizing their operations in the most efficient means possible irrespective of political boundaries.
In practice transnationalism refers to increasing functional integration of processes that cross-borders or according to others trans bordered relations of individuals, groups, firms and to mobilizations beyond state boundaries.
Individuals, groups, institutions and states interact with each other in a new global space where cultural and political characteristic of national societies are combined with emerging multilevel and multinational activities.
Some argue that it is driven mainly by the development of technologies that have made transportation and communication more accessible and affordable, which thus dramatically change the relationship between people and places.
This intense influx of resources may mean that for some nations development prospects become inextricably linked—if not dependent upon—the economic activities of their respective diasporas.
Less formal but still significant roles include the transfer or dissemination of political ideas and norms, such as publishing an op-ed in a home country newspaper, writing a blog, or lobbying a local elected official.
There is also the more extreme example of individuals such as Jesus Galvis, a travel agent in New Jersey who in 1997 ran for a Senate seat in his native Colombia.
[8][14] This approach has led to a broader study of corporate networks, the global working class[15] and the transnationalization of state apparatuses and elites.
Transnational psychologists partner with members of local communities to examine the unique psychological characteristics of groups without regard to nation-state boundaries.
[21] Socio-cultural transnational activities cover a wide array of social and cultural transactions through which ideas and meanings are exchanged.
[2] These transfers of socio-cultural meanings and practices occur either during the increased number of visits that immigrants take back to their home countries or visits made by non-migrants to friends and families living in the receiving countries or through the dramatically increased forms of correspondence such as emails, online chat sessions, telephone calls, CDs/ VDOs, and traditional letters.
[22] However, to say that immigrants build social fields that link those abroad with those back home is not to say that their lives are not firmly rooted in a particular place and time.
[25] A collection of scholarly articles, edited by Terese Guinsatao Monberg and Morris Young, seeks to understand how transnationalism reveals ways Asian/Americans "negotiate, resist, and work against emerging, shifting, and often intensified 'highly asymmetrical relations of power.
The emergence of a global economy has contributed both to the creation of potential emigrants abroad and to the formation of economic, cultural, and ideological links between industrialized and developing countries that later serve as bridges for the international migration.
Moreover, the decline of manufacturing jobs and the growth of the service sector, key drivers of the globalization of production, have transformed western economies’ occupational and income structure.