Traversing Ancestral and New Homelands: Chinese Immigrant Transnational Organizations in the United States: A Report

This study aims to examine the origins and developments of Chinese immigrant transnational organizations in the United States and their effects on immigrants' socioeconomic incorporation in the new homeland and development in the ancestral homeland. Over the past three decades, immigrant transnational organizations in the U.S. have proliferated with accelerated immigration and the rise of new transportation and communication technologies that facilitate long-distance and cross-border ties. Their impact and influence have grown in tandem with immigrants? drive to make it in America as well as with the need for remittances and investments in sending countries. Numerous studies of Latin American immigrants have found that remittances and migrant investments represent one of the major sources of foreign exchange of the countries of origin and are even used as collateral for loans from international financial institutions and that transnational flows are not merely driven by individual behavior but oftentimes by collective forces via organizations as well (Faist 2006; Goldring 2002; Itzigsohn et al. 1999; Landolt 2000; Portes 2001). But the density and strength of the economic, political, and sociocultural ties of immigrant groups across borders vary, and the effects of transnational organizations created by immigrants in the U.S. on developments of respective countries of origin also vary (Portes et al 2007). Nevertheless, the sum total of the transnational movements and the subsequent contributions of immigrants to families and communities left behind acquire ?structural? importance for both sending and receiving countries as these flows affect both the pace and forms of incorporation of immigrants in the US and the economic prospects of those they left behind.