Povezati mjesta, izdržati udaljenost: Iskustva i implikacije transmigrantskih putovanja
Connecting Places, Enduring the Distance: Experiences and Implications of Transmigrant Travels

Summary/Abstract: This paper sheds light on some aspects of situating identities within a transnational framework. The practice of personal travel as a means of maintaining transnational social fields is focused upon. A micro-ethnographic study of a bus ride between Sweden and Croatia is presented. The used material refers exclusively to people who can be classified as immigrants, here conceptualized as transmigrants. It includes labour migrants and their families, as well as people who came to Sweden as refugees. Their transnational practices are connected to some aspects of ethnic identification processes. The author argues for central importance of the fieldwork in ethno-logical/anthropological understandings of transnational practices and their implications, and discusses some methodological concerns. The embodied geography of physical distances and national borders is just one element of transnational individuals' and groups' identification processes. Nevertheless, it is central to ethnographic accounts on the multiple and often burdensome experiences of connecting places. Such accounts are indispensable in the joint interdisciplinary effort of locating and historicizing transnationalism from below, in order to promote it as a useful scholarly concept.

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