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Mexico has one of the highest numbers of emigrants in the world (Martin, 2009) and Canada is one of the states with the highest per capita immigration rates globally (Léonard, 2011). Mexico and Canada are typical examples of immigrant and emigrant countries and both countries have developed policies and strategies that aim to foster civic participation among their immigrant and emigrant population respectively (Martin, 2009; Goldring, 2002; Barry, 2002; Li, 2002; Reitz, 2005; Bauder, 2011). In Canada, academic research on immigration has centred on the effect immigration policies and practices have on including and excluding immigrants from exercising citizenship rights but it has tended to ignore the effect emigration policies have in the development of transnational citizenship practices, such as civic engagement, political participation, social activism, and acts of solidarity that transcend the frontiers of the nation-state. This has left important questions unanswered on how transnational citizenship is developed and exercised in a migration context including: 1) which policies and practices immigrants use to exercise transnational citizenship; 2) what is the impact of transnational citizenship practices in terms of the expansion and contraction of citizenship rights in the context of migration; 3) who is included and excluded by emigration policies promoting transnational citizen engagement; and 4) how do internal community issues, conflicts, cooperation, and solidarity affect the process of transnational enacting of citizenship? I attempt to fill this research gap by studying the effects Mexican emigration policies have on promoting transnational citizenship practices among middle class Mexican immigrants in Toronto and other cities in Ontario and by showing the avenues these immigrants use in order to participate civically with Mexico and with the Mexican diaspora in Canada.

The global migration of academic researchers and staff tends to follow a geographical hierarchy that has the USA at its centre. In this paper, we apply Gramsci’s concept of hegemony to explore the way in which the geo-scientific imagination of mobile researchers endorses hierarchies and asymmetries of the international academic system. While academic institutions and practices can be considered instruments for the organization and reproduction of hegemonic relations in civil society, this paper addresses hegemonic relations within the international academic system itself. An analysis of 42 interviews with mobile academics based in Canada and Germany affirms how mobile academics consent to the reproduction of a hegemonic academic hierarchy of countries. At the same time, however, the analysis reveals differentiated views that nest individual universities, departments, and disciplines in the context of national academic systems. The analysis also uncovers interesting shifts in the geo-scientific imagination of global academic hierarchies.

Academic researchers operate in their own labour market, or field, which has its own institutional infrastructure and professional practices that value international experience and mobility. In this paper, we explore if and how academics believe that international experience and mobility provide advantages for knowledge exchange and production and can be considered a symbolic form of capital that signifies value and thus renders them more competitive in the academic field. In addition, we investigate if international mobility is fetishised in the academic field and treated as an asset independent of the context in which it occurs. Results from a qualitative study involving 42 interviews with academic researchers in Canada and Germany show that international experience is valued as a form of capital but that mobility is rarely fetishised. Furthermore, the international academic field is organised hierarchically, with the USA and other English-speaking countries exerting the greatest value as destinations. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.