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This is an introduction to the special issue “Communities in Movement: Football and Basketball in Transcultural Spaces”. The articles focus on amateur basketball and football teams and leagues foun...

Amateur football teams and leagues are a common phenomenon among migrants in many cities throughout the world: Not only in Brazil, but also in the United States and in major European cities, migran...

The article explores differences in the motivation for political engagement in a transnational context according to gender. The underlying ethnographic research reveals that the majority of Chicago’s Mexican migrant leaders – male and female – are simultaneously engaged in various political and civil society organisations; they are not only members of hometown associations and Mexican political parties, but also participate in nationwide US Latino organisations, immigrant organisations, human rights organisations and even in Mexican and US government institutions. In the article the political trajectories of four Mexican migrant leaders from Chicago are presented in short biographical portraits. The biographical approach shows the difference in life experience that formed these male and female leaders. For the men the motivation to become politically engaged is rooted in the sentiment of belonging to and being recognised in a community of origin. Therefore, male migrant leaders are deeply involve...

This chapter provides an overview of contemporary mobility patterns in the Americas and evaluates them from a regional rather than a single-case or sub-regional perspective. In examining these new mobility patterns, it explores migration conditions and intersections devoting special attention to historical continuities and changes. This chapter covers five main topics: violence and migration; political and legal responses to changing migration patterns; lifestyle and high-skilled North–South migration; spaces of transatlantic and transpacific migration; and new patterns of intraregional South–South migration. The chapter argues that contemporary patterns link the entire region in a complex web of transnational and transregional movements connecting origin, transit and receiving countries. It further posits that new patterns are having major impact on states’ policies and sociopolitical conditions and are shaping in significant ways the lives, roles and identity of people on the move including migrants and refugees.

The organization of indigenous Purhépecha migrants from the northwestern Mexican state of Michoacán to Chicago has benefited from the ability they have developed to adapt to different political and cultural contexts in Mexico. The Purhépecha community of Tarecuato has managed to combine indigenous culture and the administrative structures imposed by the nation-state to confront the discrimination and assimilation strategies of the mestizo municipality of Santiago Tangamandapio. In Chicago, the migrants from Tarecuato have organized themselves into a hometown association, the Club Tarecuato, and this has made it possible for them to negotiate development projects in the home community with the mestizo municipal president when he visits them in Chicago. Thus the transnational engagement of these indigenous migrants has produced a shift in the political power structure, giving them a voice in local decision making and increasing their influence in the predominantly mestizo municipality. La organización de migrantes purépechas originarios del estado de Michoacán, en el noroccidente de México, y ahora residentes en Chicago se ha beneficiado de su capacidad de adaptación a diferentes contextos políticos y culturales en México. La comunidad Purhépecha de Tarecuato ha logrado combinar la cultura indígena y las estructuras administrativas impuestas por el estado-nación para hacer frente a las estrategias de discriminación y asimilación del municipio mestizo de Santiago Tangamandapio. En Chicago, los migrantes de Tarecuato han creado un club de oriundos, el Club Tarecuato. Esto les ha permitido negociar proyectos de desarrollo en la comunidad de origen con el presidente municipal mestizo cuando les visita en Chicago. Es así que el compromiso de estos indígenas migrantes transnacionales ha producido un cambio en la estructura del poder político, otorgándoles participación en la toma de decisiones locales e incrementando su influencia un municipio predominantemente mestizo.

This empirical study focuses on migrants from the Mexican state of Michoacan who live in Chicago and are engaged in the Federacion de Clubes Michoacanos en Illinois. The article argues that their complex and multidimensional cross-border practices create transnational political spaces. It shows how the practices of Mexican migrant organizations overcome the geographic limits of traditional political spaces – the nation-state and the local community – and bring together intertwined dimensions of “the political,” which in this case refers to: the symbolic importance of the struggle for political rights, the feeling of belonging, the public recognition gained by participation in 3-for-1 public infrastructure projects and the empowerment of the migrants as expressed by their transnational political agendas.

Schlagworter: Transnationale politische Raume, Ruckuberweisungen, politische Rechte von Migrant/inn/en, politische Ungleichheiten, Programm 3x1 der mexikanischen Regierung, transnationaler Raum zwischen Mexiko und den USA ----- “Demandando un trato digno, de iguales”. Abstract Demanding Equal Political Rights in Transnational Space. This article analyzes how Mexican migrants in the United States create transnational spaces of political participation in-between localities, regions and the two nations – the U.S. and Mexico. Their fight for political rights at various levels is a reflection of, and an answer to, the multidimensional inequalities that they experience on both sides of the border. By analyzing the political interaction between members and organizations of local communities in the Mexican state of Michoacan and migrant activists in Chicago, the article delineates how Mexican migrants fight for equal rights in different political spaces and how these spaces are connected transnationally. It shows how Mexican migrants fi rst gained voice in their home communities and regions through participation in transnational infrastructure projects and how this empowerment at the local and regional levels then encouraged them to fi ght for their political rights at the national level in both Mexico and in the U.S. Finally, by connecting the different spheres and levels of political participation, the article offers a way of conceptualizing the complexity and multidimensionality of transnational political spaces. Keywords: transnational political spaces, remesas, political rights of migrants, political inequalities, 3x1 Program of the Mexican government, transnational space between Mexico and the U.S.

In this chapter different arenas of Mexican migrants’ political engagement in Chicago from an organizational perspective are analyzed. The first part of the chapter describes the local groups of the Mexican parties in Chicago—PRI, PAN and PRD—as a form of political representation of Mexican migrants. The second part of the chapter describes—using the example of the Michoacano federation as a point of departure—the networking between the Chicago Mexican migrant organizations as well as their cooperation with other civil society organizations and institutions. Starting with the broad network of Chicago’s Mexican migrant organizations, the last part of the chapter examines the protest movement for comprehensive immigration legislation in the USA and the support for the campaign of Barack Obama.

This chapter explores how transnational political spaces can be conceptualized and contextualized in the study of transnational political spaces between Mexico and the US. Therefore, different approaches to the analysis of transnational political spaces and arenas in the context of de- and reterritorialization, the importance of ‘the local’ and national borders are discussed in the first part of the chapter. In the second part of the chapter the historical and contemporary context of transnational political relations between Mexico and the United States is introduced and the respective objectives and fields of action of Mexican migrant cross-border political involvement are shown.

In this chapter, the development of transnational communities between migrant groups in Chicago and their home communities in Michoacan is traced. The first part of the chapter delineates how a “culture of migration” has historically developed since the 1940s, how the migrants have maintained bonds with their communities of origin and how they have recently gained transnational political influence at the local level. By means of three case studies, the second part of the chapter shows, how migrant groups influence local decision-making processes in rural Mexico and how they negotiate with agencies of Mexican government authorities. The final part of the chapter relates the empirical findings to the discussion about transnational communities and the creation of new arenas of transnational political negotiation and interaction.

This chapter uses biographical narratives of migrant leaders to analyze how they connect different arenas of political engagement in a transborder context. Many of the migrant leaders are committed to the concerns of the Mexican community in Chicago as well as to the support of the communities of origin in Mexico. In the first part of the chapter the profile of four male leaders is presented. In the second part, the less frequent but no less significant engagement of four female leaders is discussed. Using gender analysis, differences between male and female leaders are discussed. In the third part of the chapter the significance of the transnational nature of their political engagement in the context of their life stories is analyzed.

This chapter discusses the emergence of transnational political spaces based on the results of Schutze’s empirical research in Chicago and Michoacan. On the basis of the analysis of interview narratives—starting from the collective and personal links among different local arenas of each actor studied—an understanding of transnational political spaces is developed. It is shown how specific process elements and characteristics of transnational political spaces have emerged which are of central importance for a more extensive theoretical understanding of transnationalization processes. These are the importance of “the local” in networks of social relationships, political action in and beyond national-state structures, the development of “agency” by political actors, and the linking of various arenas of political interaction and communication.

In den letzten Jahren werden mexikanische Migrantenorganisationen in den USA zunehmend in der politischen Offentlichkeit wahrgenommen. Ihre Anfuhrer/innen setzen sich fur ihre politischen Rechte in den USA und in Mexiko auf vielschichtige Art und Weise ein. Sie sind nicht nur in mexikanischen hometown associations und in Gruppen mexikanischer Parteien, sondern auch in US-amerikanischen zivilgesellschaftlichen Organisationen, in US-Gewerkschaften sowie in lokalen Regierungsinstanzen Chicagos politisch engagiert. Dieser Beitrag analysiert zunachst, wie die mexikanische Migrantenorganisationen aus Chicago grenzubergreifend zu Demokratisierungsprozessen – im Sinne von Inklusion und Partizipation vorher marginalisierter politischer Akteure – beitragen. Daruber hinaus wird aber auch gefragt, ob und wie das transnationale politische Engagement an die Grenzen eines herkommlichen – auf den Nationalstaat basierenden – Demokratieverstandnis gerat und wie politische Raume im Hinblick auf das zunehmende transnationale politische Engagement neu gedacht werden mussen.

Dieses Einstiegswerk zur qualitativen Sozialforschung konzentriert sich auf die methodischen Grundzüge verschiedener Ansätze der interpretativen Sozialforschung. Es vermittelt eine sehr gute Grundlage für die Anwendung der rekonstruktiven Methoden in Lehre und Forschung, da es den gesamten Forschungsprozess – die Entwicklung der Fragestellung, den Zugang zum Untersuchungsfeld, die Erhebung des empirischen Materials und die Auswertungsmöglichkeiten – begleitet. Die Autorinnen zeigen, wie in qualitativer Forschung empirisches Material durch systematische Vergleiche interpretiert wird und so begründete Generalisierungen und Theorien entwickelt werden können.This introduction to qualitative social research focuses on the main methodological features for different approaches to interpretive social research. It provides a very good foundation for the application of reconstructive methods to teaching and research, since it follows the entire research process – from the development of a research question that acts as an entry point to a field of study, to the collection of the empirical material, and finally to the possibilities for evaluation. The authors show how empirical material is interpreted through systematic comparisons in qualitative research and how, from this, justified generalizations and theories can be developed.

Fuente TESIUNAM