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297 Transnational Practices of Finnish Immigrants The Transnational Practices of Finnish Immigrants Peter Kivisto Finns offer an instructive case of political transnationalism, particularly during the period known as Karelia fever of the 1930s, during which time several thousand Finns from the United States and Canada departed for Soviet Karelia to help the Communist regime build the “Labor Republic.” While the first, and to a more limited extend, the second generations provided ample evidence of transnational activities, over time transnationalism declined as the ethnic community was transformed into American citizens, defining themselves as hyphenated Americans rather than as workers of the world. This chapter asks whether Finnish migrants in America could be construed to be transnational immigrants. In doing so, it makes use of a concept that was introduced into immigration research in the 1990s to advance research on contemporary migration. The purpose of this research was to cast new light on a group that received considerable scholarly attention by social historians and historical sociologists during the 1970s and 1980s—a time that proved to be the zenith of scholarship focusing on the wave of immigration extending from 1880 to 1930. Rather than making use of new data, I apply the concept to this extant body of research. By using the case of Finns as a strategic research site, the chapter is intended to shed light on the debates over immigrant incorporation. Transnationalism Since the early 1990s, a growing number of immigration scholars conducting research on contemporary labor migrations from the nations of the South and East to those of the North have begun to use the term “transnationalism” in order to specify what might be the distinctive features of this immigrant wave. In particular, this theorizing has sought to explore the rise of transnational immigrant communities. Such communities are treated as a parallel phenomenon to other manifestations of transnationalism, such as those related to global corporate capitalism,1 entrepreneurs,2 the emergence of international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), social movements,3 research think tanks,4 and the increased hybridization of popular culture.5 The earliest formulation of transnationalism as it applies to immigration was developed by cultural anthropologists Linda Basch, Nina Glick Schiller, and Christina Szanton Blanc, Peter Kivisto 298 who defined it as “the processes by which immigrants forge and sustain multi-stranded relations that link together their societies of origin and settlement.”6 Put simply, transnational immigrants are seen as attempting to live with one foot in the homeland and the other foot in the host society, in the process creating an ethnic community that transcends national boundaries. Employing a language borrowed from Pierre Bourdieu or from that of social geographers, they refer to this transcendence in terms of the construction of transnational social fields or social spaces. This concept is akin to the idea of the ethnic global village.7 The assumption of the earliest formulations of transnational immigration was that it distinguished contemporary immigrants from those who migrated during the preceding great migratory wave that occurred between 1880 and 1930. The former were potentially transnational, while the latter were not, chiefly because of the impact of improved communications technologies and transportation systems in the current era.8 Not all agree that transnationalism is a useful concept for immigration research. Indeed, Ninna Nyberg Sørensen has posed the question in stark terms: is it a “useful approach or trendy rubbish?”9 Few have gone as far as David Fitzgerald in proposing that “the term as it is generally used in migration research should be retired.”10 Nonetheless, critics have questioned the conceptual inflation contained in those formulations.11 Of particular salience for the topic at hand in this essay, some of these critics have questioned the assumption that immigrants from an earlier era were not transnational. Just how significant the differences are between immigrants past and present in this regard is an empirical question that is only now beginning to receive scholarly attention.12 There is an increasing concession on the part of scholars of transnationalism that the early formulation overstated the differences.13 In fact, the back-and-forth movement of immigrants in the past was far more common than is often appreciated and the numbers of those who ultimately opted to return to the homeland permanently are much higher than previously thought, as Mark Wyman’s research makes clear.14 In an effort to refine the term and to translate it into operational terms, Alejandro Portes, Luis E. Guarnizo, and Patricia Landolt have identified three discrete...

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