Transnationalism and fragmentation of belonging. Cultural citizenship and post-socialist social capital among the Lithuanian immigrants in the USA

By Vytis Čiubrinskas
English

The processes of post-socialist transformation, especially large-scale international migration from Eastern European countries (e.g. Poland, the Baltics and Balkans) to the Western hemisphere, are creating ‘new realities’ or an expansion of space for personal and familial practices, but also for the implementation of cultural difference and distinctive social capital. The paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2013 in Chicago among the Lithuanian and other Eastern European background immigrants. It explores two perspectives of transnationalism. The first is the ways of immigrant ethnification and cultural citizenship, and the other is inter-ethnic networking as (post)socialist legacy transplanted from Eastern Europe. The author is arguing for a grass-root level understanding of the complexities of transnationalism, which opened up a new web of intra- and inter-ethnic relations among Eastern European and in particular Lithuanian immigrants in the US.

Keywords

  • transnationalism
  • post-socialism
  • politics of identity
  • cultural citizenship
  • Lithuania
Go to the article on Cairn-int.info