The transnational continuum of conditional inclusion

People centered migration studies are about processes of social transformation. They often focus on the incorporation of newcomers, or, when concerned with diaspora formation and transnational ties, with the myriad of social, political and relations maintained between individuals and communities in origin and destination.

In this article, senior researcher Ninna Nyberg Sørensen takes a critical look at what happens to such processes over time. Having followed back-and-forth movements from the Dominican Republic to various destinations for more than 30 years, enables her to explore not only variation in the composition of who leaves and who stays behind, but also changes in migration policy and the impact of such changes on migrant communities.

Based on a juxtaposition of ethnographic research conducted among Dominican families in New York City in the early 1990s, several subsequent research projects concerning specific migrant sending communities in the Dominican Republic, and a recent study of deported nationals in Santo Domingo, the author examines the structural conditions that shaped the marginalization and criminalization of Dominican migrant youth in the United States and later let to their deportation.

By focusing on how conditional inclusion – in national as well as transnational spaces – manifests itself from departure to arrival, through settlement and marginalization, to deportation and struggles for (re)integration in the Dominican Republic, the article aims to contribute insights to the development of transnational theorizing.