Towards Sustainable Development Goals: Transnational encounters, connections and networks

Towards Sustainable Development Goals: Transnational encounters, connections and networks

We live in an age of migration, mobility and uncertainties. We currently also go through in an era of identity politics and popular mobilization in a highly tendentious transnational “struggle for recognition”. Under such dialectical transformations, some of us consider national affiliation concerns remaining deeply irreconcilable with the ambition of transnational connections and encounters. The argument for this proposition suggests that people would never be able to belong and combine national and transnational connections simultaneously. There is an absolute choice to make- either for this particular way or for that distinct exotic endeavour. Despite this gap, in our actual world, people (the formally legally and less formally socially organized) seem to pursue the workable premise for them- either collectively or separately. Most do, however, often combine and complicate links between national needs and transnational aspirations. 

Concrete examples include the international migration system consisting of the UN, intergovernmental organizations, and international agencies- in connection with the 17 globally ratified Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) often debating and subsequently attempting to govern the dynamics of people’s transnational trajectories. The global system often refers to developments such as “transformation towards inclusive sustainable and resilient societies”. Similarly, Europe pursues transnational state and non-state collaborations to establish migration and refugee governance regimes in mobilizing transnational resources and efforts with the aim of creating and transforming borderlines within and beyond Europe- through transnational “extra territorial-boundary making”. Business enterprises also pursue transnational connections in serving the supply, demand and profit maximization conditions and potentialities that emerge from transnational prioritization and connections. Similarly, transnational migrant and refugee communities engage transnational encounters in the formation of processes that transnationally and continuously serve and accommodate their social needs and aspirations.    

                Main points/aspects/themes we analyze:   

• Exploring the extent to which established social and political transnational theorizations can accommodate the social and political institutions of transnational, regional and global connections/cooperation
• Presenting empirical analyses of comparative transnational encounters and connections aiming at beyond homogenization and nation-state organization and institutionalization beyond conventional North-South transnational contexts
• The pluralization and diversification of transnational formations by north-south, and south-south transnational communities
• Interactions, strategies and joint networks by transnational state-regimes, transnational business enterprises, transnational NGOs and transnational communities
• Identifying transnational governance mechanisms that deal with diverse migrations in the stated regions, what transnational mechanisms that balance this transnational governance and how
• Conceptualizing transnational migration encounters, networks and connections