This document discusses the rise of transnational communities in the modern era of globalization. Key points include: 1) Globalization has increased the flow of people, ideas, and information across national borders, connecting communities in new ways through communication technologies. 2) Migration patterns are now more complex, with strong social and economic ties maintained between immigrant communities abroad and their home countries. 3) The proposed transnational platform aims to support these communities by providing online tools and services to help build social capital, civic engagement, and economic opportunities across borders.

1. Transnational
Communities
- not your grandfather’s diaspora -
Digaai Meeting
Alvaro Lima, September 2012

2. why a trasnational platform ?
 Since the end of the Cold War in the early 1990’s, a new regime has slowly evolved and continues to
take shape. Globalization has remade the economy of virtually every nation, reshaped almost every industry
and touched billions of lives, often in ambiguous ways;
 Today, drugs, crime, sex, war, protest movements, terrorism, disease, people, ideas, images, news,
information, entertainment, pollution, goods, and money all travel the globe. They are crossing national
boundaries and connecting the world on an unprecedented scale and with previously unimagined speed;
 The shrinking of distance and the speed of movement that characterize the current globalization process
find one of its most extreme forms in electronically based communities from all around the world interacting
in real time and simultaneously;
 Communication networks stretching across the world have the potential to connect people, previously
disconnected from what went on elsewhere, into a shared social space quite distinct from territorial space.
Developments in information and communication technologies have changed relations between people and
places;
 These global processes have also shaped the nature and pace of migration and the terms of national
belonging. What we still narrate in the language of immigration, is actually a series of processes having to
do with globalization of economic activity whereby global elements are localized, international labor markets
are constituted, and cultures from all over the world are de- and re-territorialized – they are, along with
the internationalization of capital, a fundamental aspect of globalization.

3.  Global markets create permanent demand for highly skilled technical and professional workers as well as for
unskilled laborers. Uneven development and the industrialization of traditional economic sectors in sending
countries create large, mobile pools of underemployed labor;
 Once this process is started, the linkages established between immigrant communities in the receiving
country and their families in the sending countries tend to reinforce the process. That is, once started, it
spreads through social networks. These social networks are the sets of cross-border interpersonal ties
connecting migrants, return migrants, and non-migrants through kinship, friendship, and attachment to a
shared place of origin;
 Although these networks generally emerge from economic relations among migrants and between migrants
and non-migrants, social, religious, and political connections also constitute these arenas. The more diverse
and thick these “transnational social fields” are, the more numerous the ways for migrants to remain active
in their homelands. The more institutionalized these relationships become, the more likely it is that
transnational membership will persist;
 Uneven integration processes further reinforce these networks. Migrants adopt some values and practices of
receiving societies but not others, gain access to some social and economic institutions but are barred from
integrating into others, they may exhibit structural assimilation without cultural or residential assimilation, or
they assimilate into different segments of the host society. They are assimilating while remaining
transnational at the same time.

4.  Transnationalism is the regular, frequent engagement in economic, political and socio-cultural activities in
both countries:
Transnational platform
Transnational platform

5.  This new reality creates new notions of community, of membership, and of entitlement. Supporting these
transnational communities is key to deeper and lasting transformations of their host and sending societies.
The possibilities opened up by the Internet and other digital technologies create unique opportunities to
empower these communities, support these transformational processes and create new forms of citizen
action, civic engagement and community life;
 The transnational platform will be designed to support these processes among Brazilian immigrants across
the world. The platform will open up opportunities for Brazilian immigrants around the world to build social
capital, political power and economic assets.
 Although designed to support the Brazilian community, it provides a “template” that can be replicated in
other communities that are looking for new ways to forward social and economic capital formation through
fostering transnational ties.

6. transnational platform model
(PHASE I)
SEARCH AGGREGATE ARCHIVE CURATE
WIKI NOTICIAS DATAHUB BLOGS
INFOGRAFICOS LIVRO TVBRASIL EDUCATION
MEMORIA MURAL BANCA POLING
Brazilian Transnational Community
RADIO ACERVO VIU ACHOU ….
everyday General Model it
life practices capture social practices capture economic activity
social economic
activity activity capture everyday life practices
(PHASE II) (PHASE III)
SERVICE MODEL
MASHUPS JOURNALING TAGGCLOUDS … (remittances, airline tickets,
phone minutes, locker…)