ABSTRACT. The failure of the 1990 political transition in the Democratic Republic of Congo to deliver on promises of better living conditions for all Congolese and the diminishing job opportunities available to young Congolese have resulted in many looking for economic opportunities outside their country of nationality. With most of the European and North American countries effectively off limits due to restrictive measures on migration (Bauman, 1998; Soguk 1999). The post-apartheid South Africa is relatively prosperous. This fact couple with a corrupt immigration and asylum system make the country very attractive for an increasing number of Congolese migrants who desire a better standard of living. Although the borders are relatively porous, the expense and hazards of moving require resources that are not available to all. This project explores how migrant networks can provide those resources through information and access to documentation, housing, and opportunities for income-generation. In particular, this thesis explores the role of social networks in structuring the movements of Congolese into Johannesburg and their integration into its social fabric. It intersects with a part of a growing body of literature demonstrating numerous new ways in which contemporary global migrants remain closely connected to their places of origin, to co-nationals or co-ethnics across nation-state borders, and indeed across the world 1(Transnational Communities Programme; 1999). While this analytical perspective has been applied fairly extensively to other groups of migrants, few scholars have sought to examine the extent to which refugees and asylum seekers maintain such a worldwide web of relationships (Crisp, 1999). Indeed, academic discourses on refugees, and also the practical efforts made on their behalf by United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees (UNHCR) and other humanitarian organizations, continue to be informed by the assumption of a rigid separation between the exile country of origin and country of asylum (Crisp, 1999). 1 Programme of a workshop on ‘Policy challenge of the new migrants diasporas’, Chatham House, London, 22-23 April 1999. Quoted by Jeff Crisp in: Policy challenges of the new diasporas: migrant networks and their impact on asylum flows and regimes. WPTC-99-05 Policy Research Unit, UNHCR, CP 2500, CH-1211 Geneva Switzerland. www.transcomm.ox.ac.uk/working%20papers/riia3.pdf Jean Didier Losango Nzinga 5 Against this background, social networks play an important role in facilitating migration, whether across borders or across regions (Guzman, Haslag and Orrenius 2004). These networks are likely to act as an important source of information to prospective migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, providing them with details on matters such as transport arrangements, entry requirements, asylum procedures and social welfare benefits, as well as the detention and deportation policies of different destination states (Crisp, 1999). Consequently, refugees and other migrants who have access to such data are better placed to negotiate entry into developed countries than those who do not2. 2 Given the increasingly important role these networks play in facilitating movement of people around the world today, the emergence of the internet plays a major role in making these networks possible. See report prepared for the Knowledge for Development Program of the World Bank: Role of Diaspora in Facilitating Participation in Global Knowledge Networks: Lessons of Red Caldas in Colombia (Bogota, December 2004).

The growing accessibility to the global community has allowed historically marginalized groups the opportunity to assert their positions on a global stage. The difficulty of States to enforce necessary protections of land and representation has allowed the entrance of new powerful international organizations with expansive networks to play a role in domestic policies. The largest indigenous group in Panama, the Ngöbe, has suffered from poor unification and political organization, weakening their position vis-à-vis the State. Recently, under the perceived threat of a large development project, the hydroelectric dam Chan 75, some Ngöbe groups have been able to make connections to bring awareness to their conflicts by appealing to distant sympathizers through international networks. These linkages are limited in their ability to force a change in national policy; however, these efforts are not in vain. The outcomes of the continuous negotiations that occur in the space of the physical development site are continuously changing to create the opportunity for the greater participation of the Ngöbe, who benefit from the leverage provided by international norms and vigilance.

Abstract It is no longer contested that migrant transnational linkages are becoming a replacement social organization where nation-states’ institutions and regulatory capacities are increasingly failing to guarantee decent livelihoods or, at least peace, to their citizens, and where potential destination countries’ policies are restrictive of immigrants. This essay explores the patterns and correlates of the contemporary migration decision-making and its timing, focusing on the role of transnational networks in that process. It is a quantitative study that uses a comprehensive dataset that Forced Migration Studies Programme collected in 2006 on the South African, Mozambican, Congolese and Somali immigrants residing in the Inner-city of Johannesburg. Based on personal experience of 594 international immigrants among those, the study challenges the well established argument in international migration theories that position economic opportunities as the primary explanatory factor underlying the contemporary migration decisions. While the study recognize the importance of economic factors, the study reveals that the entrenched history of migration between countries of origin and destinations and the resultant web of transnational ties explain better than economic factors the contemporary African migration decisions and their timing. With its relatively new approach to analysis of the patterns and correlates of migration decision timing, the study manages to position the importance of transnational ties in migration decisions and to show how they command the swiftness of migration decision-making processes.

Dans ce travail de thèse, nous nous intéressons au phénomène d'émergence du patrimoine européen. Dans une démarche interdisciplinaire, il s'agit d'aborder les processus d'appropriation, de médiation et de transmission du patrimoine comme européen dans le cadre particulier des Itinéraires Culturels du Conseil de l'Europe et selon une posture interculturelle. Grâce à un ensemble d'analyses communicationnelles et organisationnelles du Programme des Itinéraires Culturels du Conseil de l'Europe, mais aussi de trois cas d'Itinéraires Culturels (Via Regia, Via Francigena et Saint Martin de Tours), il s'agit d'appréhender le processus de patrimonialisation à l'échelle européenne en questionnant notamment les enjeux de sens, de visibilité et de lisibilité, de représentation et de légitimation qu'une construction européenne du patrimoine commun aux membres de réseaux transnationaux peut comprendre. Enfin, il s'agit de comprendre aussi comment, dans le cadre d'une labellisation de projets européens, la publicisation du patrimoine peut être le lieu de résistances vis-à-vis des institutions, qui peuvent alors influencer les discours sur les éléments patrimonialisés. / In this dissertation, we are focusing on the phenomenon of the emergence of European cultural heritage. In an interdisciplinary and intercultural approach, it is about getting into the processes of appropriation, mediation and transmission of cultural heritage considered as European in the specific framework of the Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe. Based on a set of communicational and organisational analyses of the Program of the Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe, but also of three cases of Cultural Routes (Via Regia, Via Francigena and Saint Martin of Tours), this works aims at comprehending the process of making heritage at a European level by questioning, among others, the meanings, the visibility and legibility plans, and the representation and legitimation strategies that are at stakes when members of transnational networks build a European sense of common heritage. Finally, it is also about understanding how, in the framework of the procedure of giving a label to European projects, publicizing heritage can be a place of resistance against institutions that can then influence the discourses about the heritage items.

This paper investigates the development of transnational human rights activists’ networks and how they operate and influence LGBTI human rights activist networks in Uganda against violence on the Ugandan LGBTI communities. The case study, employs semi structured interviews to investigate, how transnational networks are used as a mobilization too in promoting LGBTI human rights in Uganda. Further investigation is done on how transnational networks influence different social networks within local LGBTI activist groups when dealing with violence against the LGBTI communities. The study is taken from a view point of different local LGBTI activist groups and their close link with other international organizations and human rights bodies specifically from countries such as Sweden. Theories surrounding transnational networks and social networks are used in order to frame both cross border relations and local networks among the LGBTI groups. The study also calls for further research on other actors such as transnational migrants and individual activist including social media activist and their impact on the rights of LGBTI in Uganda.

Med anledning av att arbetslösheten är hög bland invandrare och att de i stor utsträckning startar företag är det intressant att se hur invandrarföretagare finansierar uppstarten av sin verksamhet. Av den anledningen är det också intressant att förstå vad som ligger bakom den valda finansieringsformen. Många invandrare som vill starta företag i Sverige stöter på problem tidigt i processen då de ofta blir diskriminerade av banker genom att inte bli beviljade lån i samma utsträckning som svenskfödda. Dessa begränsningar i tillgång till kapital via formella vägar öppnar upp för mer informella alternativ. En lösning skulle kunna vara att anförskaffa sig kapital via släkt och vänner som är kvar i hemlandet, med så kallade reverse remittances. Genom intervjuer med invandrarföretagare uppdelade i två olika grupper (en grupp som helt eller delvis använt reverse remittances som finansiering och en grupp som använt banklån och/eller andra finansiella medel) studerades valet av finansieringsform. Även sambandet mellan att ta emot och själv skicka remitteringar observerades. Då större delen av de invandrarföretagare som intervjuades inte hade varit i kontakt med banken innan finansieringsformen bestämdes finns ingenting i den här studien som tyder på att finansiering med reverse remittances beror på diskriminering hos bankerna. Den här studien visar istället att de främsta anledningarna till att reverse remittances används som finansiering är att det uppfattas som ett tillgängligt alternativ då invandrarföretagarna ingår i transnationella nätverk som byggs på en hög grad av tillit. Skillnaderna mellan de två urvalsgruppernas mönster i huruvida de själva remitterar eller inte visar sig i den här studien vara näst intill obefintliga. Istället beror remitteringsmönstret i båda urvalsgrupperna på kulturen inom de transnationella nätverken, en stark relation till remitteringsmottagaren och ett uttalat behov av pengar. Även om det finns antydningar på att företagarna som helt eller delvis finansierats med reverse remittances har något större benägenhet att själva remittera har studien inte kunnat se något tydligt samband mellan att ta emot remitteringar och själv remittera. / Given that the labor market for immigrants in Sweden has high unemployment and that immigrants to a large extent start businesses, makes it interesting to see how they finance the start-up. It also makes it interesting to try to understand the reasons that may lay behind the choice of funding source. However, many immigrants who want to start a business in Sweden encounter problems early in the process since banks tend to discriminate immigrants and not grant them loans to the same extent as to those born in Sweden. The constraints in access to capital through formal options open up for more informal alternatives. One solution could be to go through friends and family who still live  in their country of origin, through so-called reverse remittances. The reason behind the choice of funding source was studied through interviews with immigrant entrepreneurs divided into two groups; one group that received reverse remittances as funding source and one group that used bank loans and/or other funding sources. Additionally this study also looked at the linked relationship between entrepreneurs receiving and sending remittances. Since the greater part of the immigrant entrepreneurs that where interviewed had not been in contact with the bank before choosing source of funding, discrimination cannot be said to be the reason behind funding by reverse remittances. This study shows that the main reason for the use of reverse remittances rather is because the immigrant entrepreneurs belong to strong transnational networks built up by a high level of trust. No specific differences in the remittance pattern between the two sample groups have been found. It is rather the culture within the transnational network, strong ties to the remittance receiver and an expressed need for money that seem to decide whether immigrant entrepreneurs send remittances or not. This study has not either been able to point out whether there is a relationship between receiving and sending remittances among immigrant entrepreneurs in Sweden, apart rom some insinuations that the entrepreneurs funded by reverse remittances tend to remit to a slightly larger extent.

This dissertation explains why Taiwan and South Korea experienced democratic breakthrough in the late 1980s, when Singapore failed to do so. It explains this variation in democratic outcomes by specifying the causal mechanisms underpinning the international-domestic political interface of democratic development in these cases. New empirical evidence discovered in the course of this research has confirmed that transnational networks of nonstate and substate actors were an indisputable source of external pressures on the authoritarian governments of Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore during the late 1970s and early 80s. Foreign human rights activists, Christian missionaries and ecumenical workers, members of overseas diaspora communities, journalists, academics and students, along with legislators in key democratic countries allied to the target governments, were found to have raised the international profile of political repression by flagging them as reprehensible human rights abuses. Within the context of an international normative environment where human rights was increasingly considered a legitimate international concern, these transnational actors generated a negative international opinion of the target governments. Such grassroots pressures had the potential to raise the cost of political repression for these target governments with the effect of curbing repressive state behavior, thereby protecting key domestic actors with the potential to effect democratic breakthrough. The extent to which these external pressures could effectively constrain repressive state behavior depended, however, on the immediate geopolitical circumstances of each case. Geopolitical circumstances were also important because they could affect the strength of the protection regime. Thus, the exposition of the transnational protection regime as the causal mechanism underpinning the international-domestic political interface of democratic development requires that we specify the exact role of agency within the international normative and geopolitical contexts in which they operate. This dissertation develops such an abstracted causal model for the purposes of application in other cases and for policy analysis.

This dissertation explains why Taiwan and South Korea experienced democratic breakthrough in the late 1980s, when Singapore failed to do so. It explains this variation in democratic outcomes by specifying the causal mechanisms underpinning the international-domestic political interface of democratic development in these cases. New empirical evidence discovered in the course of this research has confirmed that transnational networks of nonstate and substate actors were an indisputable source of external pressures on the authoritarian governments of Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore during the late 1970s and early 80s. Foreign human rights activists, Christian missionaries and ecumenical workers, members of overseas diaspora communities, journalists, academics and students, along with legislators in key democratic countries allied to the target governments, were found to have raised the international profile of political repression by flagging them as reprehensible human rights abuses. Within the context of an international normative environment where human rights was increasingly considered a legitimate international concern, these transnational actors generated a negative international opinion of the target governments. Such grassroots pressures had the potential to raise the cost of political repression for these target governments with the effect of curbing repressive state behavior, thereby protecting key domestic actors with the potential to effect democratic breakthrough. The extent to which these external pressures could effectively constrain repressive state behavior depended, however, on the immediate geopolitical circumstances of each case. Geopolitical circumstances were also important because they could affect the strength of the protection regime. Thus, the exposition of the transnational protection regime as the causal mechanism underpinning the international-domestic political interface of democratic development requires that we specify the exact role of agency within the international normative and geopolitical contexts in which they operate. This dissertation develops such an abstracted causal model for the purposes of application in other cases and for policy analysis.

All Norwegian regions are represented with permanent offices and are engaged in different activities in the EU capital. This thesis investigates the regional and network level of EU policy-making, and asks the questions of what Norwegian regions are doing in Brussels; if are they are able to influence EU policy; and what effect participation in transnational policy networks have on their abilities to influence EU policy. To answer this, it applies a theoretical framework comprised of multi-level governance and the policy network approach to conduct an analysis of empirical data collected through interviews with different actors in Brussels. The present thesis argues that participation in transnational policy networks improve Norwegian regions' abilities to influence EU policy through being 'representations of scale'.

This PhD dissertation is concerned with highly skilled new Chinese migrants (HSNCMs) in the UK and their transnational (or trans-boundary) careers and business practice between China and Britain. The research subjects are those HSNCMs who have established careers and business connections between China and the UK since 1990. This research pays special attention to relationships between the transnational practice of HSNCMs, brain circulation (or their knowledge exchange with China) and China’s globalisation. Three main topics are discussed in this dissertation: First, it examines the states’ engagement which has a direct impact on transnational mobility of HSNCMs in the UK. Second, it analyzes transnational network building of OCP associations (professional associations of HSNCMs) linking between HSNCMs and China. Third, it discusses individual transnational career and business activities and identity construction of HSNCMs in order to understand China’s brain circulation in the UK context. The main theoretical object of this paper is to combine brain circulation studies with the theoretical framework of transnational migration studies. The findings of this research show that states’ policy engagement (especially China’s initiatives) is very powerful. Through transnational network building of OCP associations, HSNCMs integrate their personal development into the national projects of Mainland China. For individual HSNCMs, their transnational practice is diverse in terms of their different social backgrounds. For most HSNCMs with trans-boundary careers and business practice, their transnational identities are combined with Chinese consciousness. They have set up strategies to develop their careers and business between the sending country and receiving country. The multiple interactions between HSNCMs and China, therefore, have produced a significant impact on the brain circulation of HSNCMs and the globalisation of China.