What is the Transnational Society? Interview with Thomas Lacroix
CNRS Research Professor Thomas Lacroix has recently published The Transnational Society: A Social Theory of Cross Border Linkages (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023). This book is the first of a work in two parts addressing the relations between the transnational society and the state. It is dedicated to the analysis and conceptualisation of transnational societies. Moving beyond the mere depiction of transborder socialities, Thomas Lacroix sheds light on the fundamental structures underpinning them. He answers our questions in the interview below.
Where does the concept of “transnational society” come from?
Raymond Aron is, to my knowledge, the thinker who coined the term. He was referring to the presence and activities of non-state actors, be they private companies, migrants, tourists… on the international scene. He wanted to draw attention to the fact that non-state actors also have a direct or indirect influence on international relations. He used this concept to make an analytical distinction between the “trans-national”, that is the realm of private actors whose activities span state borders, and the “inter-national”, which is the domain of States and state interactions.
But Aron used the term rather loosely. While he acknowledged their importance, transnational actors have never been the focus of his attention. My aim here is to substantiate this notion. My conception of a “society” draws heavily on Habermas. The German philosopher broadly defines a society as an open system of interdependent sectors: the domain of interpersonal relations, a range of specialised social sectors such as the economy, where relations are mediated by money, and politics, where relations are mediated by political representation, and a civil society that ensures the link between the sphere of interpersonal relations and the specialised sectors of the society. In this regard, Habermas emphasises the importance of communication and the production of an intersubjective lifeworld. By definition, transnational societies have no states, but I focus on migrant families, businesses, and organisations as proxies to analyse their different spheres and how they interact.
You write on page 7 of your introduction, that “to describe migratory transnationalism as a ‘transnational society’ may be perceived as a provocation.” Could you tell us more about this?
In the 1990s, scholars adopting a transnationalist approach developed a critique of the concept of society. They preferred to use terms such as network, social field, or social formation rather than “society”, the latter being fraught with “methodological nationalism,” i.e. conveying an image of social reality as bounded by state borders.
I reject this critique. Transnationalist scholarship (despite the efforts of some), ends up describing immigrant transnationalism as a free-floating process completely disconnected from non-migrant societies. I think we need to reconsider the concept of society itself rather than discard it altogether. And all the more so because there is no reason to think the notion is an outcome of methodological nationalism. The work of Pierre Clastres and other proponents of anarchist anthropology have shown that the idea of society can be approached without, or even against, the state.
My aim, therefore, is to revisit the concept of society and apply it to the study of transnational phenomena. In doing so, I hope to draw a continuum between migrant and non-migrant social processes and show how they intertwine and cross-feed with each other. At the core of this hypothesis, I posit that migrants are also non-migrants: they are also parents, workers, activists, believers, etc. who have to cope with social expectations both here (in the host country) and there (in the homeland). They are embedded in a complex and multi-scalar social environment. In this regard, immigrant transnationalism is nested within non-migrant societies.
What was your methodological approach to this work?
This book is not the outcome of a research programme with a single methodological framework. It draws on my “Habilitation à diriger des recherche”, a document that we in the French academic system have to produce if we want to be able to supervise PhD students. This Habilitation is a synthesis of past works and an outline of future research orientations. In this respect, this book reflects the methodological paths I have taken over the years: ethnographic investigations on various immigrant groups (Moroccans and Algerians in France, Indians and Poles in the United Kingdom, and others) and quantitative surveys focusing on transnational practices. Although I am a qualitative researcher myself, I believe that the combination of quantitative and qualitative research is key to advancing our understanding of transnational phenomena. This is particularly true for this book, whose aim is to outline a general theory of cross-border socialities. The comparison of different data sources and case studies from around the world is driven by the will to produce generalisable results.
You engage with concepts often used in other disciplines, such as “lifeworld” and “ecotone”. What do other fields of knowledge bring to your research and your approach to migration and the transnational society?
As mentioned above, my aim is to contribute to a debate in social theory about the becoming of society and state in a globalised world. But my work is posited on a critique of the dualism between the human and the environment, between the cogito and the res extensa. In this respect, the seminal work of Bruno Latour has had a strong influence on me. And I extend this critique to any approach that considers society as a market in which individuals make decisions to maximise their benefits and happiness. Mainstream notions such as interest, social capital (and its derivatives), or opportunity structures, are absent from my conceptual toolbox.
Instead, I use concepts that I have gathered over the course of my career, assembling them in a comprehensive puzzle. I have found Habermas’s theory of communicative action to be a powerful tool for explaining society building without falling into the trap of dualism. Understanding migrants as “plural humans” (in Bernard Lahire’s1 term) proves to be more appropriate than considering them as interest-driven actors. Ecotone and thanatic ethics are concepts borrowed from the lexicon of postcolonialism. I owe much to my decade-long collaboration with friends in postcolonial studies, and in particular to Judith Misrahi Bark. Behind the concepts used by scholars, there are often stories of encounters and friendships.
Young boy playing soccer in his neighbourhood.
Photo by Gorodenkoff for Shutterstock
This book is the first of a two-part project. Can you tell us something about the forthcoming title?
The second volume will focus on the transnational state. I argue that migration and diaspora policies in sending and receiving countries have led to an unprecedented transnationalisation of state structures. Receiving states externalise border controls to impede migrants from reaching their shores and, conversely, sending states seek to reach out to their expatriate nationals to encourage remittances or tame dissident groups.
But the forms that the transnational state takes are not arbitrary. I show that public authorities rely on the structures of transnational societies to control them: they reach out to migrant businesses to encourage their investment, to families to boost remittances, to associations to secure their allegiances. And Western states try to orient or constrain human flows of people by deploying their security apparatus on the ecotones produced by transnational circulations: borders, cities, islands, camps, etc. The transnational state adapts its power apparatus to the structures of transnational societies. Hence an isomorphism between them. I have written this book in two parts: one must understand how the transnational society works in order to understand the forms and dynamics of the transnational state.
Interview by Miriam Périer.
- 1. Lahire, Bernard. L’homme pluriel : les ressorts de l’action, Paris: Armand Colin, 2011.
