FROM IMMIGRANT TO TRANSMIGRANT - THEORIZING TRANSNATIONAL MIGRATION

Contemporary immigrants can not be characterized as the ''uprooted.'' Many are transmigrants, becoming firmly rooted in their new country bu t maintaining multiple linkages to their homeland. In the United State s anthropologists are engaged in building a transnational anthropology and rethinking their data on immigration. Migration proves to be an i mportant transnational process that reflects and contributes to the cu rrent political configurations of the emerging global economy. In this article we use our studies of migration from St. Vincent, Grenada, th e Philippines, and Haiti to the U.S. to delineate some of the paramete rs of an ethnography of transnational migration and explore the reason s for and the implications of transnational migrations. We conclude th at the transnational connections of immigrants provide a subtext of th e public debates in the U.S. about the merits of immigration.