Wimmer and Schiller’s article offers very comprehensive information on approaching migrants historically. Indeed, migration can be seen as a disruptive force to the common assumption of the “isomorphisms between citizenry, sovereign, solidary group and nation”, not least when the migrants’ assimilation into their adopted nation and political allegiance might be in question. This crucially points to the insufficiency of taking political boundaries for granted as units of historical analysis, as the border are in many ways porous — in the case of migrants, it is penetrated by the migrants continued financial, familial and political attachment to the motherland. This is also reflected in my current research on the transnational dynamics underlying the Troubles where Irish communities overseas (Irish-American Catholics especially) remained very much concerned with sectarianism and violence in their distant homelands, and played crucial roles as both the influenced and influencers over the course of the conflict. Place of births or citizenships (could be summed up as political geography) were therefore far from absolute determinant factors of spheres or extent of influence and interaction which were swayed by a vast array of other matters ranging from ancestry and religion, to ideology and wealth. The research by van de Laar on port cities acts as an excellent empirical study that illustrates the merits of this standpoint. By placing Liverpool, Bremen, Rotterdam and Marseilles alongside each other, the essay exemplifies the notion of translocality — these port cities probably had more connection, or were more comparable with port cities elsewhere than inland cities in their immediacy. Importantly, port cities act as windows on a wider world, with the waterfront areas being zones of contact.
I find van de Vaar’s writing on the waterfront highly intriguing, as it introduces a spatial nuance which distinguishes between areas of port cities where particular transnational connections are felt to varying extents. Waterfronts in particular were perceived as more of a frontier than border, being an area of intense economic exchange as well as place of departure/arrival for migrants. At times it even acquired the reputation of being promiscuous enclaves, as “pools of corruption, with poverty, crime and alcoholism”. To me this makes for a rife field to combine transnational history and spatial history. Namely, would these specific contact zones “feel different” as one sees of steps into them — would there be certain visual marker, regulations or norms, or even other unique senses (noise of port labour, smell of the ocean/certain cargos, etc.) that mark out the waterfront to their contemporaries. Being from Shanghai, a city known for western concessions and territoriality in the modern era, I had particular echoes with such particularity of waterfront areas. Even until this day, whenever I wander onto the Bund (the heart of foreign concessions sitting right by River Huangpu), the sound of the cargo ships’ horns, the distinctively western style of buildings and the noise from sky bar parties on top of them (hosting primarily foreign customers) constantly remind me that this has once been, an arguably still is a contact zone where the east meets the west. Indeed for many Shanghainese, the Bund remains a place apart for both its familiarity and alienness to them — being only less than 10 kilometres from my home near Xujiahui, part of me somehow feels closer to Covent Garden than Xujiahui. One can extend this spatial scope, in fact, onto the broader study of migration, especially their physical presence in their destination. Would flags, attires, appearance or even accents mark their communities out as particular in the eyes of both locals and themselves? And how would this impact on their assimilation to their adopted societies and their sense of connection/separation from their distant homes? With transnational histories being particularly fond of playing the game scales, it would be potentially fruitful to combine the vast scope of detecting transnational ties with a microscopic perspective on how such dynamics were manifested on the ground through spatial media.