Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In this essay, I offer a more critical reading of the “moral perspective” based on an interpretation of Hegel’s views on morality and the modern subject. Although Hegel is notorious for his enthusiasm in the modern state, which is a strong system through and through, I suggest his view on morality alone allows for a non-systematic understanding of the “moral perspective.” The “moral perspective” is in this reading a moral settlement that pays respect for three kinds of subjective activity, freedom of insight, freedom of choice of pursuits, and ethical will. The need of such moral settlement is only evoked by actual encounters of particular wills when people actualize their internal ends in the external world.
One contemporary theory of transnational justice consistent with this critical reading of the “moral perspective” is Iris M. Young’s critical theory of communicative democracy. My reading of moral settlement agrees with her that our transnational causal connections engender moral obligations beyond national boundaries. But Young’s proposal of transnational institutions of justice also reveals the weakness of the “moral perspective” in transnational spheres. She, like most theories of transnational justice who see justice as the first virtue of political institutions, overlooks practicing justice is also one among the sources of our deepest conflicts. In addition to Bernard Yack’s and Judith Shklar’s accounts of our stubborn dispositions associated with justice or injustice, I use Hegel’s insight of the modern subject’s various pathologies while experiencing deep disagreements on justice to elaborate modern subjects’ inherent difficulty in practicing transnational justice. If Hegel’s views on morality and the modern subject are correct, by their understandings of their causal relations and moral responsibilities alone, modern subjects are incapable of achieving consensus on transnational justice through ordinary democratic processes.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper examines the challenges of creating and sustaining transnational solidarity within a coalition of transnational social movement networks. Specifically, this work will examine the internal dynamics of identity formation within transnational coalitions and the role of international governmental institutions in ratifying and or transforming identity claims of coalition participants.
These issues are examined in the context of a coalition of transnational non-governmental organizations (TNGOs) mobilizing at the European Union (EU) level many of whom were initiated through EU funds and most of whom continue to rely on EU program monies. In this sense contests play out on two interrelated sites, across TNGOs vying for voice and influence within their coalition and between individual TNGOs as they compete for recognition and resources from EU officials. This paper treats supranational institutions like the EU as a context which configures the dynamics of competition and conflict among groups vying for recognition and resources. Activist coalitions are conceptualized not only as sites where political identities and conceptions of justice are constituted (Hobson 2003) but also as arenas of unequal relations where organizations compete for legitimacy in a hierarchy of “legitimate” oppressions (Qunitero 2001; Cullen 2004).

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This essay explores the “transnational” as it informs the study of media and popular culture and the pursuit of Latina/o Studies. Too often the transnational is linked to other diasporas, especially the South East Asian diasporas, but as this essay suggests its theoretical and methodological apparatus can be fruitfully applied to understand Latina/o Studies but not without considering some Eurocentric dangers. Nonetheless the proposed move to transnationalism decenters the US as the sole destination of Latina/os.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper explores the transnational context of the city of San Antonio, a U.S. city with a majority Mexican origin population. It draws on case studies developed from extended interviews with Mexican immigrants, second- generation, and Mexican American residents of the city.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Most research attention in the field of immigration has been devoted understanding particular transnational practices, including shuttle migration, collective remittances and political involvement in multiple contexts. Yet these behaviors cannot be understood as inevitable consequences of social circumstances. People must learn transnational practices. With a sociological focus on the information that flows through different network channels, this paper studies how individuals are socialized to specific transnational practices, or to a general orientation towards transnationalism at all. This paper investigates how international students locate themselves socially and what the consequences are for the ways in which they are or are not socialized towards transnational practices. It also suggests a modification to existing theory—the Migration Prevalence Ratio—to enable it to serve as a mechanism connecting macro- and micro- level immigration processes, particularly with respect to how individuals gather social capital and learn transnational practices.