Transforming and Updating Transnational Imaginaries

In Chapter 6, the notions of chronotopization and rechronotopization are introduced in order to discuss the dynamicity of chronotopic images in terms of how they are constructed, updated, and transformed. These notions are first applied to analyze how migrants and non-migrants (re)imagine one another’s lives in two geographically distant time-spaces, especially when they receive new information via technology that allows them to update these images. In this section, the notion of chronotopic resolution is also introduced, which allows for a discussion of how a lower level of semiotic and ethnographic detail associated with chronotopic images of the homeland, can lead to migrants feeling disconnected from the place they left behind, even as they engage it through technology. The chapter then shifts to examine cases in which migrants seek rechronotopization, i.e., those cases in which they try to transform the images that are held of them, or of the community of which they are a part (e.g., images of ‘Muslims’), by those in both the host and home countries. The limited nature of particular rechronotopizations is discussed through data from participants and in dialogue with the notion of ‘intersectionality’ and critical discussions on race in the United States.