Defining and measuring transnational social structures

Abstract

Transnational social fields and transnational social spaces are often used interchangeably to describe and analyze emergent structures of cross-border formations. In this article, we suggest measuring two key aspects of these social structures: embeddedness and span of migrants' personal networks. While clustered graphs allow assessing transnational embeddedness, the standardized diversity index can be used to show variation in the number of countries reported in personal networks. The measures will be exemplified with the data collected in Barcelona from three groups (Chinese, Sikh, and Filipino, N = 25 in each group, 30 alters by ego)