BUILDING DREAMS BACK “HOME”: Transnational urban spatialities of homes, land, and property

This chapter argues for analytical innovation in transnational urbanism in coming to grips with the varied ways transnationalism engenders the production of urban spaces in the Global South. I contribute by proffering a framework that expands the conceptual coverage of transnational urbanism and accounts for multi-scalar relationships. Attending to postcolonial provocations in urban theory, I develop this framework by drawing from urbanizing contexts in the Global South and by bringing together three overlapping scalar relationships that are particularly integral to postcolonial terrains: the urban; national; and transnational. Through this framework, I use various case studies to demonstrate how diasporic communities build their “dream homes” in their homelands and the ways in which the state and the market capitalize on these interrelationships through two spatial expressions of transnational entanglements: (1) transnational dimensions of urban development and (2) everyday production of transnational urban spaces. This form of transnational urban spatialities helps us understand aspects of contemporary urban development in the Global South, particularly those whose economies rely heavily on remittance monies sent by their overseas citizens.