Abstract
Even though the word 'transnationalism' had been used since the 1970's in some scholars' research, the concept actually emerged during the 1980's. It has been quickly assimilated and appropriated by many disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, political sciences and other scholarships. The problem is that it has been used intensively, maybe too much, and often with some ambiguities at the end of the 20th century. Transnationalism thus, ran the risk of becoming an empty conceptual vessel. In the international migration research, the concept was introduced by an enterprising group of social anthropologists (Glick-Schiller, Basch, and Szanton Blanc) to refer to the "multi-stranded" activities created by immigrants across national borders. They presented the emergence of transnational social fields linking sending and destination countries as a rupture with the previous studies on international migration. Contrary to international phenomena that focus on the relations between states, transnationalism extends beyond them until encompassing them
