Extensions of Transnational Death

Death is traditionally perceived as a "rooting" phenomenon, connecting dying with communities and creating continuities in time and place.What happens when connections with places, communities, and histories marked by "roots" are affected by migration, conflict, revolution, war, and border shifts -all developments that are increasingly common in today's world?Transnational Death meritoriously delves into death-related processes in this era of mobilities and transnational connections.Although several of this collection's articles are written on death-related themes in other trans/national environments, it opens a fresh and under-researched field of ethnological studies in the Finnish context."We have come here to live, not to die," said one person involved in a migrant's funeral I attended at the beginning of the 2000s (see Davydova 2005).In societal discussion and research, migration is understood as a future-oriented project, but death inevitably comes in everyone's life, posing existential and practical challenges for the dying, their family members, and communities and societal institutions.The transnational perspective sheds light on negotiations of identities, obligations, rituals, practicalities, and memories that aim to reconcile more than one affiliation with home/land(s) and communities.The introductory essay by Samira Saramo aims to make "transnational death familiar," providing the reader with a survey of the previous research on the topic.She refers to the special issue of the Journal of Intercultural Studies, edited by Alistair Hunter and Eva Soom Ammann (2016), who state that "the end of life is a critical juncture in migration and settlement processes, precipitating novel intercultural negotiations."The author lists some avenues of research on the entanglement of death with migration: migration as a process that increases the risk of death; transnational community building in confronting death; the emotional weight of transnational death; death in transnational communication; and the commemoration of transnational death.The book focuses on three main themes: the effects of transnational death on families, communities, and commemorations

Political science · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · Middle East Politics and Society