Semi-Cosmopolitan Transnational Students: The Identity Work of Transnational Students at an Elite Dominican School

The Dominican Republic has a substantial history of transnational movement to the US that affects more than one generation of transnationals, whose lives, as described by Smith (1994), are ‘neither “here” nor “there” but at one both “here” and “there”’(p. 17). While the Dominican transnational narrative has often been described as transnationalism from below (Smith and Guarnizo, 1998), the following case studies of transnational, but relatively privileged, youth require rethinking that framework. Participants describe a semi-cosmopolitan identity that has been shaped by their comparative experiences in more than one locale.