The paradigm of transnationalism in both sociology and international relations often uses the metaphor of the state as a container. Containers have solid walls/borders/boundaries and are supposed to be relatively homogeneous inside. In this article we will first analyse the container image more thourougly: what it presupposes, what is hiddenly expected and what are the sideffects? The main attention is however paid to an alternative narrative, the state as a discursive spere or a field. Here the borders are not like the walls of containers but quite amorphous and fluctuating (i.a Pugh, 2009) but however help in differentiating from the outside (a distinction that is important in identity building) and somehow defining the inside, the core around what the field is structured in the given moment. Such approach has its origins in Bourdieu’s (1992) sociology and is somewhat reflected in the works of i.a. Habermas (1998, 2001) and Manea (2008) but needs further elaboration. The field approach enables us to conceptualise the state as a dynamic entity more in correspondence i.a. with the approach of Jessop (1990, 2008) and allowing for the inclusion of the more focused debates on politics (i.a. Mouffe 1993, 2000, Habermas 1998, 2001, Hay 2007) and governance (i.a. Peters, Pierre 2000, Dean 2007) or on statehood in more general sense (see Sorensen 2004). Sorensen’s framework serves to build a basis for a more sensitive approach distinguishing between various patterns of statehood in the contemporary world. Theoretical considerations are further discussed on the basis of empirical material collected in the EU DG-Research 7th framework programme “Transnationalisation, Migration and Transformation: Multi-Level Analysis of Migrant Transnationalism (Trans-Net)“ where the four examined cases of Estonian-Finnish German-Turkish, French-Moroccan and UK-Indian transnational spaces illustrate different patterns of statehood and governance.
