In public debate on immigrants' political ties with their country of origin, two assumptions prevail. The first assumption is that many immigrants engage in transnational political activities. The second is that forms of transnational citizenship are an impediment for the development of local citizenship. However, so far little research has been done on the importance of, and the relationship between, local and transnational citizenship. In this article, we focus on local and transnational forms of active citizenship, here understood as the total of political practices and processes of identification. Our study, conducted among middle-class immigrants in Rotterdam, indicates that the importance of active transnational citizenship should not be overstated. Among these middle-class immigrants, political practices are primarily focused on the local level; political practices directed to the home country appear to be quite rare. If we look at processes of identification, we see that a majority of the middle-class immigrants have a strong urban identity. Many of them combine this local identification with feelings of belonging with people in their home country. These local and transnational identifications seem to reinforce, rather than impede, each other.

Since the 1980s, there has been a rise of managers and executives in public domains. Especially in domains like education, this development was accompanied by sharp controversies and 'clashes' between managers and professionals, who would be 'alienated' from each other. The classic nature of professional and managerial loyalties would seem to strengthen this alienation. Professionals would primarily be loyal to their profession, whereas managerial loyalties would mainly focus on organisations. Although research has criticized the one-sidedness of professional loyalty, managerial loyalty has hardly been studied up till now. In this article, managerial loyalties are analyzed theoretically as well as empirically. The article rests upon a qualitative study among school leaders in Dutch secondary education. It shows that management reforms in education did not result in the adoption of a new, primary loyalty to organizations, management or performance by school leaders. Instead, long-standing relations, for example with teachers, remain meaningful, also because most school leaders have a professional background as teacher. Consequently, assumptions about managers who alienate from professionals, and managers who do not value their relationships with professionals must be criticized, at least in (secondary) education.