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figure 1. The transnational continuum/apex
Source: Harry Goulbourne.  
Second, transnational communities may be said to nearly always exist in transitory forms for sizeable communities and, if over considerable time, as discrete, elitist entities through the institution of the family. Thus, powerful banking families, such as the Rothschilds, have been able to keep their identities across nation State boundaries and thereby present something of a community over time and space. The same may be observed of some royal and aristocratic families from feudal times to the present. This kind of discrete transnationality may be said to be on the increase as wealth accumulates and accrues to small minorities whose global mobility has few constraints. Transnational communities composed of less wealthy families are, however, likely to last for fewer generations as the tendency for families to fracture over time and space comes into effect. Such folk have fewer agglutinating factors to keep them together; they lack the need to protect wealth, and they do not have the memory of loss. The power of nostalgia is too temporary to abide the ravages of time and space.