Suchergebnisse

AbstractOver the past two decades, interest in the transnational lifestyles of contemporary migrants has grown significantly. In this article, we focus not on transnational identities, processes or structures, but rather on the emergent literature on transnational families in the context of migration to the United States. Transnational family studies broadly fall into two thematic camps: 1) those that describe transnational households as cooperative units in the face of economic, political and legal constraint and 2) those that show how the conditions that lead family members to live apart exacerbate and create new sources of conflict within families. Whether highlighting family conflict or cooperation, contemporary transnational family studies differ theoretically from prior research on immigrant families. Instead of focusing on immigrant incorporation, this literature demonstrates how global structures of inequality at the macro‐level affect the everyday lives of transnational family members, as well as how individual action reproduces or challenges these broader social inequalities.

"This paper focuses on children of Bangladeshi heritage who are born in London and are mobile between the (trans) localities of East London and their ancestral home land of Sylhet (a district of Bangladesh). 'Being there' in Sylhet is intimately related to children's membership of transnational families and most of them recorded 'being there' on two occasions by the age of 11. The paper demonstrates that while there has been considerable attention on South Asian first and second generation transnationalism, comprising a focus on marital strategies, remittances, cultural productions and roots tourism, little is known about young children's transnational experiences or practices. The omission of children in part reflects a broader trend, wherein children until recently have been marginal in migration research, but more specifically stems from an emphasis on socialization. Hence South Asian children are constructed as passive members of transnational families. In this paper, I draw from a broader literature that highlights transnational ways of being to involve gendered labour which includes emotions and, I argue, this is necessary to locate children as active agents in the context of familial transnationalism." (author's abstract)

This article is based on ethnographic research among southern Lebanese in Dearborn, Michigan, in the aftermath of the 2006 war in Lebanon. It focuses on the significance of family and gender in the intensification of long-distance nationalism among Lebanese in diaspora. The war inspired a sense of belonging to a transnational Lebanese family under siege. This naturalized the practice of "comfort mothering," which met the emotive needs of a diaspora engaged from a distance with a war in the homeland. The paper explores how concepts and practices of belonging to a transnational "Arab family" placed a double duty on women activists in official Arab American public politics. Engagements with normative concepts of belonging to an "American family" entailed a gendered strategy of resistance in which Arab American official politics deployed women's narratives to humanize the Lebanese in the face of a "war on terror" discourse that conflated Lebanese Shi'ite masculinity with Hizballah and terrorism. This essay aims to expand theories on the intersections between gender and nation in light of transnational experiences of war. It also questions the expansiveness of intersectionality in light of a collective experience of military invasion in which the urgency of war overdetermines the significance of other forms of oppression, including gender oppression.

AbstractThis introduction to a special issue of the journal explores not only the role of memory and narratives in understanding gender and transnational families, but suggests how such families use and understand their memories to construct coherent narratives of the self and kin. In common with renewed thinking about the multifaceted nature of migration, the complexities of the process, and the continuing dialogue that migration establishes between the old and the new, the past and the present, those who engage with oral history/life story methods are increasingly aware that such data provide a 'value added' to rich empirical detail. These methods reveal the use of memory and its role in the continuing emotional adjustments in which most transnational experience is embroiled. They show how the multi‐layering of memory, language and narratives are indicators of the ways in which culture shapes recall and recounting. Families themselves become sites of belonging, part of the imaginary unity through which a transnational family may seek its identity. Equally, oral histories can tease out ways in which gender differences impact on, or are impacted by, transnational lives. The introduction situates the subsequent articles within a brief overview of oral history and migration.

This paper provides a descriptive and comparative analysis of transnational families with members located in Africa and Europe. It is thus far the only quantitative study, to our knowledge, that includes cross-country comparisons and focuses on the African European context. By comparing both countries of origin and destination, differences in family arrangements are found among Ghana, Senegal, and the Democratic Republic of Congo as well as within these groups depending on the European destination countries. Findings show that dates of arrival and migrant legal status are most commonly associated with transnational family forms. Family and gender norms at origin, migration motivations, destination country family reunification and migration policies, and destination country characteristics related to language, employment opportunities, and educational system help to explain the differences found.

Migration is one of the social processes that have influenced and are still deeply influencing current Romanian society, given that millions of Romanian citizens have relatives who had longer or shorter migration projects. Migration leads to socio-economic and cultural changes, which cause temporary or permanent changes in the human reality, the way of life and the personality of those who leave, but also of those who remain at home. Certainly, migration affects, first of all, the family, changing both its structure and functionality. The temporarily disintegrated family has become one of the forms towards which the evolution of the family is moving, raising a multitude of problems aimed at a new lifestyle and interaction, new demands in the line of adjustment and accommodation both within and outside the family. The phenomenon of emigration in order to find a workplace affects both the family, as a social nucleus, and the individual as part of the family structure. Migration has a major impact on the relationship between spouses, on the parent-child relationship, on parental behavior, on destiny, in general. Although the family remains central to the existence of individuals in a transnational situation, its cohesion is not self-evident; it becomes a problem of community integration. Following the way in which the perspective on the family has changed in the context of migration, the study aims to identify and analyze the most important transnational practices through which family cohesion was maintained in the case of Romanian migration. To better understand this process of maintaining transnational family cohesion, we use an analytical model in four dimensions (social, positional, cultural and identity).

Introduction. "The Family is a Little Society" -- State, family, and solidarity in the Nicaraguan nation -- Locked up and waiting -- Single mothers and absent fathers -- Reconfiguring relationships across borders -- Mamitas: Grandmothering in transnational families -- "I eat all my money here": Remittances in transnational family life -- Returns and reunions.

Migration research in Southern Africa has paid little attention to migrant men's involvement in the family, including their emotional and cognitive work, as well as associated gender transformations. Based on a qualitative study of six Zimbabwean migrant fathers in Johannesburg and three non-migrant women in Zimbabwe, this article argues that transnational migration at once presents opportunities for and obstacles to the reconstitution of gender-normative forms of parental involvement in migrant families. The analysis of the narratives of migrant men and their spouses demonstrates that, although maternal and paternal roles may become considerably indistinct in the context of transnational separations, non-migrant women may emphasize gender-normative expectations in their negotiations with distant fathers when faced with huge responsibilities at home. Such negotiations tend to reinforce gender-normative parenting in transnational split families. (author's abstract)

AbstractIn this article, I use the analytical framework of 'displaying family relationships' to explore the transnational grandparenting practices of Romanian families. I discuss the theoretical aspects of the concept of displaying with regard to its scope, specificity and manifestation. I emphasize the uniqueness of each instance of displaying, while also revealing the various patterns through which family‐related motivations trigger individual behaviour. Highlighting the intersections between such internal motivations and displaying behaviour, the research underlines the various challenges that transnational grandparents encounter, and the ways in which they react to them.

This study explored how Mexican transnational families maintain intergenerational relationships, using five of the dimensions of the intergenerational solidarity framework. Interview data from 13 adult migrant children who lived in the U.S. and their parents who lived in Mexico were analyzed. Structural solidarity was challenged by great distance between families. Families maintained associational solidarity by making contact frequently, though visiting was often restricted by lack of documentation. Functional solidarity was expressed through financial support to parents. This involved remittances sent to parents. However, it should be noted that it was often migrants' siblings in Mexico who managed these remittances. Affectual solidarity was expressed through statements of love and concern for one another. Normative solidarity and consensual solidarity reflected the value of familismo through financial support and the desire to live together. Several dimensions of intergenerational solidarity are interconnected. This study provides evidence for the relevance of the intergenerational solidarity framework in transnational families and suggests that geographic context is relevant when studying intergenerational relationships.