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Transnational Families: Imagined and Real Communities
... However, it is not a radically decentred and fluid identity, but the one that is connected to transnational subjectivities, a 'trajectory that combines living in different places, and makes mobility a historical trajectory of one's own, always connecting to where one is located but simultaneously keeping oneself solidly anchored in one's own story and oneself' (Vuorela 2009: 170). Family connection can be central to emotionally and physically comfort ageing during migration (McDonald 2011) but may also be a source of tension and increase women's burden of care and gendered inequalities (Parrenas 2001;Vuorela 2002;Baldassar 2007). ...
... Through the club, they develop their relatedness to Finland as their home, but at the same time retain their sense of belonging to their place of origin, the social world it implied, and where they had lived most of their adult lives. In transnational anthropology research, this is often referred to as multi-sited presence and transnational identity that enable sense of having more than one home, metaphorical and actual, and on different sides of the border (Davydova 2009;Huttunen 2002;Vuorela 2002). Soviet workplace identity is part of such transnational identity. ...
... Another aspect of such collective identities is channelled through transnational families, whose members maintain family ties despite seemingly separated national borders (Baldassar 2007;Vuorela 2002). For some women, the logic of maintaining a family as an extended kinship configuration in many ways resides in their socialist lives as well. ...
Combining insights from transnational anthropology, anthropology of postsocialism, and the narrating identity approach in cultural gerontology, this paper investigates how Russian-speaking migrant women living in Finland account for their ageing. It is based on ethnographic fieldwork in an urban-based club for Russian-speaking seniors, including written and oral life stories. The research shows that Russian-speaking women have a very strong sense of collective identity that is anchored in master stories of (post) socialism, their transnational life trajectories, and families. First, women’s active participation in the club for seniors generates a site of collective identity, which draws on a shared cultural and linguistic background. Their communal workplace identities continue to nourish their ageing in Finland and their participation in the club. Second, women’s family positions, in particular as mothers and grandmothers, specifically in transnational families, forms another type of collective, which defines their ageing. Third, in response to migration, women also construct a transnational collective identity, which manifests in the ways they emphasize their relatedness to both Russia and Finland through their family histories. At the same time, ageing is an intensely individual process, and the paper explores how transnational seniors experience their ageing individually yet in dialogue with these collective identities. These findings call for more recognition of transnational and collective-based accounts of ageing to extend the framework of cultural gerontology.
https://rdcu.be/b4pkB
... Los integrantes de estas familias no sólo están dispersos en diversos países, sino que tienen distintas (o múltiples) lealtades y pertenencias (legales y afectivas). Bryceson y Vuorela (2002) sostienen incluso que una de las características de las familias transnacionales es la des-localización, ya que estas son fundamentalmente relacionales y sus actitudes hacia el lugar son cambiantes. ...
... Sin embargo, es importante recalcar que la familia transnacional no es un campo neutro y muchas veces reproduce las desigualdades generacionales y jerarquías de género que existen en la familia. Estos hogares proveen una fuente de identidad al tiempo que están sujetos a las inequidades existentes en su interior (Bryceson y Vuorela 2002, Hondagneu-Sotelo y Ávila 2003. Por ejemplo, en el estudio de Mahler (2001) sobre la comunicación entre salvadoreños en Nueva York y sus esposas en el país de origen, identifica que las cartas y llamadas muchas veces revelan el control de los varones migrantes sobre las remesas y los juegos de poder en relación a sus parejas. ...
... También Vuorela (2002) se basa en la idea de las "comunidades imaginadas" desarrollada por Benedict Anderson para hablar de las familias transnacionales. Para ella, narrativa e imaginario han construido un sentido de comunidad que es a la vez imaginado y materializado a través de varias prácticas. ...
... They are formed in the pursuit of educational advance, adventure or romance. Some come from families that have been dispersed abroad over generations due to peripatetic professions, overseas military service or diasporas of an ethnic or colonial nature (Bianchera et al., 2019;Vuorela 2002;Olwig 2007). ...
... Such real and imagined feelings of common identity and mutual obligation are quintessential to transnational familyhood. How transnational family members organise their productive and reproductive activities to retain contact and caring relationships is key to the welfare and development of members and the perpetuation of the transnational family unit (Vuorela 2002). ...
Over the past two decades, globalisation has propelled millions of economic migrants from poor sending-nations to seek employment in economically better-off receiving-nations, often establishing new offshoot family formation, notwithstanding national migration policies trending towards tightening border controls. State policies on border crossing and circular migration shape and frequently impinge on the development aspirations, welfare-creation strategies and ways and means of provisioning family life cycle care needs. In the process, transnational families often make material sacrifices and contend with emotional tensions between migrant parents or spouses and their stay-behind family members. Conversely state policies, which do not take family aspirations into account in migration decision-making, are unlikely to effectively meet their intended objectives. © 2019
... The particular situation of the study's multicultural individuals has not been explored in the same ways as compared to numerous studies that examine transnational families with regard to care relations, matters of belonging and identities or with regard to socio-economic issues (see for instanceCharsley, 2012, Friedman & Schultermandl, 2011, Trask, 2010Goulbourne et al., 2010, Bryceson & Vuorela, 2002Baldassar, 2001;Beck-Gernsheim, 2007). Recently, other studies have demonstrated an interest in children's perspectives of transnational family lifestyles and attempt to bridge the gulf between the focus on disadvantaged migrant children that tends to discuss their welfare, education and livelihoods as affected by mobility, and the study of cross-cultural experiences and intrinsic processes of comparatively privileged, so-called third culture kids (TCK) (see for instanceKorpela, 2014;Tanu, 2011, Trabka, 2013[online];Lulle & Assmuth, 2013;Fechter, 2008Fechter, , 2014Pollock & Van Reken, 2001;Dewaele & van Oudenhoven, 2009). ...
... The anthropologists Bryceson and Vuorela discuss " relativising " with an explicit emphasis on the relationships of transnational families within European societies in a time of spatial mobility and historical changes (Bryceson & Vuorela, 2002: 14). They define relativising as " the variety of ways individuals establish, maintain or curtail relational ties with specific family members " (Bryceson and Vuorela, 2002: 14). It describes the family's relationship with others in specific sites and entails the construction and continual revision of one's roles and family identity throughout the individual's life cycle (Bryceson & Vuorela, 2002: 15). ...
The article-based doctoral dissertation deals with adult individuals in Western societies who were born into multilingual and multicultural families and have parents of different nationalities. The study’s participants grew up outside their parents’ countries of origin and relate to a multitude of bonds that link them across various cultures, languages and places.
Multilingualism and an identification with diverse countries and cultures contradict the political system of nation states. The social dimension of cultural identities affects both the study participants’ identification with their multiple attachments and language use in everyday life. The study examines diverse approaches that enable the participants to create notions of belonging and identification despite possessing at times contradictory transnational allegiances.
The findings of the study show that the participants consider themselves in terms of being a mixture with multiple and yet distinct bonds. These bonds relate to their family backgrounds, their knowledge of multiple languages and their early acquaintance of different cultural systems, which frequently is accompanied by a specific disposition for starting multicultural families in their adult lives.
A sense of otherness is another prominent feature in the self-representation of multicultural individuals as well as a significant aspect in their social relationships. A sense of cultural otherness is not necessarily a sign of social marginalization or a negative feeling. Rather, the experience of otherness makes it possible for individuals to sense belonging to multiple cultures, languages and nations at the same time. Hence, notions of otherness and difference constitute a social and cultural resource in terms of creating a sense of communality, and is crucial for accepting cultural otherness in society.
The author suggests that the study’s participants develop a sense of multicultural belonging that is inextricably connected to an association with multiple languages, cultures and places. Multicultural belonging is a flexible process, relational and depends on the context, social relationships and locations. The study proposes that multicultural belonging creates a tolerant and open-minded understanding of membership that transcend national borders. Personal experiences of mixedness and otherness contribute to promote social integration and diminish notions of nationalism.
The reflexive ethnography offers new perspectives on transnational belonging and makes a timely contribution to discussions in the fields of cultural heritage studies, ethnology and transnational studies.
Monikulttuurinen osallisuuden tunne lisää suvaitsevaisuutta
Monikulttuurinen, monikielinen ja monikansallinen perhetausta vähentää nationalistista ajattelua, toteaa Turun yliopistossa väittelevä Viktorija Čeginskas.
Monikulttuurinen perhetausta liittää yksilön monin sitein eri kulttuureihin, kieliin, maihin ja paikkoihin edistäen kulttuureista, kielistä tai kansallisista rajoista riippumatonta osallisuuden tunnetta.
Čeginskas toteaa väitöstutkimuksessaan, että yksilön itsessään tunnistama ”kulttuurinen toiseus” on tärkein itsetuntemuksen merkki. Se on samalla avain erilaisuuden hyväksymiselle. Toiseutta käytetään välineenä luotaessa yhteisöllisyyttä muiden kanssa.
Kulttuurinen toiseus ei kuitenkaan tarkoita sosiaalista eristäytyneisyyttä tai negatiivista tunnetta. Enemminkin se on merkki siitä, että yksilö voi tuntea ristiriidattomasti yhteenkuuluvaisuutta useisiin kieliin, kansallisuuksiin ja kulttuureihin. Tämä taas vähentää nationalistista ajattelua, koska henkilö liikkuu vaivatta useilla kulttuurisilla, kielellisillä ja alueellisilla rajapinnoilla, Čeginskas painottaa.
Monikulttuurinen osallisuuden tunne edistää Čeginskasin mukaan suvaitsevaisuutta painottavaa sosiaalista integraatiota. Siinä yksilö hyväksyy erilaisuuden, koska hän kykenee oman taustansa pohjalta näkemään kielellisten, kulttuuristen ja kansallisten rajojen taakse.
Yksilön monikielisyys ja samastuminen samanaikaisesti useisiin kulttuureihin ja kansallisuuksiin on Čeginskasin mukaan ristiriidassa kansallisvaltioiden poliittisten periaatteiden kanssa.
Monikulttuuriset yksilöt huomaavat erilaisuutensa arjessaan. Tunne toiseudesta syvenee sosiaalisissa tilanteissa, Čeginskas sanoo.
Temaattisiin syvähaastatteluihin perustuvassa artikkeliväitöskirjassaan Čeginskas tutkii, miten monikulttuurisen elämäntapansa kokevat ja määrittävät aikuiset, jotka ovat kasvaneet monikulttuurisessa perheessä ja maassa, joka ei ole heidän kummankaan vanhempansa synnyinmaa.
... It takes place between (multilocal) or beyond (translocal) 29 various locations, some of which are, or are considered to be transnational. 30 Rather than speaking in terms of 'transnational social fields' (Basch, Glick-Schiller and Szanton 1994: 352), 'transnational social spaces' (Faist 1998;Pries 1999: 219; Levitt and Glick-Schiller 2004) or 'imagined communities' (Vuorela 2002), it is more heuristic to produce a precise breakdown of the different levels of meanings employed in the discourse and practices and to add to the concept of 'social space' 31 with the concepts of physical -in some cases transnational -, cultural, symbolic, cosmological or imaginary spaces (including legal and national definitions). ...
... We are therefore witnessing its extension, intensification, diversification and 'inversion'. School migration, and later in the context of higher studies, from Africa to Europe (with comings and goings) has been historically true for the colonial and post-colonial elite (Bourgouin 2011;Vuorela 2002 for the Indian population). ...
Migration across multiple borders is a defining feature of the time in which we live, and children are central to this contemporary migration phenomenon. A core aim of this volume is to contribute at an empirical level to knowledge about the intersection between children, migration, and mobilities by highlighting under-researched child and youth short-term and micro movements within major migration fluxes that occur in response to migration and global change. This collection positions this complex mobility-in-migration within individual, intergenerational, and collective migratory lifespan trajectories. Drawing together empirical research from around the globe, we see how in the lives of children and young people, migration and mobility intersect so that migration is not an end state but rather is one form of movement in lives characterized by multiple journeys, short, circular or seasonal migrations, and holiday and pleasure mobilities that are dynamic and often ongoing into the future. However, left-behind children of transnational migrant parents experience physical immobility/imaginative mobility in circumstances in which restrictive migratory regimes in the receiving country make family reunification extremely difficult. Chapters use multi-sited and/or multi-temporal and virtual methodologies as researchers follow their research subjects over time and space.
http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/child-and-youth-migration-angela-veale/?K=9781137280664
... The main goal of this paper, therefore, is to explore the gendered effect of labour migration on Ukrainian transnational families as imagined communities (Vuorela, 2002), highlighting the actors' point of view as "a unique, and often the only, way to access migrant experience, sensitivities and identities" (DeRoche, 1996, cited by Chamberlain and Leydesdorff, 2004: 228). The paper focuses on gender implications of migration for motherhood and, more broadly, for the institution of transnational parenthood in Ukraine. ...
... The scholarship on transnational parenthood has witnessed an increasing recognition of the importance of ICT as an essential element of transnational familial relations. This scholarship emphasizes technology's positive role in maintaining connected relationships, and even virtual intimacies (Wilding, 2006) in transnational families, seen from this perspective as social constructions or imagined communities (Vuorela, 2002). It is argued that ICT and low prices "had spurred a burst of activity" in transnational families because "many have cell phones, phone cards, Internet access, Web-cams and carry out international conversations routinely" (LARG, 2005: 17). ...
How do transnational families create strategies to reconcile work abroad and family life at home across borders? How is trans-border care-giving reconfigured within transnational family space? What are the gender effects of migrancy on the institution of parenthood? These are the questions examined in the current paper on the Ukrainian transnational family and parenthood, a still under-documented phenomenon in Ukrainian scholarship. The main argument of the paper is that changes in gender roles encouraged by migration primarily affect mothers, who assume the roles of bread-winners and providers. This expands their family obligations and perpetuates roles of "pseudo-moms" exposed to multiple exploitations, including exploitation by Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), but does not entail their empowerment. At the same time, changes in the gender roles of fathers are only temporary, and do not entail tangible transformations in the institution of fatherhood in Ukraine. However, this experience may have an effect in the long-run, provided it attracts closer public attention and affects the awareness of the society about the role, status and responsibilities of men to their family and children.
... As she highlights, traditional forms of unpaid family care have been undermined by economic and social change. Social networks based on kinship have fragmented 'and even become transnational' (Vuorela, 2002). The rise in women's employment has fundamentally changed the division of labour between the sexes, and challenged the notion of a pool of labour freely available to provide unpaid care and support. ...
... Monelle monikulttuuriselle nuorelle perhe ei ole ainoastaan fyysinen koti, sillä heidän perhe-ja sukulaissuhteensa voivat levittyä ylirajaisesti paitsi entiseen kotimaahan, myös muualle maailmaan. Kokemus jäsenyydestä perheessä ei välttämättä edellytä yhdessä asumista tai fyysistä läheisyyttä (Vuorela 2002). Valtioiden rajojen yli ulottuvat perheverkostot ja niiden jäsenilleen asettamat odotukset voivat muokata voimakkaasti nuorten kokemuksia Suomessa (Hautaniemi 2004, 53-54), ja toisaalta niillä voi olla myös symbolisempi merkitys nuorten elämänkulun rakentumisessa (Honkatukia & Suurpää 2007, 71). ...
Dimensions of Exclusion Discourse among Young School Drop-Outs and Their Tutors
In modern society, there is great concern about children and young people who are in danger of social exclusion. Special attention has been paid to school drop-outs, who are left without a student place after comprehensive school, or who interrupt their second-degree studies. However, in many cases, the young people whom adults consider excluded and being in need of urgent help, do not experience their situation in such a way. On the other hand, the problems of young people are very concrete and can have far-reaching effects. There are several problems related to the concept of exclusion, such as its strong normative and discursive nature that enables the government to impose control upon people who are labelled as excluded. The article studies the views of young people
without a student place in any degree institute, and of their tutors, on being dropped out school. It concentrates specifically on defining the underlying problems of being dropped out, and on views related to tutoring and support. The reference material consists of theme interviews among young people and their tutors.
Keywords: exclusion, dropping out of school, tutoring
... This may raise questions about the relationships between transnational families and the nation state as well as the difference in political and cultural identities between the first and second generations of the transnational families. The concept of family may be viewed as 'real' for some members but as 'imagined' (community) for others of the same transnational family (Vuorela, 2002). To delineate how the crisscross and clash of cultural values and political identities within contemporary European transnational (migrant) families, the term 'frontiering' was proposed to illustrate the confrontation between genders, generations and individuals within the families; while the term 'relativizing' was suggested to refer to the variety of ways individuals establish, maintain or curtail relational ties with specific family members and local networks. ...
... The promise of Bryceson and Vuorela's (2002, p. 6) introduction to an edited volume on "family diasporas" and global networks on these terms is arguably offset by a predominant focus in subsequent chapters on dyadic connections between migrants and their families back home. Vuorela's (2002) historically situated account of a "multi-sited", East African Asian family proved a particular exception to this rule. The strength of her case study, however, is countered by a limited focus on a longstanding personal friendship with a university lecturer and the latter's extended family. ...
Studies of transnational families tend to filter understandings of mobility and stasis through a bi-national framework that juxtaposes the movement of migrants across international borders with the immobility of in-place kin within equally static national spaces. This article examines the concept-metaphors of mobility and stasis through the eyes of later-life (over 50 year-old) Western migrants living in Penang, Malaysia and Bali, Indonesia. By treating “in-place” kin as mobile subjects I examine the extent to which the movement of individuals and families within and across a range of national borders affects the lives, concerns and movements of these older, Western migrants and retirees in Southeast Asia. By examining the concept-metaphors from the perspective of these migrants I illustrate the extent to which such people both succumb to yet exceed scholarly imaginings of im/mobility and juxtapositions between mobile selves and immobile others. Migrant thinking about these concept-metaphors, I suggest, complicates an ongoing tendency within the field of transnational family studies to view mobility and stasis as categorical opposites and offers fresh insights into the role and relevance of these concept-metaphors in the lives of Western migrants in Southeast Asia and their transnational relations with teenage and adult children, ageing parents and grandchildren.
... Sel põhjusel võib peresid nimetada kujuteldavateks, nagu Benedict Anderson (1983) nimetab riiki kujuteldavaks: siin ei pea tingimata kõiki tundma, et olla kokkukuuluvusest teadlikud. (Vuorela 2002.) John Gillise järgi on kõigil kujutlustest, müütidest ja rituaalidest koosnev käsitus kujuteldavast ideaalperest (families we live by), samuti perest, kellega koos tahes või tahtmata tegelikult elatakse (families we live with) (Gillis 1996 tsit Smart 2007: 51;Smart 2011: 541). ...
Since the 1990s there has been a notable increase in family history research and genealogy in many countries. The development and popularity of information and social networking technology has substantially contributed to this boom in family history. Numerous associations, museums, archives, memorials, the media and online projects are actively participating in the collection of family history and migrant memories, to preserve this increasingly transnational heritage for future generations. It has also resulted in a growing interest to search one’s ancestral roots in “the old home country”, to search for family members who have migrated to other parts of the world, or to share one’s own memories of migration with others. In this article the author focuses on Finnish migrants in Australia and their family history activities. Australia as “a nation of migrants“ actively supports its people to engage in family history research and publicly share their experiences of migration with others in many ways as part of its multicultural policy.
... Monelle monikulttuuriselle nuorelle perhe ei ole ainoastaan fyysinen koti, sillä heidän perhe-ja sukulaissuhteensa voivat levittyä ylirajaisesti paitsi entiseen kotimaahan, myös muualle maailmaan. Kokemus jäsenyydestä perheessä ei välttämättä edellytä yhdessä asumista tai fyysistä läheisyyttä (Vuorela 2002). Valtioiden rajojen yli ulottuvat perheverkostot ja niiden jäsenilleen asettamat odotukset voivat muokata voimakkaasti nuorten kokemuksia Suomessa (Hautaniemi 2004, 53-54), ja toisaalta niillä voi olla myös symbolisempi merkitys nuorten elämänkulun rakentumisessa (Honkatukia & Suurpää 2007, 71). ...
See the publication here: https://tietoanuorista.fi/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/elinolot-2010.pdf
... The study of transnational families is an emerging topic that specifically centers on the exploration of the interrelationships among family members that live in different geographical locations. The adjustment of migrant families to the receiving nation states; their links with the homeland and the family still living there; their concepts of belonging and their national identity; as well as how this relates to globalization process are among the main interests of the emerging field of transnational families (Vuorela, 2002). The study of motherhood from transnational viewpoints focuses on the separation of mothers from their children, the process of reunification, the substitutes in the mothering role, and the ways in which mothers keep fulfilling the emotional and material needs of their children. ...
... Weaving the social fabric is thus becoming a complex, deterritorialised process, and socialisation as the learning of cultural norms and the building of a lived world (Dubar 2000) is gradually released from its territorial anchoring. As I further argue, transnational families are the exemplary social matrix generating new patterns of socialisation, due to the fact that intergenerational exchanges, the transmission of values and the inculcation of social habitus increasingly tend to take place within deterritorialised contexts (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2003;Nedelcu 2009b;Vuorela 2002; see also Bacigalupe and Cámara, this issue). The Internet, and in particular its visio functionalities such as Skype, MSN etc., widely contribute to this process, providing social actors with effective tools with which to intervene and adapt to the ongoing cosmopolitanisation of everyday life (Beck 2008). ...
This article puts forward a cosmopolitan reading of international migration, focusing on the role played by ICTs in generating new ways of living together and acting transnationally in the digital era. After underlining some of the complex dimensions of the transnational debate and the limits of methodological nationalism, I will argue that revisiting the national–transnational nexus by adopting an ‘inclusive cosmopolitan’ stance would lead to a better understanding of the dialogically ubiquitous condition of the modern migrant. An analysis of Internet use by Romanian professionals in Toronto and their transnational families will shed light on the mechanisms through which ICTs produce connected lifestyles, enhance the capacity to harness otherness, and facilitate socialisation beyond borders, thus generating new transnational habitus.
... Despite the growing body of literature that seeks to question the simple categorization of people either as the former or the latter (e.g. Faist 2000;Eastmond 2006aEastmond , 2006bStefansson 2006;Ong 1999;Vuorela 2002), there is a tendency to conceptualize 'those on the move' and 'those staying put' as distinct categories of people. In this article I will examine the division into 'movers' and 'stayers' more closely; I will consider a situation in which people move within transnational space 1 while simultaneously harbouring a deep sense of being stuck in unfavourable circumstances. ...
The main point of this article is to look at the tensions between many refugees' transnational orientation on one hand, and the sedentary understanding of living and belonging in different policy practices that govern refugees' movements on the other. The article, based on ethnographic fieldwork both in Finland and in Bosnia, provides a detailed analysis of a case study, an elderly Bosnian couple who return to Bosnia after living several years as refugees in Finland. The couple are interviewed both before and after their return to Bosnia within a programme of assisted returns. Their ideas of good life and belonging are reflected in relation to various policy practices that govern their choices, both locally and supra-locally.
... We see this in the privileging of the 'transnational family' that needs to re-imagine or re-invent itself because it can not rely on the shared time or space of day-to-day interaction. A focus on 'mothering at a distance' (Vuorela, 2002;Erel, 2002Erel, , 2003 or the mechanisms of sustaining a sense of 'co-presence' and caring relationships in the context of transnational separations (Zontini, 2004;Baldassar, 2008;Ryan, 2008;Svasek, 2008) becomes a way to tell more complicated stories about the reproductive sphere. Concepts such as 'relativizing' and 'frontiering' (Bryceson and Vuorela, 2002) are suggested to theorize the complexities of work to produce a sense of family as 'imagined community' (ibid.: 14) when actual family members are living separated, transnational lives. ...
Drawing on feminist philosophical accounts of reproduction and initial data acquired through research with migrant mothers in London, this article argues that the role and place of reproduction remains under-theorized within scholarly accounts of women's role in migration processes. Working with an expanded concept of reproduction that includes not only childbirth and motherhood, but also the work of reproducing heritage, culture and structures of belonging, it argues that feminist migration scholars can draw on valuable theoretical resources in order to tell more complicated stories about the place of reproduction in migration, and challenge the often problematic gendered distinctions between travelling and staying put, change and repetition that continue to underpin some of the narrative structures operative in migration studies.
... Regardless of this shift, the larger family unit had maintained its importance in many ways. While there is a prevalent tendency in Western countries to connect the meaning of family to a household and thus shared location, research on transnationalism has shown that the experience of being a member of a family does not necessarily presume living together (Vuorela 2002). An extract from a discussion with a mother and her 11-year-old son, with Kurdish origin and living in Finland, illustrates that the understanding on who is included in a family was in many families much broader from that generally accepted in Finland. ...
... The information about the most recent gains and losses, the well-known secrets and current failures criss-cross the Atlantic continuously and constitutes one of the vital threads that weaves together an 'imagined community' of people, who consider themselves part of the same social structure, but live in different localities. Just like any given community, members of transnational families have to create a sense of membership, an idea about who belongs to and contributes to the continuity of respective social entity (Vuorela 2002;Schmalzbauer 2008). Especially in geographically dispersed populations, gossiping about absent persons creates an imagination about 'us' over there and provides a tool for maintaining and fostering the connection. ...
In this article I make use of transnational Cape Verdean gossip in order to elaborate on social asymmetries between members of transnational families. Drawing on anthropological fieldwork carried out in Cape Verde, I reflect on the content of gossip stories as well as the motivations and reactions of those involved. Gender and resource inequalities are identified as the most prevalent issues, fixed on matters of intimacy, reciprocity, and transnational support. Furthermore, the analysis of the extended network of people involved in these mutual evaluations suggests that members of transnational social networks reflect on newly emerged kinship hierarchies by redefining gender norms, familiarity, and claims to knowledge. The article demonstrates that transnational gossip stories are not ‘just talk’, but they impose particular orders and moralities relevant for those included into them and hence, they should be understood as a powerful tool for exercising social control across national borders.
It is a new theoritical framework to understand multigenerational family processes in space and time.
In this article, we bridge the analytical gap between transnational anthropology and the anthropology of post-socialism to explore the transnational family lives of Russian and Polish women in Finland. We point to three interrelated aspects of the post-socialist legacy – (1) an inclusive understanding and practice of family that involves the interactions of immediate and extended family configurations; (2) intergenerational solidarity among women; and (3) feminine subjectivity built on the socialist ideal of a working mother. Our ethnographies illustrate that Russian and Polish women maintain their transnational families through networks of transnationally dispersed extended families. In women’s lives and selves, traditional gendered motherhood and the liberal idea of a working woman are combined and supported by women’s intergenerational companionship across borders. Our case studies show that such concrete, informal relations of affection and care provide women with a sense of security and self-worth amid transnational change.
The purpose of this article is to reconceptualise the idea of an Amazigh literature with regard to the transnational and plurilingual experiences from which this literature arises. Along these lines, the second generation of Amazigh writers born in the Netherlands-and/or those who migrated when they were children-rejects the label of writing ethnic literature, and/or being categorised under the umbrella of Dutch authors of Moroccan descent.
Although literature on child migration has developed considerably over the last decade, it has tended to focus on intra-African migration and one-way south to north migration (Razy and Rodet 2012). The themes of north to south and circular childhood migration remain understudied, and its educational, social and cultural objectives are mostly ignored. Although children are at the heart of family practices (Basch et al. 1994; Rouse 2002), the nature and function of the children’s mobility within migrant families to the family, and the community more broadly, in the process of transmission and reproduction as well as social and cultural change has been overlooked. A transnational perspective has developed (Baldassar and Merla 2014; Bryceson and Vuorela 2002; Levitt and Waters 2006; Mazzucato and Schans 2011; Olwig 2007; Parreñas 2005), but family and kinship dynamics have not been an important feature of the research, particularly in Africa (Grillo and Mazzucato 2008). Similarly, the ethnographical data and efforts at conceptual clarification have long been absent even though the notion of the ‘transnational family’ dominates1. Indeed, the criteria of membership and the morphology of the ‘transnational family’ are rarely specified (Le Gall 2005), and local family structures are often ignored. The family is defined as nuclear or extended, and is synonymous with ‘blood ties’ in a Euro-American-centered sense even though ‘nonblood ties’ can be included, as Bryceson and Vuorela (2002) state.
In the edited volume Les discourses de voyages, Romuald Fonkoua (1998: 5–10) introduces travel literature, with exploration traveling as the center of social analysis. He refers to the fascination surrounding travel and the relationship between traveling and discovery. This perspective is similar to that of travelers at the turn of the twentieth century who set off to discover the world, to experience things that were unknown and new to them. Fonkoua adds another perspective to the discoverer, namely, the writertraveler (le romancier). It is, in the end, travel itself that forms the basis of the writing by the ethnographer and the novelist. Obviously, as Fonkoua points out, discoveries and travel writing are also constructed by people “in the other world” and in this sense travel is always about interaction. The construction of the world in those days was largely inspired by travel and journeys and we are now taking up this notion of “travel as discovery” and extrapolating it to our own constructions of the world.
Care is a growing concern in welfare states and an ever-more frequent object of social policy reforms. Every post-industrial society is having to confront anew how to support families and individuals and organize the care of those who need regular help, particularly small children and those adults whose disabilities are linked to age or illness. Long-established forms of informal care are being rapidly undermined by economic and social change. Families are in particular no more self-evident care providers in the way they used to be. Social networks based on kinship have fragmented and even become transnational (Vuorela 2002). It is becoming more and more common for older people to live alone. The spread of female employment outside the home, above all, has changed the division of labour between the sexes. Unpaid work done by women at home and in the local community can no longer be treated as a resource to be drawn on freely.
Vaikka ”maahanmuuttajataustaisten perheiden” ja ”suomalaisten perheiden” välillä tapahtuu rajankäyntiä ja erottautumista, perheelle annettujen merkitysten ja puhetapojen tasoilla myös samankaltaisuudet näyttävät vahvoilta.
Maahanmuuton jälkeen perhesuhteita järjestetään uusilla tavoilla, sukupolvieron yli neuvotellen ja myös transnationaalisesti. Sekä sosiologisessa perhetutkimuksessa että transnationaalisuuden tutkimuksessa korostuu, että perhesuhteisiin liittyy sellaista merkityksellisyyttä ja sitkeyttä,
joiden ansiosta ne säilyvät muutoksista, mahdollisista konflikteista ja välimatkasta huolimatta.
Marja Peltola on väitöskirjassaan tutkinut perhettä koskevia puhetapoja maahanmuuton jälkeisinä vuosina ja vuosikymmeninä. Tutkimuksessaan hän kiinnittää huomiota siihen, miten sosiaaliset erot, kuten yhteiskuntaluokka, etnisyys, sukupolvi ja sukupuoli vaikuttavat tapoihin kuvata omaa perhettä.
Tutkimusta varten on haastateltu pääkaupunkiseudulla asuvia maahanmuuttajataustaisia perheitä. Eri sukupolven edustajien haastattelujen kautta piirretään kuvaa katkoksien ja jatkuvuuksien neuvottelusta yhtäältä perheen sisällä, mutta tärkeällä tavalla myös suhteessa suomalaiseen yhteiskuntaan.
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