Bringing transnational families from the margins to the centre of family studies in Britain

Britain, alongside other Western contemporary societies, has undergone important social and demographic transformations resulting from increased migration, ethnic plurality and multiculturalism. One important change is that family life is increasingly practised across national borders. Research on transnational families, specifically within the field of migration studies, has been pivotal in highlighting the maintenance of family networks across national borders and geographical distance, as well as the mechanisms, processes and practices sustaining these family relations. Yet, rather surprisingly, a detailed analysis of family relationships that are practised across international borders is a marginal field of enquiry within British family studies. In this article, therefore, we argue the case for bringing transnational family studies into the ‘mainstream’ academic field of family studies, by highlighting the importance of transnational families as an analytical concept for understanding contemporary family life in Britain. We do so by drawing on examples from our respective studies on Caribbean and Italian transnational family relationships to (re)frame concepts typically associated with British family studies, such as for example what is meant by the ‘normative family’, everyday practices involved in ‘doing family’ and the notion of ‘families of choice’

Liminal Lives: Navigating In-Betweenness in the Case of Bulgarian and Italian Migrants in Brexiting Britain

The UK's decision to leave the EU illustrates some of the tensions embedded in European integration, enabling us to examine how nationalism and cosmopolitanism operate simultaneously, thus reinforcing each other. Furthermore, the prolonged Brexit negotiations have created a climate of protracted insecurity where the only certainty is uncertainty. This is particularly reflected in the migratory experiences of European citizens currently residing in the UK. Academic research has begun exploring the affective impact of Brexit; however, little is known about how processes of connection and disconnection operate simultaneously, nor which coping strategies European migrants have employed to navigate this state of in-betweenness. Using the anthropological notion of liminality as a lens, we draw on participant observation and semi-structured interviews to explore the experiences of Brexit and the coping practices of a range of (new) Bulgarian and (old) Italian European migrants. We argue that Brexit results in a loss of frames of reference for European migrants in the UK-which can be both liberating and unsettling, depending on migrants' positioning as unequal EU subjects as well as their views on the nature of their future re-incorporation in post-Brexit Britain

Studying the Emotional Costs of Integration at Times of Change: The Case of EU Migrants in Brexit Britain

Events such as Brexit have drawn attention to the precarity of contemporary migrants’ settlement rights and reopened the debate on the nature of integration and assimilation processes. Drawing on participant observation and interviews with Italian and Bulgarian migrants in Brexit Britain, this article develops a novel approach for understanding migrants’ changing relationships with their countries of settlement and their current and future practices. This approach builds on the sociology of emotions, which it extends to migration and diversity with a transnational sensibility. The approach is then applied to explain the different displays of emotion undertaken by our participants and their consequences. Overall, the article develops a new way to examine the subjective experiences of integration at times of change that is capable of offering important insights into the emotional costs of the neo-assimilationist climate characterising several western societies

Growing old in a transnational social field: belonging, mobility and identity among Italian migrants

This article focuses on ageing in transnationalism. Drawing on the experiences of Italians in the UK as a paradigmatic example of settled European migrants, it explores the lived experiences of this group of older migrants. Using Levitt and Glick Schiller’s framework,it concentrates first on migrants’ways of being and then on their ways of belonging. The article argues that a transnational lens is necessary to understand the experiences of older migrants and that a focus on older people needs to be incorporated into studies of transnationalism. Through a discussion of their narratives and experiences, the article offers a long view on the migration process and brings attention to the significance of gender, time and the life course to understand both migrants’transnationalism and their integration

Transnational and diasporic youth identities: exploring conceptual themes and future research agendas

This special issue brings together multidisciplinary and international perspectives on the importance of diasporic and transnational networks for the formation of ethnic identity by migrant youths. Within the context of this issue migrant youths refer to young people (aged 16–35 years) who are themselves migrants or are children and grandchildren of migrants. Our attention to the transnational and diasporic identities of migrant youths is in direct response to policy debates and migration scholarship in this area, which in recent times have focused on the supposed crisis of minority ethnic youths and their perceived marginalisation and social exclusion from a wider society. The special issue broadens the parameters of this debate by exploring not how transnational migrant youths are but more interestingly, we believe, what it means for them to have grown up in a transnational social field. In the special issue rather than simply addressing identity outcomes, we want to emphasise identity processes. This is because we are more interested in understanding the ways the migrant youths are ‘doing transnationalism’ and also through this process ‘doing identity’ (including intersected racial, ethnic, gender, class and sexual identities)

Family formation and gendered migrations in Bologna and Barcelona A comparative ethnographic study

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:DXN057368 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Family habitus and transnational families: Mapping gender and generational borders and relations through the lens of migrant youths

Transnational families give substance to what Castells (2000) daubed ‘the network society’, and whilst it is of importance to recognize the jurisdictional context of the nation-state as a given of the transnational families experience, in our paper we argue that cultural worlds that transnational families occupy are equally relevant. Drawing on our empirical study of migrant youths’ transnational family experiences in the UK, we discuss how processes of globalization, structural processes of inclusion/exclusion operate to facilitate and constrain these young adults experiences of family life across national, gender and generational borders. Our specific focus on adolescent and young adults from migrant reflects the fact that there is still limited research attention being paid to the transnational family lives of migrant youths. Comparing the experiences of highly-skilled and mobile migrant youths, alongside low-skilled and less mobile migrant youths we explore for these differing groups family relations within a transnational social field. Influenced by Bourdieu’s notion of ‘habitus’ (1986) we also examine to what extent the transnational family practices of these migrant youths are ‘family habitus’: a structured set of values, ways of thinking and ‘being’ within the family that is built up over time through family socialization of culture and traditions (see Reynolds and Zontini 2013; Reynolds and Zontini 2014). In doing so, particular attention is given to the ways in which gender, generation and the social networks and resources (economic, social and cultural) families have access to, inform ‘family habitus’

Introduction: some critical reflections on social capital, migration and transnational families

Special Issue on ‘Social Capital, Migration and Transnational Families' edited and introduction by Venetia Evergeti and Elisabetta Zontini