(2012) 'Letter-Writing and the Construction of a Transnational Family' (original) (raw)
Related papers
Reconsidering the migrant letter: from the experience of migrants to the language of migrants
The History of the Family, 2016
Following a century of scholarly attention, the migrant letter, whether written by family members, lovers, friends, or others, is a document that continues to attract the attention of scholars and general readers. Over time, the study of migrant letters has developed in myriad directions. It has adopted methodologies ranging from the publication of complete collections and excerpts to the close analytical and computational readings of letters and their authors examined through the lens of gender, identity, family, and emotions. Regardless of the methodology, the history of migrant letters remains tied to the history of the family. This introduction presents an overview of the historiographical evolution of the study of migrant letters from the early twentieth-century onwards. It highlights the ways in which this Special Issue contributes to the discussion by exploring the connection between the practice of letter writing and the emotional, transnational, economic, and familial experiences of individuals separated by migration.
Transnational Families: Memories and Narratives
This 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.
Identities, 2007
This article is an ethnographic analysis of transnational family links between adult migrant children living in Australia and their kin in Italy, from the 1950s to the present. A key focus of the article is the persistence of bonds of emotion across distance. Drawing on Finch and Mason's research on caregiving relationships and Hochschild's work on emotional labour, it explores both the positive experiences as well as the tensions associated with the transnational exchange of moral and emotional support. The findings confirm the perseverance of bonds of emotion across distance and thus challenge arguments about the declining bonds within translocal families as a result of globalising processes. The role that new communication technologies play in sustaining these bonds is offered as a possible explanation to account for the apparent increase in the frequency of transnational emotional interaction over time. The article also calls for further work on the influence of physical co-presence or absence on emotional interaction over distance.
Familial Networks of Exchange, Support and Solidarity as Expressed through Personal Correspondence
2015
This article provides an insight into the life of family Vrabec whose members emigrated in the interwar period from the territory of Italian Julian March to Argentina and France respectively. The characters of the story presented in the article formed the triangle of correspondence that consisted of letters from Argentina, France and the »home place« which was the village of Pliskovica located in what is now Slovene Karst. What the article attempts to show is that the relations that were established at the place of origin never lost prominence. Quite contrary, the evidence shows that through time thick network of support and solidarity was formed. The key element of the network were the affections and emotions that were expressed in letters members of dispersed family sent to each other. However, the network did not consist solely of the exchange of letters, what was important was also the exchange of gifts and packages that were sent from one side of ocean to the other. As the evidence shows, material content of these packages was not so important as the meaning the characters ascribed to them.
Transnational Families in the Twenty-first Century
The Transnational Family: New European Frontiers and Global Networks. edited by D.F. Bryceson and U. Vuorela, Oxford: Berg Publishers. pp. 3-30, 2002
By their very nature, transnational family constitute an elusive phenomenon - spatially dispersed and seemingly capable of unending social mutation. Their ability to reconstitute and redefine themselves over time contingent on spatial practicality and emotional and material needs challenges even the most multi-disciplinary social scientist's analytical efforts. 'Transnational families' are defined here as families that live some or most of the time separated from each other, yet hold together and create something that can be seen as a feeling of collective welfare and unity, namely 'familyhood', even across national borders. In this introduction, the manner in which transnational families constitute themselves and their identification with and linkages to nation sates and wider community and global networks are considered. The concepts of 'frontiering' and 'relativizing' are introduced to explore intra and inter-familial relations and their interface with the wider society.
The Powerful Map of Transnational Families
Nordic Journal of Migration Research, 2011
Transnational families are, as the term suggests, social structures existing across national borders. Thus, individuals belonging to these families are in geographical terms separated by space. However, the practices of transnational families often provide a sense of proximity and emotional attachment. This article, by seeing space as inherently relational, discusses the fields within which families establish themselves and move transnationally. Transnational family spaces are, for example, arenas where young people meet and where marriages are arranged. This article includes the life and marriage stories of two individuals who have married transnationally, based on their family relationships, and further analyses how these marriages are element in the practices that families engage in to uphold a sense of closeness-an endeavour that is sometimes successful, sometimes not. Finally, the article discusses some elements that challenge the relational spaces that transnational families engage in, particularly the impact of nation states and their regulations.
Special Issue of Journal of Intercultural Studies, 2008
In this paper I explore the emotions of “missing” and “longing” as integral (though not essential) features of the kin-work (di Leonardo) and emotional labour (Hochschild) needed to maintain transnational family relationships. I argue that these emotions manifest in at least four key ways: discursively (through words), physically (through the body) as well as through actions (practice) and imagination (ideas). Hence, I consider emotions through both of the dominant perspectives in theories of emotion - constructionism (with its emphasis on discourse) and embodiment (with its emphasis on sensory experience). Drawing on a sample of Italian migrants living in Australia and their ageing parents living in Italy, I argue that the emotions of missing and longing motivate kin to construct four types of shared (co)presence - virtual, proxy, physical and imagined - which reinforce the sense of family closeness that characterises Italian conceptions of health and well-being.
The Wiley-Blackwell companion to the sociology of families, 2014
Transnational families, while not new, are a rapidly increasing family form. Moreover, they challenge our traditional methodological and theoretical conceptualisations of family life. The dramatic increase in mobility and the revolution in modes of travel and communication across distance have made it imperative for family studies to examine the impact of processes of migration and, more specifically, distance and separation, on family relationships. In contrast to the past, migratory moves and other forms of family mobility today are more likely to be characterised by regular and frequent communication and linkages between sending and receiving areas, giving rise to conceptualisations of transnational family members and global households. Through the lens of transnational family caregiving, this chapter examines these issues, including the practical and policy implications of sustaining families across time and space.