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- Convenors:
-
Brigitte Suter
(Malmö University)
Flavia Cangià (University of Lausanne)
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- Format:
- Panels
- Location:
- SO-F497
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 15 August, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Stockholm
Short Abstract:
This panel explores the nexus between time and family in the context of migration and mobility. In particular, it is interested in how the complex times and temporalities of migration interplay with kin practices, feelings and meanings of family and intimate relationships.
Long Abstract:
In times of increasing social, political and ontological uncertainties, staying, moving and settling are not to be viewed as separate tempos of migration, but as interconnected, ambivalent and at times simultaneous temporal and spatial experiences of movement, rupture, and stasis, which shape, and are shaped by, the (re)making of family and intimate relationships. Extensive research in migration and mobility studies has been conducted with regard to the issues of family and time respectively, in particular on transnational families, family care, kinship practices and relatedness across transnational social fields, as well as on experiences of simultaneity, temporary mobilities, future-making and waiting-hood in migration, just to name a few. This panel brings to light the mutual relationship between time and family in the study of migration and mobility, and considers how the experiences of time and change, the temporal movement between past, present and future, and the imagination and the making of (im)mobile trajectories interplay with "kinning" (Baldassar 2017) practices, feelings and meanings of family, and intimate relationships. It explores whether and how conceptualizing time and family in tandem in the context of migration and mobility can help to better understand, and if necessary overcome, the different tempos of migration, as well as the dichotomy between mobility and immobility, movement and stasis, migrants and non-migrants, and different forms of mobility.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 15 August, 2018, -Paper short abstract:
Showing simultaneous engagement, Chinese (im)migrant women in Canada live 'in-between' their host and home societies in terms of identity, space and time. Time is a key driver in (re)shaping their transnational imagined and actual lives, more specifically their family and intimate relations.
Paper long abstract:
Chinese (im)migrant women live 'in-between' at least their host and home societies in terms of identity, space and time. Their cross-cultural connections unveil both virtual and actual relations. These new forms of migration including simultaneous embeddedness and temporal mobilities reveal a specific relationship to time. My paper draws on results from a larger research based on field studies conducted in China and in Canada, exploring the intersection of transnationalism, family and intimate relations, and sexual health-related issues. On one hand, negotiations at work within China in family and intimate relations are re-enacted through Chinese (im)migrant women's experiences in the host country. On the other hand, gender norms and roles, intimate and sexual experience, family relations and meanings are impacted by both their home and host societies, as well as their past and present experience in China. Their transnational lives shape new spaces for change in which the temporal movement is a key driver. Reciprocal relations between time and family can be highlighted through this overall process. Reinforcing ontological and social uncertainties, lines between past, present and future are blurred and migration trajectories become more uncertain.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the construction of intimate relationship and family bonds in the context of mobility and migration. The main thrust of my argument is that time is one of the significant factors defined kinship by which the extent of one's commitment and care is measured.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines the nexus between time and family making in the migration context. It is based on extensive anthropological fieldwork in Berlin with a particular group of Vietnamese women who recently migrated from Central Vietnam through unofficial routes. For many women, the mobility is the result of economic hardship and relationship ruptures. Children of the relationships are often left behind. When a new family is formed in the new settlement, maintaining transnational family ties reflects women-designated assignments. Through a case study of a Vietnamese woman and her life history, I will elucidate the work of making and sustaining relatedness, in which gender, class, religion, and culture all interplay. Time defines kin relations as John Borneman (1992) has observed in the German context: "kin of choice based on shared time and space" (page 194). When her families faced obstacles of geographical distance and the threat of the loss of its meaning, the "time" was often regarded as both causes and potential solutions. As relatedness and commitment need time investment, the woman was torn between the time for her new family and the time for her kids compensating her physical absence. And these times are asynchronous. For this woman, time(s) is not homogeneous but plural as time and place are now intertwined.
Paper short abstract:
Focusing on both current and ex-garment workers at the place of origin and destination, this paper examines the ways in which the nexus between time and family support system at the place of origin mediate women's im/mobility and temporary labour participation in the garment industry in Bangladesh.
Paper long abstract:
The expansion of ready-made garments industry in Bangladesh, has attracted a significant number of rural- poor women from the countryside who had previously been occupied with unpaid household work and/or casual agricultural activities. On an average, women work for a relatively short period; around five years. Scholars relate this to the precarious working conditions in the garment industry. Drawing on ethnographic research, this paper argues that the temporary labour participation in the garment sector is not a mere response to the exploitative nature of work. Focusing on both current and ex-garment workers at the place of origin and destination, this paper examines the ways in which the nexus between time and family support system at the place of origin mediate women's im/mobility and labour participation. Women value productive and reproductive responsibilities differently at different phases of their life time. While unmarried women's labour migration is highly stigmatized, migration as a couple is accepted and even encouraged. Women are able to negotiate tremendous freedom from their traditional role, since their mothers or mother-in-law's carry on their reproductive burden during their migratory period, even it implies surrendering a large share of their income through remittance. When the kin support system falls short due to the aging of care givers or birth of an additional child, women opt to return to the village, although it means resuming their traditional role. This findings question the separation of production and reproduction in understanding the nature of female migration and wage labour participation.
Paper short abstract:
Based on two different studies conducted respectively in China and Switzerland with mobile families, we explore the relational dimension of time as this is experienced, negotiated and practiced by accompanying spouses as a result of the family mobility.
Paper long abstract:
Under conditions of recent global economic dynamics, the mobility of skilled labour becomes increasingly an important aspect of a wider range of individuals and their families. The relocation to a new country can entail rupturing changes for the whole family, in particular for the accompanying spouse, who can experience a more pronounced alteration of work-family relations. Especially for couples that practiced a dual career model before migration, the change in the experience of time can be very profound for the accompanying partner who moves from being a full-time professional to being a full-time homemaker. Whereas the experience of time for the contracted partner can be highly structured by the employers, a more ambivalent mixture of personal desire, family relations, cultural values and social expectations seem to affect the subjective experience of time for the accompanying spouse. Based on two different studies conducted respectively in China and Switzerland with mobile families, we explore the relational dimension of time as this is experienced, negotiated and practiced by these spouses as a result of the family mobility.
Paper short abstract:
The article investigates the roles of grandparents for second-generation immigrants. It investigates the process of kinning between second-generation Vietnamese and their grandparents in Vietnam, and their Czech nannies-grandmothers in the Czech Republic.
Paper long abstract:
The article investigates the roles of grandparents for second-generation immigrants who live with their parents in a different country than their grandparents. It draws upon in-depth interviews with second-generation Vietnamese people living in the Czech Republic, where they are the largest group of migrant descendants and the children are very often raised by Czech nannies. The nannies and the children are kinned through the process of caregiving and become grandmothers and grandchildren for each other. The analysis focuses on how the interviewees make sense of, interpret, and understand their roles as grandchildren vis-à-vis their Czech grandmothers and Vietnamese grandmothers. It shows how after migration the kinship ties are performed, negotiated, and reproduced on a very micro level of everyday life, with tasks of caring, homeland visits, and transnational/face-to-face intimacy maintenance. The article is innovative in its analysis of grandparenthood from the perspective of grandchildren; it advances the conclusion that the grandparents play an important role in the children's understanding of their belonging both to the kinned trajectory and to the homeland.
Paper short abstract:
The paper presents some elements of Italian contemporary migration towards Morocco, and focuses on how "being in motion" is part of the lives of women and families in a specific moment of their cycle of life, to apply their agency and to carry on their aspirations of a good life in future.
Paper long abstract:
The contribution presents some elements of my PhD research. Ethnographic case studies will follow a brief overview of the italian migration towards Morocco in order to highlight the experiences of Italian families in Morocco and their ways of "making family" (Grilli, Zanotelli, 2010) on the move.
Considering the family as an imagined community (Bryceson, Vuorela, 2002), and giving the importance of imaginaries and aspirations in shaping ideas of the good life and future (Appadurai, 1996, 2004, 2013), it will be pointed out how being on the move and migrating is not only a process that (re)shapes the family but is also a means of attaining an imagined model of family.
The choice to leave Italy takes origin from a personal and social crisis that changes intimates relationships both within the family and in relation to the place of birth (town or country). Morocco isn't perceived as a place where to root the family, it is rather one of the many moorings (Choen, Duncan, Thulemark, 2015) where the family passes through in a specific moment of its cycle of life, usually connected with parenting practices or educational opportunities for the children.
For the families interviewed migration is not a process in spite of which the family restructures itself, nor a specific transnational articulation of intimacy and care practices (Baldassar, 2008) but rather the means by which they can build themselves as families according to an imagined model, for culturally aspiring to a future good life for themselves and their children.
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses changing parent-child and sibling relationships in a Syrian refugee family in The Netherlands. More specifically, it addresses the impact on family dynamics of the recent marriage of the eldest daughter, presently the family's main 'broker' to Dutch society.
Paper long abstract:
The idea that reality is more complex, ambivalent, and less coherent than linear approaches of post-migration trajectories show, is align with the development of life courses of Syrian refugee families in The Netherlands. Their life courses show radical ruptures, and alterations in relations between parents and children. Simultaneously, they show strong efforts to rebuild continuities and to create a basis for desired futures.
In the presented case several key life events occur in a short period of (compressed) time. The eldest daughter of the family married less than two years after the family's settling in The Netherlands. Besides marrying and leaving the parental home, she has become a student in higher education and is expecting her first child. Analysis of how she and her family deal with these changes offers insights into the complex ways variables as agency, age, gender, transnational relations, values and beliefs inform refugees' pathways in building new personal and family lives.
I will embed this particular case study in the larger context of my ethnographic research among Syrian refugee families and their networks, during the five-year period of their temporary residence permit. The research investigates the differential effects of forced migration on different generations, and their impact on parent-child relations and the integration of individual family members in Dutch society. It does so by taking a developmental 'family resilience' perspective, which positions both children and parents in the context of a family system that interacts with larger social systems and develops over time.
Paper short abstract:
This presentation will focus on the relation between mobility and family structure. Based on a historical case study of one family, it will show how mobility changes the identity of the family as a whole, and the identity of its individual members.
Paper long abstract:
The internal structure of the family as a socio-cultural institution has changed over the last decades. Because of the multitude of family forms in contemporary European societies, the definition of 'family' became rather centred around its function, not around its form. What remains interesting is the question of things and events that led to this transformation.
This presentation will discuss a selected set of egodocuments research, in the form of one family case study. Although Kazimierz and Maria Niedenthal were both born in Lviv, Poland, in the beginning of the 20thC, they were raised in the model of 19thC upbringing. In the 1930s, they decided to migrate to Peru as settlers. Due to this decision, their life and the life of their daughters underwent substantial changes, completely reshaping the structure of their family.
Basing my presentation on this case study, I will demonstrate how mobility may reshape family structure by changing the identity of the family (from a 19thC model to a transnational family) and the identity of its members(from Lviv Intelligentsia to settlers and then into immigrants).Secondly, I will illustrate how all of these transformations worked out in the case of Kazimierz's and Maria's daughters, particularly Cecylia, who may be described as an early example of a Third Culture Kid.