‘Aprendemos A Convivir’: Conjugal Relations,Co‐parenting,and Family Life Among Ecuadorian Transnational Migrants in New York and The Ecuadorian Andes

The aim of this article is to examine conjugal relations, co‐parenting and family life among Ecuadorian transnational migrants in New York and the Azuayo‐ Cañari highlands of Ecuador. It counters two commonly‐held views of transmigration. Officials and academics often stress the negative impacts of male migration to the USA, arguing that it leads to spousal abandonment. In addition, studies of gender in transnational relationships generally concentrate on women's experiences and lack a more nuanced understanding of men's lives in migration. Based on interviews with both male migrants in New York and women in Ecuador, this research focuses instead on how intact couples work to redefine roles, relationships and family life; how they learn to live side‐by‐side (aprender a convivir). The article begins with an account of men's adjustment to single life in the city, which is then juxtaposed to women's experiences in the sending villages. The main section presents a narrative of one couple, revealing how they handle remittances, communication, child‐raising and their own relationship. Their experiences highlight the tensions and problems faced by young couples starting to form their own autonomous households in a setting increasingly different from that of previous generations. But, despite hardships, such couples often state that their relationship improved after migration.     

Migrant family visits and the life course: interrelationships between age,capacity and desire

Migrant visits to the country of origin play a crucial role in transnational family cohesion and migrant well‐being; the research on them so far has focused primarily on the relationship between migrant integration and transnational engagement. In this article, I extend the discussion by adding a life course perspective to Carling and Hoelscher's (2013) framework for studying transnational activities, which incorporates capacity and desire. I explore whether age has an independent effect on migrants' family visits and how it relates to socio‐economic resources, migration status and transnational ties. Using data from a survey of Peruvian migrants around the globe (n=7,741), I show that migrants' stage in the life course has a partial effect on their propensity to travel through the interrelationship between age, capacity and desire. The findings show that the capacity and desire of migrants to visit their country of origin are particularly strong after reaching retirement age, suggesting a favourable combination of resources at later stages in life. However, whether this expresses a positive approach to ageing, or is a strategy to balance transnational family obligations and to postpone return decisions, remains open for future research.     

Family Matters: (e)migration, familial networks and Irish women in Britain

The recent increase in transnational migration among women has lead to a reappraisal of theoretical explanations of migratory movement ( Castles and Miller, 2003 ; Fortier, 2000 ; Zulauf, 2001 ). This paper reviews a number of theoretical explanations of transnational migration and then applies these theories to a qualitative study of women who migrated from Ireland to Britain in the 1930s. I explore the women's reasons for leaving Ireland and their experiences as young economic migrants in Britain in the inter‐war years. Women have made up the majority of Irish migrants to Britain for much of the twentieth century yet the dominant stereotype of the Irish migrant has been the Mick or Paddy image ( Walter, 2001 ). Through an analysis of these twelve women's narratives of migration, I explore themes such as household strategies and familial networks. I am interested in the interwoven explanations of migration as both a form of escape ( O’Carroll, 1990 ) and a rational family strategy and, hence, the ways in which women's decision to migrate can be seen as a combination of both active agency and family obligation. Drawing on the work of Phizacklea (1999 ) as well as Walter (2001 ) and Gray (1996 , 1997 ), I will analyse the ways in which family connections may transcend migration and engage with the concept of ‘transnational family’ ( Chamberlain, 1995 ). In so doing, I raise questions about the complex nature of migration and the extent to which it could be described in terms of empowerment.     

Suspending,settling, sponsoring: the intimate chronomobilities of young Asian migrants in Australia

In this article, I develop the concept of ‘intimate chronomobilities’ to understand some of the intersections between the temporalities of intimate relationships and of migration in the lives of young and ‘middling’ transnational migrants from Asia to Australia. Drawing on in‐depth interview data, I reveal how romantic partnerships are highly significant to experiences of transnational mobility, and how such experiences take place in the context of a governance regime in Australia in which migration has become increasingly transient, transitionary and transitory, and in which sponsored partner and spouse visas can secure migration futures. The analysis explores how the lived and imagined timelines and timings of intimate partnerships play highly significant roles in defining and structuring migrants' mobilities, and reveals how intimate chronomobilities of ‘suspending, settling and sponsoring’ are understood by migrants through lived experiences of sequence, synchronicity and tempo.     

Privileged Japanese transnational families in Hawaii as lifestyle migrants

This study of privileged Japanese families in Hawaii revisits the claim that East Asian transnational families relocate overseas either to improve their well‐being or to enhance their status through their children's international education. Existing scholarship has focused mainly on the second pattern of status‐seeking migration, conceptualized as ‘education migration’. By employing Benson and O'Reilly's concept of ‘lifestyle migration’, I consider the less widely studied case of migration strategies designed to increase well‐being. The central difference between the two types of migrants lies in the way that migrant women construct their gendered identity through their transnational split‐household arrangement – a freer self (lifestyle migrants) or a sacrificial self (education migrants). In conclusion, I call for further research on this neglected topic and propose an important dimension to facilitate lifestyle migration, gender.     

Family divided: the class formation of Honduran transnational families

Although there is a growing literature on transnational families, we know little about the class formation of such families and even less about how transnational migration and generation interact in this process. In this article I draw from ethnographic research with Honduran immigrant parents in the USA and transnational youths in Honduras to theorize the class formation of transnational families. Based on Bryceson and Vuorela's concepts of frontiering and relativizing, I show how economic remittances bolster the expectations and improve the lifestyles of transnational youths to the detriment of their parents' welfare in the USA. That parents often relativize their communication, choosing not to tell children about their struggles, can contribute to increased inequalities within families. Finally, my data suggest that it will be difficult for transnational youths to meet their newfound expectations and maintain their lifestyles without a permanent flow of remittances and thus the ongoing separation of family.     

“You Know,Abraham Was Really the First Immigrant”: Religion and Transnational Migration

The purpose of this article is to summarize what we know about the role that religion plays in transnational migration and to outline a strategy for further research in this area. While migration scholars now generally acknowledge the salience of migrants' economic, social, and political transnational activities, we have largely overlooked the ways in which religious identities and practices also enable migrants to sustain memberships in multiple locations. My goals in this article are threefold. First, I provide a brief overview of related bodies of work on global, diasporic and immigrant religion and differentiate them from studies of migrants' transnational religious practices. Second, I selectively summarize what we have learned about the role of religion in transnational migration from prior research. Finally, I propose an approach to future research on these questions.¹     

Transnational lifestyles among Russian Israelis: a follow‐up study

Despite the expanding use of the transnational perspective, grounded qualitative research on everyday expressions of transnationalism has been scant. In this article, I explore the economic and social ties with former homelands among three categories of former Soviet immigrants of the 1990s in Israel, namely ethnically mixed families split by emigration; young professionals and entrepreneurs; and retirees who keep two homes – one in Israel and the other in Russia or Ukraine. To follow temporal changes in transnational lifestyles, I interviewed the same informants twice, in 2000 and 2010. The findings suggest that transnational activities reflect life‐course changes and can evolve in several possible directions. These are (1) an attrition of ties with former homelands with increasing integration in the host country; (2) a steady or ascending pace of transnational activities eventually leading to return migration; and (3) permanent low‐grade ties with former homelands and networking with co‐ethnics in other countries of the post‐Soviet diaspora. I conclude that relatively few migrants can sustain intense transnational lifestyle over many years; there are several critical life‐course points when most transnational migrants have to decide where their home is.     

Determining the Causes and Durability of Transnational Labour Migration between Mexico and the United States: Some Empirical Findings

While the field of transnational migration studies is expanding, one important challenge is to broaden research from a mainly qualitative approach proving the existence of transnational migration phenomena toward efforts to quantify transnational migration and pay more attention to analysing its internal dynamics and interrelationships with other (ideal) types of migration. Based on a qualitative and quantitative empirical study of (trans)migrants moving between Puebla (Mexico) and the New York City region focused on the life and work trajectories of 648 individuals and on biographical life history interviews with about 40 Mexican migrants, the article is focused on analysing and explaining the number of trips as an important indicator for transnational migration (even if transmigration could be predominantly a subjective perception and practice without constant physical movement between countries). In order to establish the empirical existence of the transmigration phenomenon, a typology for distinguishing between different types of migrants is advanced and applied to those migrants captured in the survey. The influence of personal, familial, time‐, job‐, and community‐related factors on their decision‐making processes and the number of country trips are analysed. The empirical findings will be complemented by qualitative interview material to present the case of a transnationally organized family. This case study serves, first, to demonstrate that research on transmigrant household decision‐making strategies is complicated by the complexity of social and family networks, which make it difficult to clearly identify household units; second, it helps address the issue of the durability of the transmigration phenomenon by showing that transnational strategies can be adopted by family members over several generations, depending on individuals' changing needs and desires.     

Consuming the transnational family: Indonesian migrant domestic workers to Saudi Arabia

Abstract There is heated debate in contemporary Indonesia about the rights and regulation of transnational women migrants, specifically about the ‘costs to families’ of women working overseas, but little attention has been given to women migrants' own views of family or women's own motivations for migration. In this article, which is based on field work in a migrant‐sending community in West Java, I focus on migrant women's narratives of transnational migration and employment as domestic workers in Saudi Arabia. I contribute to the literature on gender and transnational migration by exploring migrants' consumption desires and practices as reflective not only of commoditized exchange but also of affect and sentiment. In addition, I show in detail how religion and class inflect low‐income women's narrations of morally appropriate mothering practices. In conclusion, I suggest that interpreting these debates from the ground up can contribute towards understanding the larger struggles animating the Indonesian state's contemporary relationships with women and Islam.     

‘Knowing one's place’: gender,mobility and shifting subjectivity in Eastern Indonesia

Abstract In this article I analyse the gendered space of transnational mobility by problematizing migrant subjectivity in everyday practices. In line with feminist perspectives I highlight the significance of the micro‐scale experience of female migrants from Eastern Indonesia in acquiring mobility as a struggle for new subjectivity. I frame this migration as a production of the subjective space of power. Based on in‐depth interviews with returned migrants, I present reflexive accounts of two migrants on contract domestic work abroad to illuminate the changing contours of the relationships between gender, mobility and shifting subjectivity. Households take into account the cultural meanings of space in everyday life including local relations in the decisions on mobility. Strategies of ‘knowing one's place’ reflect women's agency in negotiating alternative roles and positions within the intra‐household dynamics and in the workplace. Women's personal accounts have the potential to illuminate spatial processes of migration as a contested space for the repositioning of self in networks of family, kin, local and global relations.     

‘Give me my pathway!‘: multinational migration,transnational skills regimes and migrant subjectification

In this article, I address the interplay between migration regimes and migrant subjectivities in stepwise multinational migration through a comparative analysis of biographical interviews with migrants in the healthcare and dairy farm work sectors in New Zealand. In both sectors, migrants' trajectories involve movements from Asia to locations in the Middle East, North Africa or Japan before arrival in New Zealand, and in some cases plans for onward migration. The analysis of these migration patterns and the narratives of migrants, reveal an emergent transnational skills regime that involves connected but uncoordinated systems of skills recognition; negotiating this regime occurs through increased attunement to migration on the part of multinational migrants, as well as adaptation to the expectations of authorities and employers. I conclude the article by suggesting that while multinational migration involves new opportunities for people on the move it also entails greater entanglement in the unequal conditioning of transnational migration.     

Ageing,migration infrastructure and multi-generational care dynamics in transnational families

The analysis of transnational family relations from an intergenerational to a multi-generational perspective highlights the significant role migration infrastructure plays in transnational family care arrangements at different family life stages. Changing migration policies and local-bound welfare systems in the host and home countries tend to fixate the role of care-receiver and provider against fluid transnational family care dynamics as the life course of the family unfolds. This paper focuses on Chinese transnational one-child families in which the initial separation between parents and their only-child was motivated by the child's overseas education, and followed by the adult child's employment and family formation in the UK. My findings illustrate how reified definitions of the family and familial roles structure mobile individuals’ access to family rights in a transnational context. They warn of the danger of entrenched injustice embedded in the definitional classification of family migrants.     

Pakistani labour migration and masculinity: industrial working life,the body and transnationalism

In this article, I examine the narratives of migrant Pakistani men in their fifties and sixties, who became chronically ill over the course of their working lives in London. The men's life histories show that the body, and in particular the labouring body, needs more sustained attention in migration studies. Their narratives tell of how the physical toll of industrial labour resulted in chronic ill health, unemployment and various forms of ‘redundant masculinities’. Moreover, the impoverishment that frequently followed from ill health ate away at local social status and transnational relationships. I argue that the existing work on transnationalism has normalized the experiences of an entrepreneurial migrant elite and obscured those of migrants who are bound to one place by force of circumstance. Chronic ill health is not merely the experience of a minority who fall between the cracks of epidemiological studies on ‘healthy migrants’, as some have recently suggested, but rather, common to industrial labour migration.     

Migration and the accentuated ambivalence of motherhood: the role of ICTs in Filipino transnational families

This article is concerned with the impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on Filipina transnational mothers' experience of motherhood, their practices of mothering and, ultimately, their identities as mothers. Drawing on ethnographic research with Filipina migrants in the UK as part of a wider study of Filipino transnational families, this article observes that, despite the digital divide and other structural inequalities, new communication technologies, such as the internet and mobile phones, allow for an empowered experience of distant mothering. Apart from a change in the practice and intensity of mothering at a distance, ICTs also have consequences for women's maternal identities and the ways in which they negotiate their ambivalence towards work and family life. In this sense, ICTs can also be seen as solutions (even though difficult ones) to the cultural contradictions of migration and motherhood and the ‘accentuated ambivalence’ they engender. This, in turn, has consequences for the whole experience of migration, sometimes even affecting decisions about settlement and return.     

Transnational youth transitions: becoming adults between Vancouver and Hong Kong

In the context of the academic interest shown in the enduring transnationalism of contemporary migrants and in the modes of transitions to adulthood in different global settings, in this article we examine the transnational lives of adolescents moving between Vancouver (Canada) and Hong Kong. While there is a lot of literature on the parents' political and economic calculations, there is very little on how adolescents in these situations articulate their geographical sensibilities. We draw on three periods of fieldwork undertaken in 2002, 2008 and 2010 during which we employed a transnational methodology to interview young people in Vancouver and Hong Kong. We argue that becoming an adult involves a process in which, in their discussions about the geographical and emotional distance between themselves and their families, young people articulate their own complex emotions towards specific places in their transnational social field. Their families sporadically interrupt the adolescents' otherwise independent lives with fragmented modes of supervision. By examining the complex intentions and emotions behind circular migration from the perspective of transnational youth in a community of split families, we advance the discussion on transnational geographies, particularly of the family in the context of a flexible global economy.     

Transnational healthcare seeking: how ageing Taiwanese return migrants view homeland public benefits

In this article, I argue that, by offering ageing return migrants new opportunities both to organize their lives and to rethink their social attachments, the extension of public healthcare in Taiwan constitutes a new contextual feature of the transnational social field bridging Taiwan and the USA. I use the concept of ‘transnational healthcare seeking’ to describe how returning seniors try to maintain their physical, psychological and social well‐being by accessing the benefits of public healthcare available in their homeland rather than in the USA. Furthermore, I offer the concept of ‘logics of social right’ to demonstrate how older returnees seek to reconfirm their social commitment to their homeland and to defend their entitlement to its state‐provided benefits against public criticism that they are free riders. In so doing, this article contributes a nuanced understanding of how ageing migrants imagine, pursue and construct an ideal later life across national borders.     

Local attachments and transnational everyday lives: second‐generation Italians in Switzerland

Many descendants of migrants grow up in the context of lively transnational social relations to their parents' homeland. Among southern Italian migrants in Switzerland, these relations are imbued with the wish to return among the first generation, a dream fostered since the beginning of their migration after the Second World War. Second‐generation Italians have developed different ways of negotiating the transnational livelihoods fostered by their parents on the one hand, and the wish for local attachments on the other. In this article I discuss how the children of Italian migrants have created their own cultural repertoires of Italianità and belonging within Switzerland and with co‐ethnic peers, and how, for some, this sense of belonging evokes the wish for ‘roots migration’, the relocation to the parents' homeland. With the example of two trajectories of local attachment and transnationalism among members of the second generation of the same origin, I question existing work on the second generation that assumes commonalities among them on the grounds of ethnicity and region of origin.     

Visiting here,there, and somewhere: Multi-locality and the geographies of transnational family visiting

For transnational families, visits represent an opportunity to temporarily punctuate the geographical distance that separates them from significant others in everyday life. Drawing on data from mapping-interviews conducted with older skilled migrants in Abu Dhabi, the UAE, this paper is concerned with how transnational visiting is harnessed to sustain a sense of family togetherness at a later stage of the life course. The discussion contributes to migration scholarship on return visits and visits by relatives to the migration destination but also draws attention to a third dimension of visiting; family meet-ups in a third space—a location that is neither the country of origin nor the migration destination. Hence, I propose an explicitly spatial, relational conceptualization of transnational family visits, arranged around a multi-local framework: the return visit (‘there’); the receiving of visits in the migration destination (‘here’); and visits in an in-between geographical space (‘somewhere’). In so doing, this paper places the spotlight on the geographies of visiting, drawing attention to the dynamic way in which the practice of transnational family visiting in enacted in later life.     

Merchants and missionaries: Chinese evangelical networks and the transnational resacralization of European urban spaces

This article sheds new light on the diverse modes in which migration and religion intersect in shaping everyday transnational practices by exploring the articulations of religion and business migration in an emerging Chinese-led transnational mission field. Drawing on multisited ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Wenzhou, Rome and Paris, I show how a large group of transnational Chinese merchants has adopted a vigorous homegrown evangelical Christianity as the spiritual and social anchor of their territorial mercantile culture in diaspora. These merchants have actively engaged in producing religious activities and events that link China to Europe and in resacralizing secular real estate and attaching evangelistic meanings to Europe's historic urban spaces. For rural-originated migrants who embrace a global hierarchy of places, the evangelical discursive distinction between the mundane and the transcendent spheres finds expression in their perceived opposition between the peripheral local and the modern global centre in the global market economy.