Seeking identity: the transborder lives of mainland Chinese families with children born in Hong Kong

Between 2001 and 2013, Hong Kong regulations permitted pregnant women from mainland China to travel to Hong Kong to deliver their babies. In this article, based on 30 in‐depth interviews, I explore the transborder lives and identities of these mainland Chinese families who, motivated by cost considerations, citizenship and anticipated benefits for their children, chose to give birth to their babies in Hong Kong. In some cases, family networks providing flexible residential practices and family care, supported these transborder activities. However, the complexities of transborder life reveal the diverse ‘identifications’ within Hong Kong society and mainland families. Because neither administration totally accepts them, they are not full members of either society and so the identities they form are both plural and fragmented.     

Migration status and transnational mothering: the case of Filipino migrants in France

Recent studies on transnational mothering have explored the various strategies migrant women use to negotiate their absence from home; however, there is limited knowledge on how migration status diversifies transnational mothering practices. To fill this gap, I conducted in‐depth interviews and observations of Filipino migrant mothers working in the domestic service sector in and around Paris. The consequences of migration include the prolongation of a planned stay in France, emotional difficulties due to family separation, and distant mother–child relationships. Transnational family life appears more complicated and difficult to manage for undocumented migrant mothers since they cannot easily visit their family back home, which they try to compensate by resorting to more intense transnational communication and gift‐giving practices. Hence, migration status plays an important role in shaping transnational motherhood.     

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.     

Between two families: the social meaning of remittances for Vietnamese marriage migrants in Singapore

Scholars who have applied transnational perspectives to studies of migration and remittances have called for a move beyond the developmentalist approach to accommodate an expanded understanding of the social meanings of remittances. Researchers working in Asia have begun to view the remittances of money, gifts and services that labour migrants send to their families as transnational ‘acts of recognition’, as an enactment of gendered roles and identities, and as a component of the social practices that create the ties that bind migrants to their ‘home’ countries. In this article, we depart from the more common focus on remittance behaviour among labour migrants and turn instead to examine how, as marriage migrants, Vietnamese women generate and confer meaning on the remittances they send. First, from the women's viewpoint, we discuss the extent to which expectations vested in being able to generate remittances for the natal family by marrying a Singaporean man not only translate into motivation for marriage migration but also shape the parameters of the marriage. Second, we show how sending remittances are significant to the women as ‘acts of recognition’ in the construction of gendered identities as filial daughters, and, through the ‘connecting’ and ‘disconnecting’ power of remittances, in the reimagining of the transnational family. Third, we discuss the strategies that women devise in negotiating between the conflicting demands and expectations of their natal and marital families and in securing their ‘place’ between two families. We base our findings on an analysis of interviews and ethnographic work with Vietnamese women and their Singaporean husbands through commercial matchmaking agencies.     

Displaying grandparenting within Romanian transnational families

In this article, I use the analytical framework of ‘displaying family relationships’ to explore the transnational grandparenting practices of Romanian families. I discuss the theoretical aspects of the concept of displaying with regard to its scope, specificity and manifestation. I emphasize the uniqueness of each instance of displaying, while also revealing the various patterns through which family‐related motivations trigger individual behaviour. Highlighting the intersections between such internal motivations and displaying behaviour, the research underlines the various challenges that transnational grandparents encounter, and the ways in which they react to them.     

Family and nation: Brazilian national ideology as contested transnational practice in Japan

Studies of Brazilian Nikkeis (Japanese emigrants and their descendants) living in Japan tend to conceptualize ‘family’ and ‘nation’ as two distinct entities. Such distinctions are filtered through mutually exclusive discourses and understandings of national and ethnic identity. In this article, however, I view national attachments and migrant experiences in Japan through the lens of ideology, embodied experience and kinship relations. Treating national ideology as lived process sheds fresh light on the dynamics of state—society relations in transnational social spaces. I suggest that the ability of Brazilian state actors to impose social, moral and economic regulation on its citizens in Japan is compromised by the extent to which such discourses are ontologically grounded in the social relations of migrant family life. It is through these kin ties, I argue, that people set the tone and rules of play for state interests to encroach or otherwise on their everyday lives in these transnational social spaces.     

Antecedents and Outcomes of Work Family Conflict Among Employed Women and Men in Finland

The aim of this study was to examine theprevalence, antecedents, and consequences of work familyconflict among employed women and men in Finland. Thedata were obtained by questionnaire from a sample of 501 employees working in four organizations.The results showed that work family conflict was moreprevalent than family work conflict among both sexes,but that there were no gender differences inexperiencing either work family or family work conflict.Family work conflict was best explained by family domainvariables (e.g., number of children living at home) forboth sexes, and work family conflict by work domain variables (e.g., full-time job, poorleadership relations) among the women, and by higheducation and high number of children living at homeamong the men. Family work conflict had negativeconsequences on family well-being, and work family conflict,in particular, on occupational well-being. The findingssuggest that in particular improvements in working lifeare needed to prevent problems in the work family interface.     

Deep Roles: Twelve Primordial Roles of Mind and Organization

The thesis in this paper is that there are 12archetypal roles in groups and organizations. Thesedeep roles have their origin in the rolesof the essential family — father, mother, son, anddaughter. In groups and organizations, each of theseimages of family roles will — through the basicdefense mechanisms of splitting and projection —be polarized into a good and bad part: The father as Godor devil, the mother as queen or witch, the son as crownprince or black sheep, and the daughter as princess orwhore. In addition to these eight primary deep roles,there come two secondary ones: the helpers Shaman and Slave whose function are to help the familysurvive spiritually and materially, respectively. Thetwo last deep roles are of a transcendental nature: thehero (winner) and the clown (loser), i.e., the one who has won a good family role, and the onewho has lost it — or never gained it. These 12deep roles are well known from such cultural artifactsas fairy tales and mythology. In groups andorganizations, deep roles are attended with power andinterest. Those who are attributed a deep role in theirorganization will have a similar symbolic power ascharacters in fairy tales and mythology.     

Sending Granny to Chiang Mai: debating global outsourcing of care for the elderly

This article ties in with existing discussions on global care chains, family separation and the devaluation of social‐reproductive work. We explore the new trend of outsourcing care for the elderly to countries with lower wages. We base our analysis on the debate in the German press and supplement it with insights from ethnographic field observations in two care homes in Thailand. We identify a discourse of abandonment, which shows how outsourcing the care of the elderly unsettles the privilege of sedentarism that is often taken for granted in the Global North. Furthermore, the newspaper articles tend to villainize people who seek care for their loved ones abroad. We argue that both discourses foster a neoliberal rationale of individualized responsibility and obfuscate the deep systemic roots of the care crisis in the Global North. However, by extending the discussion on outsourcing care for the elderly beyond the dominant media discourses, we envisage a rich potential for provoking political debate on the revaluation of care.