From C.Y. Lee to Shawn Wong: The Transnational Family and its Implicit Rules

Employing the distinction between explicit and implicit rules as formulated by psychoanalytic theorist and philosopher Slavoj Žižek, this article examines the way in which challenges toward an initial rule-based fantasy take place within transnational families. In particular, the article employs an implicit, unwritten rules framework to assess the effect of transpacific migration on the institution of family within the Chinese American diaspora as represented in post-World War II fiction by Asian Pacific authors C.Y. Lee and Shawn Wong. Suggesting five implicit rules underpinning Chinese American families, the article examines Lee’s The Flower Drum Songto highlight early challenges to these rules before finding in Wong’s Homebasean unflinching adherence to an implicit rule concerning reverence for ancestors. Wong has the advantage of writing in the wake of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act and of being in a position to trace more and more challenges to the initial fantasy following later waves of transpacific migration. His novel American Kneesis then shown to epitomize the implicit rules being stretched almost to breaking point as, for instance, the criteria for spouse selection becomes no longer Chinese or partially Chineseor even Asian or partially Asian but Americanization.

Transnational Cross-Border Family Ties: Diasporic Lives of Bangladeshis in Italy and Beyond

The scope of this paper is to gain a better understanding of how Bangladeshi migrants in Italy maintain transnational family attachments, across multiple destinations, with the home country as well as with several host countries. The data comes from fieldwork in Northeast Italy. Research methods include in-depth interviews and participant observation. The findings reveal that a high proportion of Bangladeshi migrants maintain a variety of transnational and diasporic ties with their family and friends living in the country of origin and different European countries. These include family obligations, remittances, establishing businesses back home, visits and communication. They also preserve their national identity in this host society by maintaining cultural ways of belonging and through religious practices and involvement in Bangladeshi politics. The findings have also shown that Italian Bangladeshi families work to foster transnational family ties among the new generations born in Italy, who have little knowledge of their ancestral country. On a final note, this paper argues that transnational connections with the homeland play an important role in shaping the diasporic lives of Bangladeshis in Italy.

Transnational Caregiving for Older Adults and Caregivers’ Wellness in Japanese Americans during the Pandemic

Global migration has greatly affected intergenerational family support beyond national borders, in particular adult children’s transnational family caregiving for elderly parents. Specifically, the COVID-19 pandemic has largely influenced transnational caregiving due to the travel restrictions. Transnational caregiving for older adults includes adult children’s periodical returning to their home country and/or adult children’s caregiving for their parents in their settled country. The goal of this study was to identify trajectories between adult children’s transnational caregiving for their parents and caregivers’ wellness in Japanese Americans before and during the pandemic. We conducted semi-structured interviews with Japanese Americans 40 to 59 years of age (N=20) in California before the lockdown and during the increasing number of patients infected with the Delta variant. The qualitative data analysis showed some Japanese Americans periodically returned to Japan to provide caregiving for their parents before the pandemic, while others didn’t. However, the former group currently relied on their families in their home country more than before. The limitations led to not only distress over uncertainty but also release from a strong sense of reciprocity and filial responsibility, by changing from physical support to emotional and financial support via online. They also enhanced cultural identity as Japanese Americans, by thriving from discrimination against Asian Americans. Thus, our findings demonstrate important factors that impacted on transnational caregiving and caregivers' wellness, including cultural identity, family norms, beliefs and practices of intergenerational support, social and historical contexts, financial remittance, ICT use, and healthcare policies among the underrepresented populations across the Pacific.

Mobile phones, non-human agents at the service of assisted reproduction: monitoring and gendered dual allegiance

For sub-Saharan women enrolled in a protocol for assisted reproductive technology (ART), the use of mobile phones entails dual allegiance: toward the services of reproductive medicine and toward their transnational family. Indispensable for medically monitoring women’s reproductive bodies, the mobile phone enters the process for producing female gametes and contributes to the gender asymmetry typical of biomedicalized procreation. It is also used to maintain contacts with transnational family members who, from a distance, obtrude in the woman’s reproductive life. The use of mobile phones extends biomedical power over the woman’s body into her everyday life and the normative power of her transnational family into reproduction. Paradoxically, the mobile telephone allows collateral relatives to support the woman seeking reproduction assistance while also “hypermedicalizing” the woman’s daily life. Also paradoxically, this everyday companion is conductive to individual autonomy while also being used for new forms of surveillance and control. The data come from fieldwork conducted in the greater Paris area between 2011 and 2013 within a network of ART professionals and their patients.

Precarious Hope: Situated Perspectives on the COVID-19 Pandemic from Undergraduate Students in Manchester, UK

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on the lives of young people, transforming and disrupting education provision, employment opportunities, social practices, mobilities, and experiences of health and well-being. In the UK context, the pandemic can be understood as both a unique event and as a further addition to the intersecting crises—including austerity and Brexit—that are increasingly shaping and constraining youth experiences and aspirations and exacerbating precarity and inequality. In this article, seven undergraduate students from Manchester, UK, with two academic co-authors, employ a co-productive approach to reflect on our experiences of the pandemic. Our autoethnographic accounts draw attention to the situated effects of the pandemic, and its intersection with existing challenges and pressures, including the gig economy, mental and physical ill health, and transnational family networks. At the same time, our narratives capture a sense of precarious hope: hopefulness that is both a product of precarity and itself precarious, opening up new possibilities for collectively imagining and pursuing viable and meaningful futures in uncertain times. Supporting our endeavours requires the inclusion of youth voices in research, policy, and practice; work we begin here.

Social remittances during COVID-19: on the “new normality” negotiated by transnational families

Social remittances- the transfer of ideas, practices, and codes of behaviors- are a well-documented subject in migrant transnationalism literature and transnational family studies. However, the COVID-19 (coronavirus) outbreak has generated unprecedented regulations around the world which require widening the conceptual basis of social remittances in a state of emergency. As the pandemic progresses, most countries require civilians to follow a number of norms deemed as the “new normality,” while other countries continue to operate under their “old normality,” with minor or no restrictions. As national pandemic policy responses vary across countries, transnational families live under different regimes of “normality.” In these settings, the study of transnational families offers a valuable opportunity to examine a special type of social remittances practiced during global crises, and analyze whether the exchange of rules, practices, and ideas across national borders has any impact on re-shaping and renegotiating pandemic-coping “new normality” practices for both migrants and their families. The paper is based on 13 in-depth interviews conducted with representatives from Armenian transnational families with migrant members in Russia, the Czech Republic, or Belarus. These countries provide a backdrop for an examination of social remittances among transnational families that we term “pandemic transnationalism.” The study shows that the circulation of safety rules and “good practices” actively shapes the everyday behavior of migrants and their families, their level of perceived danger towards the coronavirus, and their practical knowledge of safety measures. The latter are often harnessed in informal collective settings despite being in conflict with the obligations and regulations of their home society.

Love’s Labour’s Lost? Separation as a Constraint on Displays of Transnational Daughterhood

This article develops sociological knowledge on daughterhood through an analysis of how separation shapes the emotional and moral dynamics of transnational daughterhood. Building on Finch, we look at daughtering as a set of concrete social practices that constitute kinship and carry the symbolic dimension of displaying the family-like character of relationships. Within this framework, we analyse how Latin American women living in Barcelona discuss their transnational family lives and filial responsibilities. We see family as finite, evolving in the past, present and future, and develop a threefold understanding of filial love as an institution imbued with formal expectations, a strong and complex emotion, and reciprocal embodied caring. We consider persisting physical separation in migration as a circumstance that demands not only practical solutions but also ongoing moral labour that sustains transnational bonds and notions of being a ‘good enough’ daughter.

The Cost of “A Better Life”: Children Left Behind—Beyond Ambiguous Loss

Aim: The aim of the study is to learn how children left behind in El Salvador and Nicaragua, due to parental migration, experience care across borders. Demographics: 80 participants: adolescents ( n = 21; age 13–18 years; 11 females and 10 males); emerging adults ( n = 10; age 19–30 years; whose parents had migrated when they were children); grandparents and guardians caring for children whose parents had migrated ( n = 14; 12 females and 2 males); professionals (social workers, nurses, lawyers, and teachers); and community leaders involved and/or working directly with children and youth whose parents had immigrated ( n = 35). Methodology: Using grounded theory, the study began with one sensitizing concept: parental migration. Analysis: Modified grounded theory principles centered the exploratory nature of the study. Findings: The reconfiguration of the family after parental migration did not meet the emotional needs of children, challenging notions of a “better life.” Implications: These experiences are redefining notions of the transnational family through new geographies of care.

BETWEEN INCLUSION & EXCLUSION: THE DIGITAL LIVES OF UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS IN THE UNITED STATES

Undocumented immigrants are a highly vulnerable group that can both benefit and suffer from digital technologies. However, little is known about their digital inclusion and the ways in which this amplifies or attenuates the vulnerabilities of their undocumented status. This paper provides rare and novel evidence from 44 in-depth interviews with undocumented Latino immigrants in the United States. It reports on findings regarding the digital employment of undocumented immigrants, the use of the internet in supporting their transnational family practices, and their uses and attitudes towards telehealth services. It highlights the importance of providing insight and analysis on digital life at the margins of society.