This handbook compiles the most up-to-date research on transnational families. It employs a dialogue between classical approaches and cutting-edge directions in transnational family research to identify continuities and changes in terms of socioeconomic disparities and actors, and to analyze coexistence. Further, the volume adopts a twofold global and international comparative perspective. On the one hand, it focuses on different migratory flows around the world and describes their entangled logics; on the other, it is written by an international group of contributors, with a diverse range of professional backgrounds. Their contributions are based on sound empirical research, and explore geographical regions around the world. The handbook presents different thematic perspectives on transnational families, including an analytical focus on gender, global sociodemographic inequalities, power asymmetries, and border- and mobility regimes, as well as the organization of transnational care, transnational fatherhood, ageing, family reunions and return. It also includes a variety of methodological approaches to transnational family research, ranging from ethnography, biographical research, and life-course methods, to multi-sited approaches and quantitative surveys. Investigating an emergent debate, it sheds new light on migratory fluxes, their common and specific determinants, the types of actors involved, and ways to empirically and methodologically approach them. This is a must-read reference for social scientists interested in family research, migration, and gender studies. Chapter 7 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

'Aging within Transnational Families' is the first book to provide a multi-method approach to studying aging across borders. By asking how, why and to what extent do older Peruvians engage in transnational family ties and practices, the book enhances our knowledge about aging across borders. Drawing on the care circulation framework and the capacity and desire approach, it explores the motivations of older Peruvians’ transnational involvement as well as the factors influencing the scope and propensity of their cross-border practices. From a lifecourse perspective, the book asks how age relates to older Peruvian migrants’ integration into the host society and engagement in the sending of remittances and visits of family members in Peru. Exploring the prevalence and structuring features of family-related transnational practices against the backdrop of different migration regimes 'Aging within Transnational Families' shows how policies affect transnational family configurations and the role of older people within them.

Without denying the difficulties that confront migrants and their distant kin, this volume highlights the agency of family members in transnational processes of care, in an effort to acknowledge the transnational family as an increasingly common family form and to question the predominantly negative conceptualisations of this type of family. It re-conceptualises transnational care as a set of activities that circulates between home and host countries - across generations - and fluctuates over the life course, going beyond a focus on mother-child relationships to include multidirectional exchanges across generations and between genders. It highlights, in particular, how the sense of belonging in transnational families is sustained by the reciprocal, though uneven, exchange of caregiving, which binds members together in intergenerational networks of reciprocity and obligation, love and trust that are simultaneously fraught with tension, contest and relations of unequal power. The chapters that make up this volume cover a rich array of ethnographic case studies including analyses of transnational families who circulate care between developing nations in Africa, Latin America and Asia to wealthier nations in North America, Europe and Australia. There are also examples of intra- and extra- European, Australian and North American migration, which involve the mobility of both the unskilled and working class as well as the skilled middle and aspirational classes.

Offering a transnational perspective on the processes of identity transmission and identity construction of mixed families in various parts of the world, this book provides an overview of how local, national, global contexts and inter-group relations structure the development of specific forms of belonging and identification. Featuring nine rich ethnographic studies situated in geographic areas less covered by scholarship on mixed families such as Québec, Morocco, Italy, France, Switzerland, Belgium, the Philippines, Thailand and Israel, the book’s contributions reveal how families’ everyday lives are shaped by historical and sociopolitical contexts, as well as by transnational dynamics and mobility trajectories. The studies illustrate the context-specific realities that shape social definitions of mixedness—whether religious, national, cultural, ethnic or racial—at local and transnational levels. The articulation of local and transnational perspectives on mixed families will be of interest to students and scholars of migration, transnationalism, families, ethnicity, race and racism in the social sciences (anthropology, sociology, history, social work, international relations and global studies). The book will also be of interest to policymakers, as well as activists and practitioners working in organizations offering services to mixed individuals, migrants, and their families.

This book explores novel aspects of transnational family research through the study of Romanian transnational families. A range of topics are covered, including the impact of lodging type upon life strategies; understudied elements in transnational relationships; gender roles in transnational communication; multinational relationships; the role of polymedia in the formation of couples; and the lives of the children of Romanian transnational families. The author presents the experiences of ‘leavers’ as well as of ‘stayers’; of the ‘highly-skilled’ as well as the ‘low-skilled’; that of women and that of men - through individual testimonies and couple interviews. Romanian Transnational Families will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including sociology, politics, anthropology and geography. Chapter 3 and Chapter 5 of this book are available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com

The research presented in this book explores care and its circulation in Chinese transnational families that are split between China and Spain, and the paths these families’ children have taken through their lives so far: from their early years to their current position as young adults, with care, in its multiple dimensions and timescales – past, present and future – as the unifying thread. In doing so, it provides a contribution to the emerging body of research about care and transnational families and it posits the need to question hegemonic models of family, childhood and care, and to give voice and visibility to other actors, moving beyond the adult-centred perspective that dominates migration research. The ethnographic approach together with the focus on the day-to-day lives of these families, in which care is the core concept, as it permeates people’s lives and traverses society generationally, makes this book appealing to both scholars and general public. The Conclusions chapter of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

This book examines the needs, aspirations, strategies, and challenges of transnational Muslim migrants in Europe with regard to family practices such as marriage, divorce, and parenting. Critically re-conceptualizing ‘wellbeing’ and unpacking its multiple dimensions in the context of Muslim families, it investigates how migrants make sense of and draw on different norms, laws, and regimes of knowledge as they navigate different aspects of family relations and life in a transnational social space. With attention to issues such as registration of marriage, civil versus religious marriage, spousal roles and rights, polygamy, parenting, child wellbeing, and everyday security, the authors offer national and comparative case studies of Muslim families from different parts of the world, covering different family bonds and relations, within both extended and nuclear families. Based on empirical research in the Nordic region and further afield, this volume affords a more complete understanding of the practices of transnational migrant families, as well as the processes through which family relations and rights are negotiated between family members and with state institutions and laws, whilst contributing to the growing literature on migrant wellbeing. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology and social policy with interests in migration and transnational communities, wellbeing, and the family.