Families’ Emotion Work in Transnational Settings: The Case of Military Families

Abstract

Combining literature on transnational families, migrant workers, and expatriates, I suggest a reconceptualization of military service personnel’s labour during overseas deployment as transnational. Further, I argue that during deployments, military families are thus transnational families who experience unique issues related to their geographical separation. To illustrate this, I explore the way in which military families access information and communications technology in order to maintain relationships across geographical distances, emphasizing the emotional labour of military service personnel and their families. I conclude that conceiving of military service personnel as transnational labourers enables a more nuanced understanding of transnational labour in the context of globalization, one which acknowledges a “grey area” between an ideological dichotomy that places poor manual labourers from developing countries (migrants) in contrast to rich knowledge workers from developed countries (expatriates) with little recognition of the diversity of transnational lives in between.