Global Migration and Family Change in the Baltic Sea Region

Abstract

Global migration rapidly modifies family life in the Baltic Sea region and, for the several last decades, has presented a challenge to migration scholars. The impact of migration on a family attracts the interest of researchers not only because the number of such families is on the rise, but also because it poses certain challenges to the academic discipline, especially when it comes to revising family theories rooted in the ‘low-mobility’ family discourse. The purpose of this article is to review the impact of global migration on family life in the Baltic Sea region, introduce the ‘family change’ perspective for studying migrant families and, to provide an example of how to apply this perspective, by examining the migratory experience of the Lithuanian families. The article demonstrates that the Baltic Sea region can be considered as heterogeneous in regard to migration patterns as well as challenges and opportunities facing its families. To facilitate the analysis of migrant families, the authors of the article propose the ‘family change’ perspective, which is based on the ideas about interactions, orders and identities articulated by symbolic interactionism, and further supplement these ideas with contemporary awareness about the imagined family configuration structure; the suffusion of intergenerational, kin, and personal relationships; and the analysis of family change with a perspective of memory and temporal dimensions. We draw data from the mixed method study conducted from 2012 to 2014 to analyze the migratory experience of Lithuanian families. We discuss familial resources as a latent relationship matrix that can be activated in the case of migration and emphasize the overlap of kin and non-kin ties in this matrix. We also reveal the importance of family relationships in conceptualizing migrant families and demonstrate how role behavior and related identities could constitute an axis for the study of migratory behavior.