Intimacy at stake: Transnational migration and the separation of family

Abstract

The issue of “separation of families” has emerged in the debate over immigration as a humanistic appeal to those who favor a legal absolutist approach to deportation. However, the image of the “family” privileged in this national discussion mobilizes a highly gendered, racialized, and monolithic portrayal of the ideal US Latino family unit to the exclusion of the many relationships forged in the context of transnational migration which are not limited to those of “nuclear families.” This article explores how the act of kinning, or creating family, among migrants exceeds the conventional emphasis on mainstream notions of the idealized Latino family. I turn to the concept of “chosen families” as a way of conceptualizing the vernacular theorizing migrants engage in creating complex relationships of intimacy amid the challenging pressures of transnational mobility, which I argue must be woven into conversations surrounding the social injury of deportation.