Abstract
This chapter is set up to incorporate Finch’s idea of ‘display’ to examine how migrant parents, adult migrant children, and close significant persons perform a set of actions to convey to each other and the society at large that these are family-doing activities. The authors sought to demonstrate that the concept of ‘display’ could be applied to analyze transnational practices of parenting and caring for elderly parents in a quantitative way. The chapter draws on the data from a quotabased survey (N = 304) of three types of transnational families: mother-away and father-away with under-aged children living in Lithuania and adult child-away with elderly parents needing care living in Lithuania. The study was carried out in August 2018 as part of the research project ‘Global Migration and Lithuanian Family: Family Practices, Circulation of Care, and the Return Strategies’.
Highlights
Transnational family studies tell us that experiencing migration leads individuals to reorganize family configurations, family relationships, and care arrangements
We incorporated Finch’s idea of ‘display’ to examine how migrant parents, adult migrant children, and close significant persons perform a set of actions to show to each other and the society at large that they perform activities signaling their commitment to family members staying behind in the home country
Unlike the studies conducted by other family sociologists relying on qualitative methods, we sought to demonstrate that the concept of ‘display’ could be applied to analyze transnational practices of parenting and caring for elderly parents in a quantitative way
Summary
Transnational family studies tell us that experiencing migration leads individuals to reorganize family configurations, family relationships, and care arrangements (see Bryceson and Vuorela, 2002; Baldassar and Merla, 2014; Crespi et al, 2018). Various research studies of transnational family life show that circulation of care within cross-border family networks plays a crucial role in maintaining the sense of ‘familyhood’. Examining how care circulates among family members on one hand, and between family and extended kin networks on the other, the researchers – starting with Baldassar and Merla (2014) – conceptualize care as a multidirectional process and refer to the ‘care circulation’ framework. In order to examine transnational family structures and networks beyond the nuclear, co-residential, two-generation households, the researchers rely on the ‘family configurational’ approach formulated by Widmer (2010; Widmer and Jallinoja, 2008). Researchers are used to examining long-distance relationships within transnational families through the lens of ‘intergenerational solidarity’ approach (Bengtson and Schrader, 1982; Bengtson and Roberts, 1991; Silverstein et al, 2010), or through the ‘life course’ perspective emphasizing transnational family transitions experienced by individuals (see Bernardi, 2011; Wall and Bolzman, 2014; Kobayashi and Preston, 2007)
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