Family Migration History Research Articles

National Identities, Migration Histories and Attitudes to Independence in Scotland

This article uses data from the 2021 Scottish Election Study to apply both established and relatively rare or unique approaches to understanding the interrelationships between personal national identities, attitudes regarding the (Scottish) nation and independence, and people's own/family migration histories. Analysis broadly substantiates previous research in Scotland on the effects of birthplace, parentage and length of residence on national identities, and similarly highlights that previously established ‘non-alignment’ between national identities and position on Scottish independence extends to how the latter is associated with personal and family migration histories. The paper also makes at least three distinctive contributions. First, it highlights the significance of socialisation in Scotland, particularly in early childhood, for migrants’ personal national identities and attitudes to Scottish nationhood and independence. Second, it suggests only limited variation in the degree to which personal biographical characteristics are associated with perceptions that Scotland has distinct values compared to other parts of the UK. Third, it demonstrates that social connections to England via birthplace, family and/or prior residence do not invariably affect national identities and attitudes to Scottish independence, but that those with the strongest associations to England are substantially less likely to prioritise a Scottish identity or support Scottish independence.

Parental migration, socioeconomic deprivation and hospital admissions in preschool children in England: national birth cohort study, 2008 to 2014

BackgroundA third of children born in England have at least one parent born outside the United Kingdom (UK), yet family migration history is infrequently studied as a social determinant of child health. We describe rates of hospital admissions in children aged up to 5 years by parental migration and socioeconomic group.MethodsBirth registrations linked to Hospital Episode Statistics were used to derive a cohort of 4,174,596 children born in state-funded hospitals in England between 2008 and 2014, with follow-up until age 5 years. We looked at eight maternal regions of birth, maternal country of birth for the 6 most populous groups and parental migration status for the mother and second parent (UK-born/non-UK-born). We used Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) quintiles to indicate socioeconomic deprivation. We fitted negative binomial/Poisson regression models to model associations between parental migration groups and the risk of hospital admissions, including interactions with IMD group.ResultsOverall, children whose parents were both born abroad had lower emergency admission rates than children with parents both born in the UK. Children of UK-born (73.6% of the cohort) mothers had the highest rates of emergency admissions (171.6 per 1000 child-years, 95% confidence interval (CI) 171.4–171.9), followed by South Asia-born mothers (155.9 per 1000, 95% CI 155.1–156.7). The high rates estimated in the South Asia group were driven by children of women born in Pakistan (186.8 per 1000, 95% CI 185.4–188.2). A socioeconomic gradient in emergency admissions was present across all maternal regions of birth groups, but most pronounced among children of UK-born mothers (incidence rate ratio 1.43, 95% CI 1.42–1.44, high vs. low IMD group). Patterns of planned admissions followed a similar socioeconomic gradient and were highest among children with mothers born in Middle East and North Africa, and South Asia.ConclusionsOverall, we found the highest emergency admission rates among children of UK-born parents from the most deprived backgrounds. However, patterns differed when decomposing maternal place of birth and admission reason, highlighting the importance of a nuanced approach to research on migration and health.

The intergenerational transmission of migration capital: The role of family migration history and lived migration experiences

The intergenerational transmission of migration capital: The role of family migration history and lived migration experiences

Families’ discursive practices in data discussions about migration histories

ABSTRACT Large-scale data and data visualizations are ubiquitous now in the stories that shape our society. In particular, these stories influence youth and families’ communication and understanding of scientific, social, and personal issues. Consequently, we need to better understand how youth and families can engage and learn with the tools that generate such narratives. This study reports on a qualitative analysis of 13 data discussions with families that used data visualization tools to explore georeferenced data connected to their family migration histories. We developed the Co-Construct, Situate, Advance a Theory (CSAT) model, from family cases, which details the discursive and interactional processes by which families tell personal stories grounded in data displays. Extending earlier studies of storytelling as theory-building in family conversations, our model provides an understanding of families’ discursive practices around data exploration. We discuss implications for family learning with data technologies.

Editorial: The diversification of the teaching profession in Europe and beyond. Ambivalences of recognition in the context of (forced) migration

The topic of teacher diversification relating to migration has come to the fore in recent years in many European countries and beyond. This Special Issue focuses on the ambivalent structures of recognition in national school systems regarding the situation of international teachers on the one side, as well as teachers with a family migration history on the other. Addressing these teachers’ experiences of migration discourses and structural barriers in the respective societies, without framing them as ‘the other’ teachers, is central to the intertwining of the teaching profession and migration. First, the topic of teacher diversification is introduced as a policy issue on a European level as well as on a national level in European countries. Second, recognition as an ambivalent theoretical concept is presented. Third, we use this perspective to point out dimensions of ambivalence of recognition for migrant teachers that become visible in the research presented in this Special Issue from Australia, Austria, Germany, Ireland, Sweden and Switzerland: formal (non-)recognition of professional certificates and experiences of international teachers, social recognition and misrecognition as well as recognition as a (powerful) practice of subject constitution in the context of migration research.

Urban Nature and Public Health: How Nature Exposure and Sociocultural Background Relate to Depression Risk.

As the world’s population becomes more urbanized, there is an associated decrease in nature exposure and a rise in noncommunicable diseases, including depression. Previous cross-sectional studies examining urban nature exposure and depression have reported favorable associations. However, many of these studies rely primarily on nature exposure metrics that measure the intensity of nature exposure, while other dimensions of urban nature exposure remain understudied. Therefore, in a cross-sectional, questionnaire-based case study targeting a general urban population (n = 282), we examined the relationship between two less commonly studied urban nature exposure variables (i.e., gardening behavior and greenspace visit frequency) and depression risk while also considering sociocultural background (multivariate logistic regression model). Results indicated that being a gardener was significantly associated with a reduced odds of being at risk of depression and that having a family migration history, but not a self-migration history, was associated with increased odds of being at risk of depression. In the examination of neighborhood socialization frequency and depression risk, we did not determine any significant association. The results of this study, therefore, highlight the importance of considering both people’s sociocultural backgrounds and urban nature exposure in more detail to help plan for and support healthier cities in the future.

When parents are not present: Decision-making dynamics for young children's health and illness in migrant-sending households in rural Cambodia

As migration rates increase globally, an increasing proportion of children in low- and middle-income countries live apart from their parents. In particular, skipped-generation households are becoming more common, with grandparents serving as primary caregivers for young grandchildren whose parents migrate and provide remittance support. Yet, how families living apart make decisions for young children's healthcare is not well understood. Processes of care seeking for children's health are examined in Cambodia, which has high rates of internal and international migration, and an increasing number of skipped-generation households. We conducted semi-structured in-depth interviews with grandparents who are primary caregivers for children under ten in skipped-generation households in rural migrant-sending areas. Respondents discussed their family's migration history, care seeking and decision making for grandchildren, dynamics with absent migrant parents, and sources of support. Decisions for children's care are intimately tied to the availability of migrant remittances, which are the modality of the relationship between grandparents and parents. Additional remittance support allows grandparents to make decisions for grandchildren's health based on convenience rather than cost, given the burdens of caring grandparents have taken on a result of the parent's migration. Instrumental supports such as in-kind assistance and informational supports further facilitated children's access to healthcare. This qualitative study informs and explains findings from recent quantitative studies of migration and child health.

Migrating Family Owners and Strategic Change Performance: Unpacking the Imprinting Effects

The U.S. is an attractive melting pot for immigrants and has some of the highest domestic migration rates. A notable migration group is family business owners whose first-generation wealth makers business headquarters originated from other regions or countries. These businesses have migrated from their home headquarters, exposing their family businesses to the imprinting effects of the family migration history. This history represents an essential aspect of the family business that can influence how the family responds to environmental changes and informs their strategic performance. Using panel data from 3,369 family-firm-year observations to examine how the migration history of the family business influenced the firm’s strategic performance. Our results indicate that the family migration history of family blockholders influences a firm’s strategic performance through family governance characteristics and industry environmental uncertainty. These results illustrate how the family migration history influences the firm’s adaption and imprints onto the organization, influencing future strategic changes.

Learning with large, complex data and visualizations: youth data wrangling in modeling family migration

ABSTRACT We present a micro-analysis of youth interactions with large complex, socioeconomic datasets and data visualization tools. Middle and high school youth used georeferenced data and data visualization tools to assemble models that present their family migration histories in relation to larger socioeconomic trends in a summer program. Using screen-capture and video recordings, field notes, and artifacts, we analyzed youth’s step-by-step decision-making and interaction with data interfaces in data wrangling, which we define as the practices for selecting, interpreting, and integrating datasets in order to build meaningful data displays and tell a story with the data. We identify patterns in youth’s data wrangling trajectories and propose a conceptual model for describing the stages (Find, Relate, Challenge, Build) of youth learning to construct models and tell stories about family migration. In addition, we highlight student struggles and opportunities for learning to be explored in future learning environment designs with large, complex datasets and data interfaces.

Telling Migration Stories: Course Connections and Building Classroom Community

This commentary shares an assignment on family migration stories from an upper-division undergraduate course on global migration. The assignment, which asks students to interview each other about their family migration histories and then analyze their partner’s story, requires students to apply course readings to the real-world context of their peers’ experiences. The commentary provides an overview of the assignment and challenges students encountered. I also highlight the lessons learned, both in terms of course content and classroom community. The large public teaching university where I work is a Hispanic-serving institution and is home to around 1,000 undocumented students. Many more students are immigrants or the children of immigrants. Bringing in students’ personal experiences with migration serves to build academic confidence and classroom community among these mostly first-generation students while building connections among students and setting the tone for the course as a whole. It positions students as experts and valuable members of our classroom learning community, while recognizing the importance of their experiences with issues of culture and identity, xenophobia, transnational family-life, immigration enforcement, and immigration status. The assignment also disrupts narrow assimilationist narratives of migration by highlighting the diversity of students’ migration histories.

Growing up with a long-awaited nation-state: Personal struggles with the homeland among young diasporic Armenians

This paper explores identification with the nation-state as homeland among young diasporic Armenians in France, Russia and the United Kingdom (UK). For dispersed Armenian communities worldwide, the emergence of a fragile nation-state since 1991 has represented a form of collective goal fulfilment accompanied at times by disillusionment in the national myth of the homeland as a place of sanctuary. We argue that the resulting shift in understandings of homeland markedly differentiates the diasporic experiences of Armenians of diverse backgrounds growing up in the post-independence era from those of previous generations. Key to this shift are ambivalent dynamics between memory and myth integral to personal struggles with the homeland. Analysing original interviews with Armenians aged 18 to 35 in three host states, we unpack how memories of contact with the Armenian state accumulated in youth interact with national myths about the homeland in the context of different family migration histories. The active engagement of young people with homeland myths is shown to play an important role in their recollections of first formative visits to Armenia. Through more regular contact with the state, disappointment in elements of politics and culture that clash with personal imaginings of the homeland can lead to ambivalence in identifying with Armenia. Ultimately, the state plays a key orienting role for many young diasporic Armenians, but clashes between recalled encounters and myths concerning the state can render it a place of partial belonging, unable to fulfil the ideals of the diasporic imagination. The findings highlight the value of attending to interaction between memory and myth in diasporic engagement with ‘homeland’ states more broadly.

Framing and immigration through the trump era

AbstractFor the last decade, undocumented or illegal immigration has been one of the most contested policy issues in the United States, with significant news attention on policies affecting the undocumented population, ranging from deportations to comprehensive immigration reform, the DREAM Act, and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Despite these prominent and multifaceted policy debates, scholarship on media framing and public opinion remain more focused on the portrayal of immigrants rather than policies affecting them. In general, scholars find that policy frames are far more consequential to public opinion than equivalency frames (variations in how news media describe unauthorized immigrants, either as “illegal” or “undocumented”) or episodic frames (whether news articles are heavy on human‐interest stories rather than policy facts and statistics). Also, negative frames generally have stronger effects than positive frames, and these effects sometimes vary by partisanship and family migration history. Finally, the relative infrequency of powerful frames in news stories, like a life spent in the United States, provides opportunities for advocates to move public opinion on immigration policy. These findings have important implications for future battles over immigration policy in the United States, which show no signs of abating.

Intergenerational and interethnic mental health: An analysis for the United Kingdom

AbstractThis paper uses a nationally representative data set to examine the extent to which family migration history helps explains interethnic variations in mental health in the United Kingdom. We confirm that there is significant variation in mental health across ethnic group and generation of migration. Furthermore, we show how these dimensions interact. The analysis explores the extent to which neighbourhood, personal characteristics, and migration experience are related to mental health. We find evidence that all are important. Our results are consistent with a dynamic view of migration and settlement whereby individuals' circumstances and how they might contribute to mental health change over time and across generations.

Connotations of ancestral home: An exploration of place attachment by multiple generations of Chinese diaspora

AbstractThis paper explores the connotations of ancestral home by investigating how multiple generations of Chinese migrants sustain their place attachment to China. Based on 50 in‐depth interviews with Chinese migrants from the first to the sixth generation, we unpacked the meanings of ancestral home from the “place,” “person,” and “process” dimensions and identified 3 types of connections: personally attached to ancestral home, cognitively connected to a generic China and the Chinese culture, and spiritually connected to a symbolic China. Factors were identified in each type of place attachment in illustrating how Chinese diaspora members sustain their ancestral home connections. The personally attached group ground their attachment in strongly valued personal involvement with the physical and social ties. They are more sensitive to migration background, social relationships, and home return mobility. The cognitively connected group, in contrast, is more aware of the influence of their own families and the Chinese communities and embed their connections in understandings, knowledge, and Chinese cultural practices. The spiritually connected group maintain their connection through collective memories, sense of pride and appreciation for family ancestry, and interests in personal past. The findings suggest that the meanings of ancestral home are diverse and dynamic, reflecting both individual and family's migration history, personal experiences, cultural exposures, social relationships, and mobility. This study offers empirical insights into diaspora members' experiences of engaging with their place of origin and contributes to the understanding of place attachment by integrating a generational view.

Hakka genealogical migration analysis enhancement using big data on library services

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the data connection, spatial distribution characteristics and trends in genealogical information. First, it implements a spatial-temporal visualization of the Hakka genealogical information system that makes these individual family pedigree charts appear as one seamless genealogy to family and researchers seeking connections and family history all over the world. Second, this study applies migration analysis by applying big data technologies to Hakka genealogies to investigate the migration patterns of the Hakka ethnic group in Taiwan between 1954 and 2014. This innovative library service enhances the Hakka genealogical migration analysis using big data.Design/methodology/approachThe platform is designed for the exchange of genealogical data to be used in big data analysis. This study integrates big data and geographic information systems (GIS) to map the population distribution themes. The general procedure included collecting genealogical big data, geographic encoding, gathering the map information, GIS layer integration and migration map production.FindingsThe analytical results demonstrate that big data technology is highly appropriate for family migration history analysis, given the increasing volume, velocity and variety of genealogical data. The spatial-temporal visualization of the genealogical research platform can follow family history and migration paths, and dynamically generate roadmaps to simplify the cartographic steps.Practical implicationsTechnology that combines big data and GIS is suitable for performing migration analysis based on genealogy. A web-based application for spatial-temporal genealogical information also demonstrates the contribution of innovative library services.Social implicationsBig data play a dominant role in library services, and in turn, provide an active library service. These findings indicate that big data technology can provide a suitable tool for improving library services.Originality/valueOnline genealogy and family trees are linked with large-volume, growing data sets that are complex and have multiple, autonomous sources. The migration analysis using big data has the potential to help genealogy researchers to construct minority ethnic history.

Effects of place attachment on home return travel: a spatial perspective

ABSTRACTRecent studies on place--mobility relationships suggest an increasing possibility that people can have multiple place attachments at varied spatial scales. Yet, our understanding of how place attachment in different spatial scales affects mobility remains limited. This study investigates home return visits by Chinese diaspora tourists from North America who have made multiple trips to China. A total of 27 in-depth interviews with repeat home return travellers were conducted. Four different types of return movements were identified: local; dispersed; local & dispersed; and second-migration locale focused. A relationship was found between the participants’ sense of place, place identity, and home return travel. The findings suggest that home return travel is more complex than previously thought. More focused sense of place and strong personal connection to ancestral homes may lead to more localized return, while a more generic sense of place (i.e. to ‘China’) and collective personal identity would result in a more dispersed travel pattern. Family migration history and strong attachment to family's first-migration destination also lead to focused return to the place. The study highlights the fact that place and place attachment are deeply personal and can evolve over time and space.

Javanese Cultural Socialization in Family and Ethnic Identity Formation of Javanese Adolescent Migrant at Lampung Province

Javanese adolescent migrants interactions in family across generations at multicultural society in Lampung stimulates a dynamic atmosphere for adolescent ethnic identity formation. Through socialization, the adolescent acquires Javanese cultural information as a foundation to develop their ethnic identity. This research aims are to know, find and analyze the cultural socialization aspects in family that support ethnic identity formation of Javanese adolescent migrants in Lampung. Throughout qualitative research, this research showed that socialization and ethnic identity formation in family is based on six themes : (1) family migration history; (2) adopted and referred family culture; (3) family identity development; (4) parenting style and amount of time spend for interaction in family and parent’s type of job ; (5) language used within the family; and (6) situations that support and obstruct of expression of ethnic identity.

‘There’s no future here’: The time and place of children’s migration aspirations in Peru

This article examines young Peruvians’ aspirations and the role of migration in their imagined futures, from a generational perspective. The data come from Young Lives, a long-term study of childhood poverty combining survey and qualitative approaches with children and their parents. The paper uses a biographical approach that sees migration as part of individual biographies as well as social structures and life course processes. The aim is to deepen understanding of the social contexts in which aspirations for and by children are generated, paying close attention to family migration histories, dynamic household contexts, and children’s migration networks. The analysis focuses on the time-spaces of migration aspirations, showing the way past, present and future are interconnected. It also emplaces aspirations by focusing on the way aspirations by and for children are constituted in and through particular places. The conclusion reflects on the role of poverty and argues that ‘aspirations’ are about much more than abstract ‘futures’; they orient actions in the present and say a great deal about young people’s current realities and relationships.

Some Ideas for Teaching the Home State Geography Course

One hundred-thirty-six colleges and universities in 40 states offer home state geography courses. Enrollment in these courses ranks second among all geography courses. Because state departments of education and local school boards regularly require social studies teachers to teach home state geography, the demand for this course should remain high. This article discusses three exercises for the home state course that tap the store of knowledge possessed by a classroom of home state residents. The exercises include a family migration history, a review of a home state novel, and a self-guided field trip. The family migration history invites students to place their families into the home state's settlement history. The book review introduces students to popular geography written by home state novelists. Students' training in home state geography culminates with a field trip exercise that asks them to travel to, and report on, new or familiar places in the home state.

Family migration history: A project in introductory cultural geography

(1977). Family migration history: A project in introductory cultural geography. Journal of Geography: Vol. 76, No. 6, pp. 215-224.