Grandparents, kinship ties, and belonging after migration: the perspective of second‐generation grandchildren

Abstract

In this article, I investigate the roles of grandparents for second‐generation immigrants who live with their parents in a different country from their grandparents. I draw on in‐depth interviews with second‐generation Vietnamese immigrants living in the Czech Republic, where they are very often raised by Czech caregivers. The carers and the children are joined through the process of caregiving and become grandmothers and grandchildren to each other. The analysis focuses on how the interviewees make sense of, interpret, and understand their roles as grandchildren vis‐à‐vis their Czech and Vietnamese grandmothers. It shows how, after migration, the kinship ties are performed, negotiated, and reproduced on a micro level of everyday life, with tasks of caring, homeland visits, and a transnational/face‐to‐face maintenance of intimacy. The article concludes that grandparents play an important role in the grandchildren's sense of belonging both to their family kin and to the homeland.

Watching them grow: Intergenerational video‐calling among transnational families in the age of smartphones

“…The new technological tools at our disposal are making us reconsider what we in our corporeal existence have taken to denote separation and togetherness, allowing us to connect to distant family even while grocery shopping. Previous works have helped establish the field of digitalized family practices among transnational families (King‐O'Riain, 2015; Madianou & Miller, 2012; Moskal, 2017; Nedelcu, 2017), ‘doing family’ through ICTs (Baldassar et al., 2016; Chib et al., 2014; Madianou, 2012; Nedelcu & Wyss, 2016; Tiilikainen, 2017) and ways of fostering ‘virtual connectedness’ (Wilding, 2006) that transcend our geographical boundaries uniting different generations (Bangerter & Waldron, 2014; Gonzalez et al., 2012; Tarrant, 2010; McClure, 2015; Souralova, 2019).…”

“…It is argued that grandparents take on the challenge of mobility by providing support as caregivers across borders, who come to be defined as ‘flying nannies’ (Plaza, 2000) or the ‘zero generation’ migrants (Nedelcu, 2009). Furthermore, grandparents in second‐generation migrant families play a significant role in shaping the sense of ‘belonging’ in two different societies, both the destination country and the country of origin (Souralova, 2019). Thus, most studies on grandparenting in transnational families so far have focused either on conventional means of communication among the grandparents living at a distance and their migrant family or the physical presence of grandparents who mobilize across borders to support their families in times of need.…”

“…Likewise, Nedelcu (2017) expands this earlier research, illustrating the continuum between offline physical presence of mobile grandparents and online novel grandparenting duties across borders. The burgeoning field of intergenerational ties among transnational families in the digital era thus provides preliminary insights to everyday ICT use among transnational families and the role of grandparents as active participants of transnational socialization (Nedelcu, 2017; Nedelcu & Wyss, 2016; Sourlova, 2019). Yet, these initial studies remain limited in their scope for several reasons: (i) their analyses largely overlook the predominance of smartphones outweighing the use of computers with respect to real‐time audio or audio‐visual communications, (ii) they neglect the importance of intergenerational ties among three generations, including migrant children, migrant mothers as intermediaries and the ‘left‐behind’ grandparents, (iii) they do not consider how the younger generation adapts to such new technologies at an early age and (iv) most importantly, while signalling an important new phenomenon engendered by everyday ICT use in transnational families, they fail to analyse and elaborate systematically what actually are those recurrent daily routines that constitute new digitalized family practices and in what ways such ‘co‐presence’ impacts separated family members.…”

“…There is a rich and thriving new field that explores the impact of new digital technologies on the lives of migrants, including social media and migrant networks (Dekker & Engbersen, 2014; Komito, 2011), online practices of transnational families (Baldassar, Nedelcu, Merla, & Wilding, 2016; King‐O'Riain, 2015; Madianou & Miller, 2012; Nedelcu, 2017; Nedelcu & Wyss, 2016; Wilding, 2006), changing forms of motherhood in migration (Parreñas, 2005; Chib, Malik, Arikat, & Kadir, 2014; Gonzalez, Jomhari, & Kurniawan, 2012; Madianou, 2012), the experience of migrant children and those of grandparents (Bangerter & Waldron, 2014; Moskal, 2017; Tarrant, 2010; Tiilikainen, 2017; McClure, Chentsova‐Dutton, Barr, Holochwost & Parrot, 2015; Souralova, 2019). While the primary focus on the technology in question has either been international calls, SMS, emails, social media or more recently desktop Skype use, there is an evident gap in this field with regard to how the smartphone has replaced computer usage in maintaining everyday ties among transnational families.…”

Personal social networks as a superdiversity dimension: A qualitative approach with second-generation Americans

“…Other studies have focused on the relationship (and outcomes coming from it) between: second-generations and their families (Bayrakdar and Guveli, 2020; Choi et al, 2020; Coleman-Minahan and Samari, 2020; Kho et al, 2019; Souralová, 2020) or second-generations and their friend networks (Lauer and Yan, 2020).…”