Migrant Family Display: A Strategy for Achieving Recognition and Validation in the Host Country

Abstract

This article draws on the narratives of 10 migrant families living in a predominantly White British northern UK city, Hull, and brings together the typically distinct fields of the sociology of family, transnational family studies and migration studies. By uniquely applying the lens of family display to migrant family accounts, this article offers a timely new way to understand the strategies migrant families employ when negotiating recognition and validation in an increasingly globalised world. Existing applications of family display focus on what might be referred to as unconventional families: same-sex couples, dual-heritage families, single-parent households, and families living in commercial homes. Furthermore, previous migration studies consider the strategies employed by migrant individuals, sometimes within a family, but do not do so through the lens of family display. The concept has not, then, been applied to migrant families and their everyday lives, and with a specific focus on understanding the influence of audience in family display. This article, therefore, contributes to migration and transnational family studies by providing a new way of understanding migrant family lives, and also advancing the concept of family display in three clear ways: by showing that migrant families do display family to audiences beyond the family–including the State–so as to present as a ‘legitimate’ family; by expanding understanding of how family display is enacted; and by arguing that broader narratives influence those related to ‘family’ and impact on how and why migrant families engage in family displays.

Displaying grandparenting within Romanian transnational families

“…In the face of being accused by the domestic press of having abandoned their children, transnational mothers adopt various strategies in their attempts to act in a 'mother-like' fashion (Ducu 2013;Juozeliūnienė and Budginaitė 2018). Another example is when, as the external audience, the local community in the destination country questions the familyhood of transnational family members and they try to counter these challenges (Seymour and Walsh 2013;Walsh 2018). Finch (2011) emphasizes that, in her view, the act of displaying family is primarily to do with conveying meaning to 'significant others' within the family (for example, other family members).…”

Family display, family type, or community? Limitations in the application of a concept

“…Heaphy (2011) argues, however, that the wider audience is significant and that the concept of family display is flawed, because some family constructs are privileged and perceived to be more legitimate than others; their displays are Gabb (2011), for example, considers when teenage children of lesbian parent couples choose not to display family to omit displays in order to F H are weak displays 2011: 37) F 2007) the potential audience (whether within or external to the family) -being unwilling to receive, interpret and validate them as desirable alternatives to family. Walsh (2018) argues that display is complicated further in the context of multi-cultural communities. This is because, as Morgan argues, types of practices cultural, gendered and family F om scratch as they are going about family living.…”

“…elsewhere (Walsh, 2018: McNamee, 2016) but, more importantly, because all the authors have an interest in highlighting the active participation of children in their family practices (McNamee and Seymour, 2012;Walsh, 2015).…”

“…does not always reveal the positive nature of family relationships, (Seymour, 2011: 109). Indeed, Walsh (2018) argues that migrant families may engage in family validation in the host country. She does not, however, consider in her article if this results in the F L F the activities element of family display/practices, and examine cases where they reinforce or disrupt hegemonic discourses of family.…”

Walking the Walk: Changing Familial Forms, Government Policy and Everyday Social Work Practice in England

“…Traditionally, structural understandings of ‘the family’ have dominated family sociology and tend to define ‘the family’ in heterosexual, co-resident and biological terms (Parsons and Bales, 1956; Williams, 2004). More recently, scholars have reported a diversification of family forms influenced by changing patterns in marriage, a weakening of the male breadwinner/female care model, reproductive technologies and the global movement of people (Williams, 2004; Heath et al ., 2011; Nordquist and Smart, 2014; Walsh, 2018). Over the past ten years, for example, the number of lone parent families in the UK has steadily increased from 1.6 million in 1996 to nearly 2.0 million in 2015 (ONS, 2016).…”