Transnational Families: Memories and Narratives

Abstract

This introduction to a special issue of the journal explores not only the role of memory and narratives in understanding gender and transnational families, but suggests how such families use and understand their memories to construct coherent narratives of the self and kin. In common with renewed thinking about the multifaceted nature of migration, the complexities of the process, and the continuing dialogue that migration establishes between the old and the new, the past and the present, those who engage with oral history/life story methods are increasingly aware that such data provide a ‘value added’ to rich empirical detail. These methods reveal the use of memory and its role in the continuing emotional adjustments in which most transnational experience is embroiled. They show how the multi‐layering of memory, language and narratives are indicators of the ways in which culture shapes recall and recounting. Families themselves become sites of belonging, part of the imaginary unity through which a transnational family may seek its identity. Equally, oral histories can tease out ways in which gender differences impact on, or are impacted by, transnational lives. The introduction situates the subsequent articles within a brief overview of oral history and migration.

Narratives of Place, Culture and Identity : Second-Generation Greek-Americans Return 'Home'

“…As such, the asymmetrical relations of gender generate particular conceptualisations about consciousness, experience, and the relations between social structure and human agency (Cowan 1990) as power is not simply exercised or resisted since compliance is complexly intertwined in hegemonic behaviours (see Williams 1977 andFoucault 1978; that occur not only in the midst of conflict but also in the centre of celebration. For the most part, the participants' life stories are revealing of how the family is narrated and presented as a site of belonging and a nexus of both an imaginary and performed unit through which transnational migrants seek to construct their identities (Chamberlain and Leydesdorff 2004). But the family is also a site of difference and continuing emotional adjustment in which migratory experiences are indicators of the ways in which culture shapes relations of conflict.…”

Introducción al número especial

“…This has underpinned the development of a rich scholarship on transnational families which requires the application of multi-sited and family-centred approaches that can capture the reconfiguration of intimate and family roles and relationships across time and space as well as the ways in which a sense of familyhood can be sustained and operationalised across borders (Bryceson and Vuorela, 2002;Chamberlain and Leydesdorff, 2004;Evergeti and Zontini, 2006;Heath et al, 2011;Haagsman and Mazzucato, 2014).…”

Care, Control, and the Electroconvulsive Therapy Ritual: Making Sense of Polarized Patient Narratives

“…The collection of these less structured narratives allowed us to uncover the relative importance of links between participants, others and "objects" in our analysis (see the discussion of actor network theory below). It also allowed participants to use more readily their own words and metaphors in relation to their experiences of ECT, therefore highlighting their own priorities and values (Chamberlain & Leydesdorff, 2004). Participants had to be 18 years or older, and a preliminary phone consultation with the researcher (experienced in mental health) took place in which an assessment was made as to whether the prospective participant was well enough to take part.…”

“…Stories and memories of past events are partly a product of the current day telling of those narratives (Frank, 1995). These stories are important for securing a sense of self, and determining how we go on to form a relationship with things and people, yet they very much depend on our worldview and the frameworks of recollections available to us (Chamberlain & Leydesdorff, 2004). In consolidating any ECT "truths", whatever the story told by participants, it was the recalled trust-controloutcomes (including side-effects) of the ECT ritual that was woven together in a narrative to draw out present-day conclusions about the treatment.…”