Transnational familyhood and the liquid life paths of South Americans in the UK

Abstract

In this article, we explore the nature of identity in the contemporary transnational family. To do this we extend lifecourse scholarship by considering Bauman's liquid modernity thesis and introducing the concept of a liquid life path. Original empirical examples drawn from our work among South American migrants and their families living in London and northern England illustrate diverse patterns of identification; everyday practices and social norms associated with maintaining split families, including parenting and remitting, coalesce around liquid life paths. We describe how these life paths turn on and reproduce a set of spatial and temporal imaginaries. We also reflect on the implications of these fluid imaginaries for our understanding of transnational familyhood.

Migrant Men's Fathering Narratives, Practices and Projects in National and Transnational Spaces: Recent Polish Male Migrants to London

“…While transnational fathers reported undertaking a range of activities to maintain relations with their children, as with transnational mothers (Fresnoza‐Flot, ), close family ties were not an inevitable outcome and, as with the South American migrants interviewed in the UK by Mas Giralt and Bailey (), the experience of ‘being split' featured in some fathers’ accounts. For one father this was experienced with a degree of puzzlement since he felt he had made an effort: “I thought that it was enough to call very often, but… his mother's behaviour has influenced him too much” (Wojtek).…”

Cosmopolitanism and the Media

“…Still, what unites the cases is that none of the re-embedding processes has implied any temporal dislocations affecting the sense of Self and the continuity of habitus (cf. Giralt and Bailey, 2010).…”

“…The discussions in this chapter are informed by Giddens' (1990) notion of re-embedding. Time is understood here in a social and existential sense, taking into account the interplay between individual/collective agency pertaining to the life course (Giralt and Bailey, 2010) and structural transformations affecting the life conditions of individuals and groups. As Giddens (1990) argues, whereas modern life in general, and mobile lives in particular, are increasingly sustained through processes of social disembedding, making the individual less tied to particular places and resources, this development is not one directional, but may fluctuate via re-embedding processes throughout the life course.…”

Transnational parenthood and forced migration: the case of asylum-seeking parents who are forcibly separated from their families by immigration laws

“…Zimbabwean fathers passively spoke about their communication patterns and routines with children. Notions of 'being split' (Mas Giralt and Bailey, 2010) were common within the fathers' narratives. However, sporadic communication with children in this instance was blamed on the asylum identity.…”