Loretta Baldassar - Transnational Families, Migration and the Circulation of Care

Baldassar and Merla break new intellectual ground in this eminently readable and provocative book extending understanding of the nature of mobility and absence in contemporary family life. The essays ambitiously examine the intricate ways family membersincluding mothers and children, fathers and elders, those who move and those who staycare for each other through processes of reciprocal exchange, across and despite distance. Theoretically brilliant and ethnographically rich, Transnational Families, Migration and the Circulation of Care is one of the most bold and exciting works to emerge in transnational studies in some years.

Sarah Lamb, Brandeis University, author of Aging and the Indian Diaspora: Cosmopolitan Families in India and Abroad

This is a wide-ranging and compelling study of migrant families coping with the practical and emotional difficulties of living and working across borders in communities which may be many thousands of miles apart. Modern ways of communicating (Skype, Facebook, YouTube and the like) may help, but of crucial importance are their social relationships, tried and tested in the past, but which now face the new challenges of caring transnationally.

Ralph Grillo, University of Sussex

This new book on care circulation and transnational family relationships expands the concept of family in contemporary societies. The stimulating selection of chapters combines a theorisation of transnational family practices with empirical studies, opening up new understandings of care, support, and socialisation over the life course across borders. The collection represents an important shift in focus from a Western notion of the nuclear family to a notion of social community involving kin and affinities within transnational settingscommunities made possible through virtual technology on a global scale. The volumes central contribution will necessitate a widening of social and family policy taking into consideration consequences of global mobility.

Ulla Bjrnberg, Gothenburg University

Without denying the difficulties that confront migrants and their distant kin, this volume highlights the agency of family members in transnational processes of care, in an effort to acknowledge the transnational family as an increasingly common family form and to question the predominantly negative conceptualisations of this type of family. It re-conceptualises transnational care as a set of activities that circulates between home and host countriesacross generationsand fluctuates over the life course, going beyond a focus on mother-child relationships to include multidirectional exchanges across generations and between genders. It highlights, in particular, how the sense of belonging in transnational families is sustained by the reciprocal, though uneven, exchange of caregiving, which binds members together in intergenerational networks of reciprocity and obligation, love and trust that are simultaneously fraught with tension, contest and relations of unequal power. The chapters that make up this volume cover a rich array of ethnographic case studies including analyses of transnational families who circulate care between developing nations in Africa, Latin America and Asia to wealthier nations in North America, Europe and Australia. There are also examples of intra- and extra- European, Australian and North American migration, which involve the mobility of both the unskilled and working class as well as the skilled middle and aspirational classes.

Loretta Baldassar is Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Western Australia and Adjunct Principal Research Fellow, School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash University.

Laura Merla is a sociologist and Deputy Director of the Interdisciplinary Research Centre on Families and Sexualities (CIRFASE) at the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium).

1 New Transnational Social Spaces
International Migration and Transnational Companies in the Early 21st Century
Edited by Ludger Pries

2 Transnational Muslim Politics
Reimagining the Umma
Peter G. Mandaville

3 New Approaches to Migration?
Transnational Communities and the Transformation of Home
Edited by Nadje Al-Ali and Khalid Koser

4 Work and Migration
Life and Livelihoods in a Globalizing World
Edited by Ninna Nyberg Sorensen and Karen Fog Olwig

5 Communities across Borders
New Immigrants and Transnational Cultures
Edited by Paul Kennedy and Victor Roudometof

6 Transnational Spaces
Edited by Peter Jackson, Phil Crang and Claire Dwyer

7 The Media of Diaspora
Edited by Karim H. Karim

8 Transnational Politics
Turks and Kurds in Germany
Eva stergaard-Nielsen

9 Culture and Economy in the Indian Diaspora
Edited by Bhikhu Parekh, Gurharpal Singh and Steven Vertovec

10 International Migration and the Globalization of Domestic Politics
Edited by Rey Koslowski

11 Gender in Transnationalism
Home, Longing and Belonging among Moroccan Migrant Women
Ruba Salih

12 State/Nation/Transnation
Perspectives on Transnationalism in the Asia-Pacific
Edited by Brenda S. A. Yeoh and Katie Willis

13 Transnational Activism in Asia
Problems of Power and Democracy
Edited by Nicola Piper and Anders Uhlin

14 Diaspora, Identity and Religion
New Directions in Theory and Research
Edited by Waltraud Kokot, Khachig Tllyan and Carolin Alfonso

15 Cross-Border Governance in the European Union
Edited by Olivier Thomas Kramsch and Barbara Hooper

16 Transnational Connections and the Arab Gulf
Edited by Madawi Al-Rasheed

17 Central Asia and the Caucasus
Transnationalism and Diaspora
Edited by Touraj Atabaki and Sanjyot Mehendale

18 International Migration and Security
Opportunities and Challenges
Edited by Elspeth Guild and Joanne van Selm

19 Transnational European Union
Towards a Common Political Space
Edited by Wolfram Kaiser with Peter Starie

20 Geopolitics of European Union Enlargement
The Fortress Empire
Edited by Warwick Armstrong and James Anderson

21 Rethinking Transnationalism
The Meso-link of Organisations
Edited by Ludger Pries

22 Theorising Transnational Migration
The Status Paradox of Migration
Boris Nieswand

23 Migration, Nation States, and International Cooperation
Edited by Randall Hansen, Jobst Koehler and Jeannette Money

24 Beyond Methodological Nationalism
Research Methodologies for Cross-Border Studies
Edited by Anna Amelina, Devrimsel D. Nergiz, Thomas Faist and Nina Glick Schiller

25 Transnationalism and Urbanism
Edited by Stefan Krtke, Kathrin Wildner, and Stephan Lanz

26 Transnational Marriage
New Perspectives from Europe and Beyond
Edited by Katharine Charsley

27 Transnational Politics and the State
The External Voting Rights of Diasporas
Jean-Michel Lafleur

28 Transbordering Latin Americas
Liminal Places, Cultures, and Powers (T)Here
Edited by Clara Irazbal

29 Transnational Families, Migration and the Circulation of Care
Understanding Mobility and Absence in Family Life
Edited by Loretta Baldassar and Laura Merla

Understanding Mobility and Absence in Family Life

Edited by Loretta Baldassar and Laura Merla