Transnational Families: Ethnicities, Identities and Social Capital

209 Pages·2010·1.776 MB·English

by  Harry Goulbourne, Tracey Reynolds, John Solomos and Elisabetta Zontini

Transnational Families
Contemporary Western society is changing and, controversially, migration is often
flagged as one of the reasons. The nature of population change challenges conven-
tional understandings of family forms and networks whilst multiculturalism poses
challenges to our understanding of social change, families and social capital.
This innovative book provides an overview of the emergence of new understand-
ings of ethnicities, identities and family forms across a number of ethnic groups,
family types and national boundaries. Based on new empirical data from fairly
distinct sets of transnational family networks in minority communities with a sub-
stantial presence in the United Kingdom – principally, Caribbean and Italian, but
also drawing on others such as Indian – it examines their experiences and uses the
concept of social capital to explore how these families manage to maintain close
and meaningful links.
Transnational Families discusses, explains and illustrates the substantial
problems and issues confronted by communities and families, academics and
policymakers/implementers, and non-governmental organizations within a tran-
snational world. It will be of interest to students and scholars of migration,
transnationalism, families and globalization.
Harry Goulbourne is Professor of Sociology at London South Bank University, UK.
Tracey Reynolds is Senior Research Fellow in the Families & Social Capital
Research Group at London South Bank University, UK.
John Solomos is Professor of Sociology at London City University, UK.
Elisabetta Zontini is Lecturer in Sociology at Nottingham University, UK.
Relationships and Resources
Series Editors: Janet Holland and Rosalind Edwards
London South Bank University
A key contemporary political and intellectual issue is the link between the relation-
ships that people have and the resources to which they have access. When people
share a sense of identity, hold similar values, trust each other and reciprocally
do things for each other, this has an impact on the social, political and economic
cohesion of the society in which they live. So, are changes in contemporary
society leading to deterioration in the link between relationships and resources,
or new and innovative forms of linking, or merely the reproduction of enduring
inequalities? Consideration of relationships and resources raises key theoretical and
empirical issues around change and continuity over time as well as time use, the
consequences of globalization and individualization for intimate and broader social
relations, and location and space in terms of communities and neighbourhoods.
The books in this series are concerned with elaborating these issues and will form
a body of work that will contribute to academic and political debate.
Available titles include:
Marginalised Mothers
Exploring working class experiences of parenting
Val Gillies
Moving On
Bren Neale and Jennifer Flowerdew
Sibling Identity and Relationships
Sisters and brothers
Rosalind Edwards, Lucy Hadfield, Helen Laucey and Melanie Mauthner
Teenagers’ Citizenship
Experiences and education
Susie Weller
Transnational Families
Ethnicities, identities and social capital
Harry Goulbourne, Tracey Reynolds, John Solomos and Elisabetta Zontini
Transnational Families
Ethnicities, identities and social capital
Harry Goulbourne, Tracey Reynolds,
John Solomos and Elisabetta Zontini
First published 2010
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010.
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collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.
© 2010 Harry Goulbourne, Tracey Reynolds, John Solomos and Elisabetta Zontini
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Transnational families : ethnicities, identities, and social capital / Harry
Goulbourne ... [et al.].
p. ; cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Immigrant families—Great Britain. 2. Transnationalism. 3. Families—
Cross-cultural studies. I. Goulbourne, Harry.
[DNLM: 1. Emigrants and Immigrants. 2. Family. 3. Cross-Cultural
Comparison. 4. Ethnic Groups. HQ 519 T772 2010]
HQ519.T727 2010
306.85086’9120941—dc22 2009025996
ISBN 0-203-86218-X Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0-415-46890-6 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0-203-86218-X (ebk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-46890-9 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-86218-6 (ebk)
Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Preface vii
PART I
Some general questions 1
1 Theorizing transnational families 3
2 Social capital joins the trinity: families, ethnicities,
communities 16
3 Methodological issues and challenges 36
4 The politics of migration 49
PART II
Living and coping across boundaries 63
5 Migrants, offspring and settlement 65
6 Families, needs and caring practices 81
7 Continuity and invention of identities within families
and communities 99
8 Problems of belonging and ‘return’ 120
9 Alienation and escape from the family and community 136
10 Crossing boundaries: problems and opportunities in
‘mixed’ families 155
11 Conclusion: transnational families, policy and
research challenges 177
Bibliography 182
Index 198
Acknowledgements
We have individually and collectively amassed a bundle of debt during the process
of designing, researching and writing this book. We therefore take this opportunity
to thank colleagues, who are too numerous to mention here, at our respective insti-
tutions (London South Bank University, City University London and Nottingham
University), as well as colleagues at the universities of Bologna, Guyana, Oxford,
Sussex and University of the West Indies (at Cave Hill, Barbados and Mona,
Jamaica), who provided homes for us as well as sound advice. We thank Professor
Rosalind Edwards and Professor Janet Holland, for their support and leadership of
the Families & Social Capital ESRC Research Group as well as other members of
the Ethnicity Strand of this Group at London South Bank University; the Economic
and Social Research Council (ESRC) for financial support in undertaking this
work; referees of our proposal to Routledge; our editors at Routledge, who have not
only been forgiving but have been generous and very understanding; and members
of our Advisory Group and virtual network advisory group in the United States,
Continental Europe, Australia and elsewhere.
In particular, we wish to thank the very many individuals in families and com-
munities in Britain, the Caribbean, Italy, India and elsewhere who shared intimate
details about their private lives with us.
Professor Ralph Grillo has consistently been an endless source of support, and
we are delighted to be again in his debt for kindly providing us with a preface to
this book.
An undertaking of this kind makes considerable demands on family life. We
therefore thank our respective family members across the generations, from those
who are moving into ‘the vale of years’ to those who – during the course of our
work – sprung forth like lions, brightening our relationships and developing our
collective resources.
Preface
International migration is changing the social and cultural composition of contem-
porary societies, sometimes posing difficult questions about living with difference
and diversity. Two features of that migration have attracted the attention of poli-
cymakers and practitioners as well as social scientists. While many migrants still
come to work in countries such as the UK on a temporary basis, others have long
since settled down, and established a wide range of community institutions. One
consequence is that the population of migrant or refugee origin is now substantially
a family population, with implications for housing, health and educational systems
in receiving countries which in varying degrees have been implementing neoliberal
economic and social agendas, running down provision for welfare.
Settlement, however, did not mean that those who originally came as migrants
or refugees abandoned all ties to countries of origin. Although many so-called
migrants are long-term settlers, or have been born and brought up in receiving
countries, their links with sending countries have not necessarily diminished, and a
huge amount of literature over the last decade has explored the way in which indi-
viduals, households, families and whole communities find themselves with stakes
in interconnected worlds, widely separated spatially, which they try to maintain
simultaneously. They live, as we say, ‘multi-sited’ lives. While this phenomenon
is not new, by the twenty-first century the revolution in information and communi-
cation technologies, and cheap international air travel, enabled millions of people
to be ‘doubly engaged’, as Valentina Mazzucato has called it, ‘here’ and ‘there’.
At the same time, neither transnationalism nor globalization (of which it is part)
have led to the withering away of the nation-state. Indeed, transnational life, with
households sometimes scattered across the globe, may oblige family members to
engage with, and be affected by, a multiplicity of states and state systems.
One of the virtues of the present volume is that the authors through their research
have brought together these big themes (as has begun to happen in a limited number
of other studies), and linked them through some key analytical and theoretical
concepts in the social sciences, notably ‘identity’ and ‘social capital’. This proves
to be a powerful way of investigating both the relationship between families of
migrant origin and the society in which they have settled, and relations within those
families across gender and generation.
A further strength of this volume is its comparative focus. The research on which
viii Preface
the book is based deals comparatively with several minorities present in the UK
including people of African–Caribbean, Italian and South Asian origin. Many
ethnic and racial studies are content to report in very general terms about migrants
or ethnic minorities, or alternatively provide an in-depth account of particular
populations or ‘communities’ in relative isolation. While such studies are valuable,
the significance of their findings may only emerge in comparing their trajectories
with those of others. Thus, one conclusion of the present study, is that the:
children and grandchildren of Caribbean and Italian migrants are carving out
new identities for themselves which combine and incorporate their connec-
tions with the Caribbean and Italian Diaspora, their lives in UK and continued
links to the familial homeland.
In this case the trajectories appear to be similar; in others, perhaps in respect of
‘mixed’ partnerships for example, they may not be. Unravelling such complexities
poses a considerable challenge to the social sciences. Secondly, although the book
is principally concerned with the UK and presents an in-depth account of its subject
in that context, the authors are fully aware of studies elsewhere and this allows
them to embed their research in wide-ranging international literature, and enables
the reader to begin to draw some conclusions about similarities and differences
between the UK and other countries experiencing the same phenomena.
By enlarging the scope of ethnic and racial studies in these ways, the research
breaks through some of the self-imposed boundaries that have long characterised
work in this field in the UK. As such, it represents a notable, highly innovative and
ethnographically rich contribution to a topic of considerable public importance.
Ralph Grillo,
Professor Emeritus, Anthropology,
University of Sussex
April 2009
Part I
Some general questions