Summary: Qualitative interviews were conducted to grandmothers and children living in transnational families in the Philippines. The study aims to examine how they experience their life situation and how they find strategies to cope with difficulties that may appear in transnational family life. Findings: The grandmothers experience difficulties with ageing and health problems in their role as caregivers, and the children experience difficulties with new responsibilities such as household chores, taking care of younger siblings and manage school. For both respondents the financial benefits with having a family member working abroad is the most important. Applications: The results are discussed in the context of globalization, transnational families and gender.

In Europe, legal parent-child family reunifications are regulated by policies specifying the eligibility criteria that migrant parents must fulfill – two of the general conditions is having a long-term residence permit and fulfilling standardized income requirements. The emergence of transnational families – border crossing family arrangements – is often blamed on the conditions set by immigration countries. On the other hand, qualitative studies in the West African context indicate that transnational family life can be a strategic choice, arguing that West African family practices, such as fostering, are compatible with transnational family life and that parent’s preferences for the child to be brought up in the country of origin is one driver behind separation. Taking the case of Ghanaian migrant parents in the UK and Netherlands, the aim of this study is to explore what factors are associated with if and where parent-child reunification takes place – in the immigration country or the country of origin, with a focus on the interplay between family reunification policies, migrant family practices/norms and gender. The research question is: Do the policies that frame family reunification in the UK and Netherlands determine whether and where parent-child reunification takes place? And, how is the outcome affected by Ghanaian family practices/norms and gender? The analysis is made using binomial logistic regression on a selection of 167 current and return migrant parents from the MAFE-Ghana data, collected in 2009. The results indicate that having a high occupational status has a positive effect on reunification in any location, while a long-term legal status only increases the likelihood of reunification in the immigration country. Indicators for family status show mixed results; while having a partner in the UK or Netherlands has a gendered positive effect on the likelihood of reunification in Europe, it also tends to prolong parent-child separation for migrants who do not reunify in Europe. Against expectations, the availability of alternative caregivers in Ghana does not impact the outcome in any direction and no significant difference is found between the likelihood of reunification in the UK or Netherlands. The findings do not support the notion that transnational family life is a strategy for Ghanaian migrant parents; the conclusion is that policies strongly influence whether and where transnational parent-child separation ends.

This dissertation examines transnational family practices between Kyrgyzstan and Russia. Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan experienced intensive internal and external mobilities. As one of the poorest Soviet republics, independent Kyrgyzstan continued to battle with poverty and high unemployment, which pushed nearly 20% of its population to seek jobs internationally. Transnational families have become a norm for Kyrgyzstan that receives the equivalent of one-third of its GDP in remittances. Using the transnational perspective, I explored the role of migration in reconstituting 'family practices' (Morgan, 1996, 2013). In a multi-sited ethnography of family life between Alcha village and Yakutsk city, the study demonstrates the everyday lives of transnational family members maintaining ties across time and space. Treating families as groups of configurations, rather than households, the study illustrates the multitude of family and kin relationships and networks that family members are embedded in. Through the examination of remittances and monetary ties, communal celebrations, arrangements of caregiving in migrants' absence, the study describes the contradictory effects of migration. I argue that migration has dramatically transformed and reconstituted family life. Divided and fragmented, Kyrgyzstani transnational families continued to maintained strong ties with home. I demonstrate that transnational families coped with the contradictory consequences of migration that shifted the family meanings, practices, constitution, and architecture of Kyrgyz family lives. The dissertation argues that Kyrgyzstani families, characterized by extended family relations, are nonetheless increasingly engaged in nuclear family type of relations in the transnational social fields.

ABSTRACT The thesis investigates how transnational familial ties and socio-cultural dynamics shape migrants‘ remitting behavior and inform their relationships. It shows that most research on remittances fails to capture the personal and social significance remittances have for migrants, embedded not only in their transnational social relations, but also in cultural contexts. Drawing on empirical qualitative and quantitative research amongst Congolese migrants in Johannesburg, the study argues that migrants remit mainly in a bid to escape social death by fostering familial belonging and sustaining social status. It shows that socio-cultural influences and internalized social stereotypes about the economic effects of emigration shape migrants‘ awareness of the role expectations their communities of origin hold in relation to them. This internalization of role expectations subjects migrants to such a social pressure that they often feel a compelling need to be perceived as financially ―successful‖ as well as ―valid‖ and ―good‖ family members – not only in their communities of origin but also among other migrants. In this context, remittances become a fundamental measure and criterion that shapes migrants‘ sense of belonging and social and familial inclusion or exclusion. For individual migrants, remittances play an essential instrumental role portraying positive images for themselves and, at the same time, are seen as a means to avoid social stigmatization and exclusion.

Cette thèse examine la façon dont les migrants soudanais aux Pays-Bas et au Royaume-Uni organisent leur protection sociale, pour eux et leurs familles au Soudan, localement et au-delà des frontières. Dans notre monde globalisé, de plus en plus de personnes vivent au-delà des frontières nationales, développant des attaches et des responsabilités dans plus d’un État-nation. Toutefois, les systèmes de protection sociale formels traditionnels ont été conçus pour répondre aux besoins de populations sédentaires liées à un seul pays. Dans ce contexte, cette thèse examine les stratégies que les migrants développent pour couvrir leurs propres besoins de protection sociale et/ou ceux de leurs familles, englobant une série d'éléments formels et informels provenant de différentes institutions (États, marchés, organisations du tiers secteur ou réseaux sociaux informels). En prenant la famille élargie comme unité analytique principale, cette thèse montre que même si certaines ressources formelles sont disponibles pour des individus migrants, elles peuvent ne pas correspondre aux choix privilégiés pour la protection sociale de leur famille. En prenant en considération le contexte soudanais, cette thèse souligne l’importance des normes socio-culturelles du pays d’origine sur la manière dont le soutien intra-familial, en particulier les soins, doit être fourni. Cette thèse est basée sur les données collectées durant 14 mois d'ethnographie multi-située conduite avec des migrants aux Pays-Bas et au Royaume-Uni, et leurs familles au Soudan. / This dissertation investigates how Sudanese migrants in the Netherlands and the UK, and their families back home navigate their social protection, locally and across borders. In our current globalised world, more and more people choose or are pushed to live across national borders, developing attachments and responsibilities in more than one nation-state. Yet, the traditional formal social protection systems have been envisaged to cater for sedentary populations, tied to one single country. Against this backdrop, this dissertation investigates the strategies that migrants develop to cover for their own and/or their families’ social protection needs, encompassing a series of formal and informal elements from different institutions (e.g. states, markets, third-sector organisations or informal social networks). By taking the extended family as the main analytical unit, this dissertation shows that even though certain formal resources are available for individual migrants, they might not be the preferred option for the family’s social protection. By including the Sudanese context, this dissertation points to the importance of the sending country’s sociocultural rules on how intra-familial support—especially care—should be provided. This dissertation is based on the data collected over 14 months of multi-sited and partly matched-sample ethnography across the Netherlands, the UK and Sudan where the migrants and their families live.

Colombia has some 2.5 million emigrants (KNOMAD 2016), many of whom likely experience diaspora as a state of mind and transnationalism as a feature of their familial interactions. Storytelling constitutes an intersection at which individuals and families create and recreate themselves. Today, much of this process is mediated via information and communication technologies (ICTs). Hence, the central question guiding the thesis is: How do ICTs catalyze and constrain storytelling within transnational families? Drawing from information gathered through in-depth semi-structured interviews with six Colombian families with members who immigrated to Canada from Colombia, this thesis investigates the technologically mediated familial interactions and storytelling of 12 adult Colombians residing in Montreal, and six of their respective family members who remain in Colombia. The participants report that prior to migrating their familial stories were mainly oral and occurred in very warm face-to-face situations whereas after migrating their family narratives and stories are being altered in various ways through the presence, interactive, and multimodal affordances ICTs provide.

No description available.

Nearly 175, 000 Haitian immigrants have settled in South Florida since the 1970s. Their lives are often lived transnationally with persistent connections and obligations to family members in Haiti. Yet, traditional theories of immigrant assimilation focus on the integration of immigrants into host countries, giving little consideration to relationships and activities that extend into migrants' countries of origin. Conversely, studies of transnational families do not explicitly address incorporation into the receiving country. This dissertation, through the experiences of Haitian immigrants in South Florida, reveals a transnational quest “to raise the family up” through migration, remittances, and the pursuit of higher levels of education. I argue that familial duties and obligations, which have cultural foundations in the Haitian lakou, structure the activities of Haitian transnational families as they pursue socioeconomic advancement through migration and education. With the support of transnational families, many students cross boundaries to academic achievement and improve their opportunities for socioeconomic mobility in the US. With higher levels of education, these individuals contributed to a more favorable incorporation into the United States for their extended families, as well. The data were collected through participant observation and 78 in-depth interviews documenting the migration histories of 27 Haitian immigrant families in South Florida. This dissertation contributes to the existing literature on Haitian immigrants in the United States and to an understanding of the transnational dimensions of immigrant incorporation more broadly.

No description available.

Since the second half of the 20th century the Philippines have supplied the world with migrant workers. Today, almost one tenth of the population is residing abroad. Labour migration has become an important source of revenue to both state and private actors through remittances, for the Philippines, and a source of cheap labour battling labour shortage, in the receiving countries. Today, the global labour market is a distinct and important part of what we call globalisation. This is portrayed in this thesis through the lens of Philippine-Korean labour migration. The purpose of this thesis is to illustrate the emergence of migrants as a commodity for export, the institutionalised creation of migrants, the normalisation of labour migration, and containment of migrants through legal and spatial constraints, in Manila and in Seoul. This thesis look at the ways in which labour migration, as an economic policy, is internalised and transformed into a culture of migration. I argue that the effects of a culture of migration is felt not just by the labour migrants themselves, but also by their families and by the Philippines as a whole. As such, the reliance on remittances as a source of income has transformed domestic and global infrastructures as well as norms and social behaviour. Moreover, this thesis aims to add to the discussion on migration and remittances by exploring social dimensions and consequences of the globalisation of the labour market.