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The Powerful Map of Transnational Families: Marriage, Spaces and Life Trajectories

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The Powerful Map of Transnational Families: Marriage, Spaces and Life Trajectories Article • DOI: 10.2478/v10202-011-0010-4 NJMR • 1(2) • 2011 • 080-087 THE POWERFUL MAP OF TRANSNATIONAL FAMILIES: Marriage, spaces and life trajectories Abstract Transnational families are, as the term suggests, social structures existing Garbi Schmidt* across national borders. Thus, individuals belonging to these families are in geographical terms separated by space. However, the practices of transna- Professor, Cultural Enounters, tional families often provide a sense of proximity and emotional attachment. Roskilde University, University, This article, by seeing space as inherently relational, discusses the fields Universitetsvej 1, P.O, Box 260, within which families establish themselves and move transnationally. 4000 Roskilde, Denmark Transnational family spaces are, for example, arenas where young people meet and where marriages are arranged. This article includes the life and marriage stories of two individuals who have married transnationally, based on their family relationships, and further analyses how these marriages are element in the practices that families engage in to uphold a sense of close- ness – an endeavour that is sometimes successful, sometimes not. Finally, the article discusses some elements that challenge the relational spaces that transnational families engage in, particularly the impact of nation states and their regulations. Keywords Marriage• Nation state regulations• Transnational families • Transnational networks• Transnational spaces 1 The Space of the Transnational: Aspects of Mumtaz: Yes, somewhat. Yes, they can. Family Garbi: Have they ever been here? Mumtaz: No. Garbi. How close are you to your family in Pakistan? I mean, emo- This article opens with the life story of Mumtaz, a woman of tionally and in terms of interaction? Pakistani descent who was born and raised in Denmark and who Mumtaz: Very, very [close]. Especially to my cousins. I talk a lot with has married a man from her family’s country of origin. During our them. About everything. So we have a bond of friendship besides dialogue, Mumtaz and I circled around the theme of closeness and being cousins… remoteness, especially when discussing how family members con- Garbi: But I am thinking – they are still far away, aren’t they? What sider themselves close when they are geographically far apart. Her is it in the relationship that created closeness? Or how do they statements constitute a useful springboard for understanding the become close? role of the interplay between space and emotional intimacy within Mumtaz: It’s the thing about us being a family: we are cousins, we transnational families. This article analyses these issues and de- know each others’ families, and if there are any family problems, velops them in accordance with existing research on transnational we talk about them. And besides, I visit Pakistan quite frequently…. families, networks and spaces.1 And then you talk about life here, and they talk about their lives A focus on closeness and remoteness ties into larger discus- there. So… sions of how we can understand the family, as well as networks and Garbi: But can they relate to your life here when they are so identities in a transnational context. For example, Deborah Fahy far away? Bryceson and Ulla Vuorela, in their book The Transnational Family: * E-mail: [email protected] 80 New European Frontiers and Global Networks (2002), define the Glick Schiller suggest in their depiction of transnational networks transnational family as a (relative) structure involving ‘the selective as fields). Similarly, we can say that human relationships include formation of familial emotional and material attachments on the the awareness of their being embedded in space. Space is cre- basis of temporal, spatial and need-related considerations’ (ibid., ated by the proximity of agents, and the frequency (ebb and flow) p.14). Nina Glick Schiller and Peggy Levitt, while not referring with which their agents seek, experience or reject such proximity. specifically to transnational families, call for an understanding of This article seeks to clarify how interactions that take place among transnational networks as social fields( Glick Schiller & Levitt 2004). individuals in transnational families are also expressions of trans- By describing transnational practices in this manner, Schiller and national spatial configurations. Although space is geographical, it Levitt show that transnational practices are embedded in a topol- is also relational. ogy where subjects have an established an on-going experience My approach to space is also in line with Wimmer and Glick of belonging, contact and closeness, even though, geographically Schiller’s warnings against methodological nationalism (Wimmer speaking, they are far away from each other. Closeness and & Glick Schiller 2002). Family processes in an age of globalization remoteness can be, among other things, a consequence of the are not confined by national borders per se, and distances do not temporal sequences of transnational family life, the ‘ebb and flow necessarily sever family relations. As Danish anthropologist Ninna in response to particular incidents or crises. A one-time snapshot Nyberg Sørensen notes in her studies of South American women misses the many ways in which migrants periodically engage with taking jobs in Western Europe, the unit of the family is frequently their home countries during election cycles, family or ritual events, what encourages the women to decide to go abroad (Nyberg or climatic catastrophes…’ (ibid. p. 1012–1013). Sørensen 2005: 74). However – as Nyberg Sørensen also notes – The central question of this article is how emotional proximity, while we must pay more attention to the spaces that transnational frequently expressed through identification and expressions of families create and within which they move, we must also attend belonging, is upheld in a transnational environment. The family as to the effects that national and supranational politics have on the a unit is a good starting point, as we are dealing with a structure establishment or fragmentation of these spaces. In other words, that is often associated with emotional support and socialization. as much as transnational spaces are relational, they are inherently However, as families are often associated with closeness, intimacy, political. Space is, as Massey writes, ‘the moment of antagonism frequent communication and trust, families also can fall apart, trust where the undecidable nature of the alternatives and their resolu- can be broken, and frequent communication can turn into silence. tion through power relations become fully visible’ (Massey 2005: Thus, this article also explores which elements constitute the glue 151, after Laclau 1990: 35). Transnational relational spaces, I of transnational families, that is, why do they not fall apart when argue, are full of such antagonisms, but equally – through various their members are scattered across the globe? What images, individual strategies – full of attempts at establishing equivalence, events and rituals hold them together? Why do people understand at reconciling contrasts. These are the contrasts and processes on their family as close when they are actually geographically remote? which this article concentrates. And what is the role of politics – whether we talk about the politics The article begins with a short introduction to the study, fol- of nation states or the politics of identity – in these processes? lowed by the life stories of two individuals, Mumtaz and Ali, who Bryceson and Vuorela describe transnational families as built have both married transnationally. The next section analyses the upon ‘temporal, spatial and need-related considerations.’ In the two stories by focusing on two questions: first whether (and if so, conversation with Mumtaz, my starting point was whether (and if how) reflections on space can help deepen our perspective on so, how) geographical remoteness had any impact on the feeling of transnational family networks and the individuals situated within closeness (proximity) that people experience within their transna- these networks; and second whether a focus on space is useful tionally located family. Both proximity and its antithesis are based for a deeper understanding of the power relations, politics and on understandings of ‘here’ and ‘there’ and what lies in between. possible antagonisms in transnational relational spaces. Space is Given that conceptualizing this relationship includes perspectives often used as a locus for identity-defining processes, and is thus, on location and translocation, we need to focus on one concept as Massey notes, inherently political (Massey 2005). However, as fundamental to our understanding of transnational relations, a whereas the spatial employment of identity politics is frequently concept implicit in the statements of the writers I have been quot- described as including a strategic deployment of identity ‘as a form ing: that of space. of collective action to change institutions; to transform mainstream In her impressive book For Space, geographer Doreen culture, its categories, and values, and perhaps by extension its Massey stresses the relationality that space includes: ‘What is policies and structures; to transform participants; or simply to always at issue is the content, not the spatial form, of the relation educate legislators and the public’ (Bernstein 1997, also Bernstein through which space is constructed’ (Massey 2005: 101). In other 2005), the present article
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