Identification of an individual and family with a fixed locality and nation state is not evident any more. Multi-local identities bridge the space and are analyzed at the level of individuals, ethnic communities, family lives and lifestyles. Families are no more seen as given facts, rather as imagined communities, displaying and doing family lives in a globalized space.
Families were always affected by migration however contemporary globalized world creates new modes of sociological analysis of families and migration. New concepts came up to emphasize the extended networks and boundaries of newly emerging family variations and seek to define their lived realities. These concepts reveal the opportunities for families as well as mark the new sources of social stigma.
The emphasis of the CFR Seminar is on how families are shaped by mobility, separation, reunion. How families are affected by multiple national residences and transnational identities. Which way families under migration are articulated on the levels of civil society, the state and are represented in social media. Whether belonging to de-located families is in contradiction with feelings of belonging to nation state. Is it the case that the word “migrant” tends to carry class, ethnic connotations and takes the shape of “the other”? How come that transnational elites are perceived as “mobiles” and avoid the connotations, attributed to the “migrants”?
Participants are challenged to take the perspective of country of origin and country of destination. The seminar would cover several levels of analysis:
1) Rethinking the concepts we use and names we give to the emerging family forms. The discussion about representation of families and migration in official documents, social media, and everyday life situations is suggested. A special attention is to the way these representations are mediated by family ideology.
2) The way of knowing, the language of doing research on families and migration. The participants are encouraged to suggest theories and methods to study newly emerging family forms. Quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods approaches are welcome.
3) Lived realities of families under migration, as “thick descriptions” of cultural, institutional, interactional practices.
The number of participants is limited to 30.
