Family Practices in Migration

This book places family at the centre of discussions about migration and migrant life, seeing migrants not as isolated individuals, but as relational beings whose familial connections influence their migration decisions and trajectories. Particularly prioritising the voices of children and young people, the book investigates everyday family practices to illuminate how migrants and their significant others do family, parenting or being a child within a family, both transnationally and locally. Themes covered include undocumented status, unaccompanied children's asylum seeking, adolescents' "dark sides", second generation return migration, home-making, belonging, nationality/citizenship, peer relations and kinship, and good mothering. The book deploys a wide range of methodological approaches and tools (multi-sited ethnographies, participant observation, interviews and creative methods) to capture the ordinary, spatially extended and interpersonal dynamics of migrant family lives. Drawing on a range of cross-cutting disciplines, geographical areas and diversity of levels and types of experiences on part of the editors and authors, this book will be of interest to researchers across the fields of migration, childhood, youth and family studies.

Martha Montero-Sieburth is a Lecturer in Social Sciences and Humanities at Amsterdam University College, the Netherlands, and Professor Emerita of the Leadership in Urban Schools Doctoral/Educational Administration Masters Programs at the University of Massachusetts-Boston, USA. Rosa Mas Giralt is the Deputy Programme Manager of the BA Professional Studies at the Lifelong Learning Centre and Visiting Research Associate at the School of Geography in the University of Leeds, UK. Noemi Garcia-Arjona is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Sports and Physical Education, University of Rennes 2, and tenured member at Research Unit VIPS2 (Violences, Innovations, Politiques, Socialisations, Sports), Rennes, France. Joaquín Eguren is Senior Researcher and Professor at the University Institute for Studies on Migrations, Universidad Pontificia Comillas in Madrid, Spain.

Introduction. 1. Experiences of childhood 'illegality' for 1.5 generation Latinx youth in Texas: 'Never tell anyone about your status'. 2. Case studies across national boundaries: underscoring nuanced factors in migrant peer youth groups. 3. Honduran children's views on migrating to Barcelona: Narratives of violence, hardship and family strategies. 4. Portuguese migrant descendant returnees from Canada: the role of family in processes of return. 5. Home without family, family without home: Young migrants' experiences of home and relationships in the city of Brussels. 6. My mother's country. Relational Nationality and Transnational Family Ties. 7. Mothers Who Cross Borders. Family Care Networks in the Homes of Immigrant Mothers. 8. Family Narratives and Moving Intimacies in an Indian Diaspora. 9. Narratives of motherhood: Seeking asylum. 10. Reflections on a community based participatory research project with unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. 11. The researcher as a shapeshifter in the field: Challenges in doing fieldwork with transnational migrant families. 12. Transforming the Pause of Life for Female Asylum Seekers into Action: Empowerment through Dance and Movement. Concluding thoughts on family practices in migration.