In an age of migration and mobility many aspects of contemporary family life - from biological reproduction to marriage, from child-rearing to care of the elderly - take place against a backdrop of intensified movement across a range of spatial scales from the global to the local. This insightful book analyzes the opportunities and challenges this poses for families and for academic, empirical and policy understandings of 'the family' on a global level, including case studies from Europe, India, the Philippines, South Korea, the United States and Australia. With chapters on international reproductive tourism, transnational parenting, 'mail-order brides' and 'sunset migration', it examines the implications of migration and mobility for families at different stages of the life course. Moreover, it brings together leading international scholars to connect a fragmented field of research, and in so doing enables an interdisciplinary exchange, generating new insights for theory, policy and empirical analysis.

Autorentext

Majella Kilkey is Reader in Social Policy at the University of Sheffield, UK. Her current research centers on migration and families. 

Ewa Palenga-Möllenbeck is Postdoctoral Researcher in the Gender Studies Department at the University of Frankfurt, Germany. Her research interests include migration, transnationalism, gender studies and care work. 

Inhalt

Introduction. Family life in an age of migration and mobility: introducing a global and family life course perspective; Majella Kilkey and Ewa Palenga-Möllenbeck

1. Mobilities and communication technologies: transforming care in family life; Loretta Baldassar

2. Everyday practices of living in multiple places and mobilities: transnational, transregional and intra-communal multi-local families; ****Michaela Schier

3. Polymedia communication among transnational families: what are the long-term consequences for migration?; Mirca Madianou

4. Travelling to the United States for fertility services: push and pull factors; Lauren Jade Martin

5. Transnational surrogacy and 'kinning' rituals in India; Amrita Pande

6. Marriage migration policy as a social reproduction system: The South Korean experience; Gyuchan Kim and Majella Kilkey

7. Strangers in Paradise?  Migrant Italian mothers in Norway; Lise Widding Isaksen

8. Transnational mothering and the law: Ghanaian women's pathways to family reunion and consequences for family life; Miranda Poeze and Valentina Mazzucato

9. Fatherhood and masculinities in post socialist Europe: the challenges of transnational migration; Ewa Palenga-Möllenbeck and Helma Lutz

10. Swedish retirement migrants in Spain: mobility and eldercare in an ageing Europe; Anna Gavanas and Ines Calzada

11. Contrasts in ageing and agency in family migratory contexts: a comparison of Albanian and Latvian older migrants; Russell King, Julie Vullnetari, Aija Lulle and Eralba Cela

12. Defamilialization of whom? Re-thinking defamilialization in the light of global care chains and the transnational circulation of care; Florence Degavre and Laura Merla

13.The contested meaning of care in migration law; Sarah van Walsum

Conclusions; Majella Kilkey and Ewa Palenga-Möllenbeck