1st Edition
Migration and Families in East and North Europe Translocal Lifelines
This book explores the phenomenon of familyhood across borders, examining the experience of translocal familyhood and the manner in which lifelines in and between countries are formed when individual family members spend long periods away from home. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research, it considers the emotions, social relations, materialities and discourses that occur within family lives between Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Romania, Russia and Sweden. With attention to the ways in which gender, generation, class and geography create and reinforce inequalities, strengths and vulnerabilities within and between families, it combines ethnographic, descriptive work with shorter photography-based chapters in order to allow textual and visual methods to complement one another. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, geography and anthropology with interests in migration, transnationalism and the sociology of the family.
Preface
Acknowledgements
1 Introduction: Translocal Familyhood and Lifelines across Borders
Laura Assmuth, Marit Aure, Marina Hakkarainen and Pihla Maria Siim
Section I: Everyday Emotions
2 Overcoming the Burden of Distance: Emotions in the Family Lives of Estonian Men Working in Finland
Laura Assmuth and Keiu Telve
3 Place Attachment and Translocal Ties: Adult Descendants of Polish Migrants in Sweden
Ann Runfors
Commentary on Chapters 2 and 3
Translocal Lifelines through the Lens of Emotion: Dealing with Distance and Connection
Maja Povrzanović Frykman
Section II: Gender and Inequality
4 Negotiating Same-sex Family Space between Finland and Russia
Marina Hakkarainen
5 From Estonia to Finland: Women’s Stories of Inequality, Survival and Relatedness
Pihla Maria Siim
Commentary on Chapters 4 and 5
Feeling Translocalism: Stretched and Connective Emotions through Time and Space
Natasha A. Webster
Section III: Materialities
6 Representing Translocal Taste Buds: An Exploration of Photography as a Method
Agnese Bankovska
7 Claiming Translocal Place among Romanian Roma Migrants in Helsinki: Infrastructures, Urban Encounters and Displacement
Anca Enache and Airi Markkanen
Commentary on Chapters 6 and 7
The World Constituted through Photos
Carlo Cubero
Section IV: Family Values and Integration
8 Lines of Differentiation and Connection in Translocal Lithuanian Lives: Stories about the Norwegian Child Welfare Service
Marit Aure and Darius Daukšas
9 Integration, the Generation Gap and Continuity in Russian-speaking Translocal Families in Finland
Marina Hakkarainen
Commentary on Chapters 8 and 9
Family Values and Integration Narrated, Negotiated and Politicised
Elo-Hanna Seljamaa
Index
Biography
Laura Assmuth is Professor Emerita of Social and Public Policy, University of Eastern Finland. Her research interests are migration and mobility, borders, translocal family and inequality. Assmuth is an experienced ethnographer, with fieldwork in several European countries. She has led several international research projects resulting in publications in many languages.
Marit Aure is Professor of Sociology and Head of Department at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø. Her research interests encompass international and national migration and integration, gender, masculinity, employment-related mobility, (coastal) rural and urban development, just cities and art-based action-oriented research. Aure engages in participatory research.
Marina Hakkarainen is an independent researcher living in Finland and a fellow of the European University at St. Petersburg. She is a candidate of sciences in history, specialising in ethnology and anthropology. She has conducted ethnographic research among indigenous Siberian communities, rural localities in European Russia and Jewish communities in Ukraine. Her recent research interests include migration and mobility, post-Soviet subjectivities and economic relations.
Pihla Maria Siim is a postdoctoral researcher at the Migration Institute, Finland, also affiliated to the University of Tartu, Estonia. She has worked on issues related to children and mobility and translocal families and intimacy, mainly in the Estonian–Finnish context. She has also published on folkloristic fieldwork practices, family storytelling and storycrafting method.
