Transnational Families in Lithuania: Multi-dimensionality and Reorganization of Relationships

Abstract

This chapter examines the ways in which the experience of migration re-defines and re-organizes the relationships of transnational families in Lithuania. It employs four of C. Smart’s concepts to analyze personal life—‘imaginary’, ‘embeddedness’, ‘memory’, and ‘relationality’, and its primary source is a mixed method research study carried out between 2012 and 2015 that was financed by the Research Council of Lithuania. The authors draw on the relational perspective, and focus on how transnational family relations exist in one’s imagination, how the ‘embeddedness’ within family and kinship networks governs the ways transnational support and family memory communication is maintained, and, how living across borders may influence the renegotiation of role-specific commitments and reshape the identities of family members.