Children and the Intimate Violence of Transnational Labor Migration

Abstract

This chapter reviews the scholarly literature on the economic migration of families, in particular, family separation, reunification, with especial focus on the children implicated in the Filipino labor diaspora and Latin American migration to the United States. The experiences of children in families separated through economic migration occur across a range of circumstances: from those left behind in their home countries while their parents work abroad, to those born to temporary migrants and subsequently separated from their mothers when they are sent ``home'' to be cared for by relatives, to those who migrate to join their parents after a period of family separation. The lives of these children are adversely affected by governments' ambivalences about the rights and citizenship entitlements both of temporary work migrants and of children. Neoliberal economic priorities and rationalities also often clash with liberal-democratic values to create contradictory and inconsistent outcomes. Despite the very real differences in the experiences of different groups of children -- in this chapter between those migrating from the Philippines and Mexico and Central America, there are some similarities across their experiences of separation and reunification, in terms of the emotional consequences of transnational separation and reunification, and adverse effects on educational achievement. The violence considered in this chapter is the mundane, chronic, and everyday violence of poverty, social and economic marginalization, and feelings of abandonment. Children and youths are not passive in the face of these challenges, and brief attention is given to their capacity to address them.