Transnational Families: Entangled Inequalities and Emerging Challenges on the Global Scale

Abstract

In this introduction to the handbook, we explore the social phenomenon of transnational families, provide an overview about the scholarship, and discuss emerging challenges that affect transnational families in the twenty-first century. In the first section, we discuss the classical transnational family literature and its development in the last decades of the twentieth century. Central concepts such as the formation of transnational families, reciprocity, co-presence, and care circulation are outlined here. In the second section, we propose four analytical lenses to understand current transnational families in the scope of increasing cross-border social inequalities and in an increasingly interconnected globalised world: (1) the concept social entanglements, (2) social cross-border assemblages, (3) the life-course perspective, and (4) the notion of (im)mobility regimes. Finally, we map out the emerging challenges that affect transnational families in the twenty-first century, such as climate change, war and political crisis, and mobility restrictions and social distancing measures responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.