Abstract
Research shows that members of transnational families sustain meaningful relationships despite the physical boundaries that separate them. At the same time, distance creates many stresses and strains that disrupt family life. In this article, the authors take a child-centered approach to explore how the migration of different family members affects children’s ideas about their families. To do so they use a unique data set of 421 drawings collected from Mexican school children, ages 5–15. The data suggest that the migration of a family member activates his or her symbolic membership in the family in the eyes of the children.
In what ways do changes in the global economy impact the intimate ties between family members? Contemporary patterns of international migration, especially an increase in the migration of women, have inspired numerous studies of the intersection between geography and family relationships (see Grasmuck and Pessar, 1991; Levitt, 2001; Parreñas, 2001; Smith, 2006; Stephen, 2007). Of particular interest are the experiences of ‘transnational families’, that is, those families in which one or more members are living in different countries while maintaining significant ties with each other (Bryceson and Vuorela, 2002; Chavez, 1992). Transnational families are not a new phenomenon; historical examples abound (Foner, 2000). However, contemporary scholars look at transnational families in a new light, using them to demonstrate the way macro-level factors, such as labor demands and systems of immigration regulation, have consequences for the daily lives of men, women and children (Dreby and Adkins, 2010).
In some ways, international migration does little to diminish the ties between family members. Transnational households continue to function across space, and members of families sustain meaningful relationships despite the physical boundaries that separate them (Pribilsky, 2007). Family members may send money to each other, talk frequently on the phone, communicate by text and email, visit each other and remain in committed relationships even when they live apart, at times, for years (Baldassar et al., 2007; Mahler, 2001; Parreñas, 2001; Wilding, 2006). Understanding the reality of family life among international migrants requires a transnational imaginary; this is, after all, the way migrants define their own families and the significant relationships in their lives (Levitt and Jaworsky, 2007).
Yet there are many stresses and strains that accompany family separation. Men and women negotiate relationships when family members move between places with different gender expectations of behavior (Pedraza, 1991). This is particularly true today as an increase in female migration rates worldwide belies the expectation that women’s domain is that of the home (Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 2002). Research has pointed to a series of consequences that migration has for the conjugal relationships between adult men and women (Hirsch, 2003; Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1994; Smith, 2006), but has often overlooked the lives of children in migrant families. More recently, scholars have begun to take a child-centered approach, examining the lives of children left behind in migrant families. They find that gender adaptations in families – and migratory patterns more broadly – have a series of consequences for non-migrant children (Dreby, 2007, 2010; Moran-Taylor, 2008; Parreñas, 2005).
International migration, and especially the migration of parents, affects the lives of children, yet we know little about how children define their families in a transnational context. Adults make great efforts to sustain familial ties despite the distance, but how do children view these relationships? Do children, like adults, actively define their families as spanning national boundaries? Or do the stresses and strains that accompany transnational family life disproportionately disrupt children’s experiences of family life?
In this article, we explore how the migration of different family members affects children’s ideas about their families. To do so we use a unique data set of 421 drawings Joanna collected from Mexican school children, ages 5–15. Our analysis addresses the task anthropologist David Schneider sets forth in the study of kinship, that is, ‘to chart the relationship between the actual states of affairs and the cultural constructs so that we can discover how the cultural constructs are generated’ (1968: 7). We compare Mexican children’s family portraits across a variety of transnational families. Doing so sheds light on the way international migration, and the separations it so often entails, may affect children’s definitions of their families.
The data suggest that, as is true for adults, international migration does not disrupt Mexican children’s ideas of family. Rather, the migration of a family member actually activates his or her symbolic membership in the family. Notwithstanding some important variations across transnational family type, migration heightens membership in the family in the eyes of children.
Kinship and family in the transnational context
Family ties are most certainly ‘cultural constructs’ (Schneider, 1968). Families of different class, racial and ethnic backgrounds, and in different countries around the world, have varying definitions of who belongs in their family (Stack, 1974). Moreover, children are keenly aware of kinship structures and are active participants in defining who is, or is not, a member of their family. Children may consider not only blood and marriage as criteria for participation in a family network, but also other criteria including the active involvement in family rituals, length of time spent with family members and residency of biological and step-kin (Mason and Tipper, 2008).
Some children have relatively creative definitions of kinship ties. For example, children with same-sex parents are often flexible in defining their families as including two mommies or two daddies (Weston, 1991). Children in long-term foster care arrangements may come to view their foster parents as more central parental figures than their biological parents (Fox and Berrick, 2007; Gardner, 1996). Changes in family structure due to divorce or remarriage may also result in children being fairly accepting of a step-parent, especially when the biological parent is absent from their lives (Mason and Tipper, 2008; Roe et al., 2006). For these children living in ‘non-traditional’ families, it is participation in daily activities that garners someone a place in the family.
Yet for other children, co-residency or shared activities on a daily basis are not the primary criteria for family inclusion. Specifically, children who are separated from their parents for work-related reasons or military service consider an absent parent as central to the family even when the children actually spend little time with that parent (Kelley, 1994; McKee et al., 2003; Sampson, 2005). Children of seafarers, for example, visit their fathers’ ships and know something about their work routines and expected periods of separation (Sampson, 2005). Middle-class professionals often bring their children gifts when they return from work trips; the gift-giving symbolizes their commitment to children despite the time apart (McKee et al., 2003). For these children, it is the role expectations of the non-residential parents to continue to provide for the family that garners them a place in the family unit.
Children in transnational families
Like children whose parents migrate for work, parents in transnational families often leave their children in order to better provide for them economically. However, international separations during migration are less predictable, as many times parents and children have little idea about actually how long they will live apart. Additionally, there are often changes in the family structure, such as divorce or remarriage that accompany migration. Many parents have new children post-migration. For their part, children develop strong bonds with their caregivers in their country of origin. The longer parents and children remain apart, the more likely it is for children’s bonds with caregivers to grow and for changes in parents’ lives abroad to affect the composition of the family (Dreby, 2010). It is unclear how the international separations of parents and children affect children’s definitions of their families.
Moreover, recent changes in gendered patterns of migration may alter children’s ideas about family membership. Historically, fathers’ absences due to migration were fairly common among those coming to the United States, for example (Foner, 2000; Robles and Watkins, 1993). When men migrate to work, they are fulfilling the gender expectation to be the family financial provider. Like other children separated from parents for work-related reasons, men’s migrations may not disrupt children’s notions of the roles fathers play in their families. This may be especially true in places where fathers’ absences have become normative. In Mexico, starting with the Bracero Program (1942–63), Mexican migration to the United States typically followed a circular pattern, with men leaving wives and children for seasonal jobs on work visas in US agriculture (Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1994; Massey et al., 1987). Although these men were often accused of being absent fathers, they continued to maintain an important role as the head of the household despite periodic physical absence because they provided financially for the family in Mexico (Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1994).
Today, however, women are migrating without their family members more than ever before to work in the service economies of ‘global cities’ (Sassen, 2002). Transnational motherhood appears to be increasingly common in many parts of the world, including among Mexican women in the United States (Dreby, 2010; Hondagneu-Sotelo and Avila, 1997). These mothers are ‘actively, if not voluntarily, building alternative constructions of motherhood’ (Hondagneu-Sotelo and Avila, 1997: 549). Research shows that the distribution of household labor in families often shifts post-migration, with men making greater contributions to housework in Latino immigrant families (Pessar, 1999). Moreover, mothers may become crucial providers for non-migrant children, as they may be particularly diligent in sending money home in support of their children living in their home countries (Abrego, 2009).
Mothers’ roles in families change when women migrate, but gendered expectations of parents often do not. Thus mothers’ labor migration has emotional repercussions for the children from whom they are separated. As migrant mothers become important economic contributors to the family, their role as family caregivers necessarily diminishes. Unlike working women in the United States who both work and continue to do the primary caregiving for children, transnational mothers cannot be involved in the work of caring for their children on a daily basis. Indeed, what Parreñas (2005) describes as the ‘gendered woes’ of children in transnational families may lead to resentment among children, which creates problems for children both in school settings and at times well into adulthood (Dreby, 2007).
Familismo and international separation
New configurations of family migration may be distressing for children, particularly when their mothers are absent. Yet it is also true that familial social networks make international migration possible, especially for parents who rely on grandparents or community ‘other mothers’ to care for their children while they are away (Moran-Taylor, 2008; Schmalzbauer, 2005). Researchers in the West Indies, for example, suggest that a cultural disposition to flexible kinship ties means that parental absence is rather normative for children (Chamberlain, 2003; Soto, 1987; Watkins-Owens, 2001). Children who define their families in flexible ways may not be as affected by parental absences during migration.
Flexible definitions of family may be particularly significant for members of Mexican transnational families. Extended family ties are more important in Mexico and other parts of Latin America, and for Mexican-Americans, than they are for white families in the United States (Esteinou, 2004; Tienda, 1980). Familismo, or the cultural predisposition to value extended family networks, may become more salient during periods of family separation. Social network ties often facilitate family members’ migrations (Massey et al., 1987), and reciprocity between family members of different generations is essential to the caregiving relationships parents set up across borders (Dreby, 2010). Indeed, children in transnational families describe deep emotional bonds with their caregivers while parents are away (Moran-Taylor, 2008; Schmalzbauer, 2005). Such a value on extended family members, and children’s more flexible definitions of family, may ease the negative emotional wake of a family member’s absence.
In this article we explore children’s definitions of their families when they are separated from different members of their family due to international migration. Children’s cultural constructs of their families under conditions of international separation can shed light on how new patterns of Mexican migration, especially those of women, may alter children’s concepts of family. It is possible that, like children in other types of non-traditional families, children are flexible in their ideas of family. The cultural predisposition toward familismo may enable such flexibility in definitions of family when mothers migrate. Or, it is possible that like children of other types of working parents, the roles migrants play in the family – that of economic providers – garners them a place in the family circle, regardless of the gender of the migrant.
Methodology
Children’s social worlds in drawings
This article analyses drawings collected from Mexican school children in the 1st through 6th grades. Some psychologists have questioned the validity of drawings in research because analysis may involve projections from drawings to children’s individual psychologies (Bardos and Powell, 2001; Lally, 2001). However, we view drawings as expressions of what drawings best depict: children’s imaginations. Drawings can be a useful tool for research with children, especially those of young ages or those who, due to age or educational background, may have difficulty verbalizing their ideas about families, especially to foreigners (see DiCarlo et al., 2000; Gibbons et al., 1990; Stiles et al., 1990). Indeed, research has shown that drawings provide a culturally sensitive measure of symbolic concepts (DiCarlo et al., 2000). In this vein, we use the drawings as a method for gaining insight into who children include and exclude from their families under different circumstances of international migration within their families. We do not make inferences about how children feel about separation from their drawings; rather we use the drawings to better understand how different patterns of international migration impacts children’s definition of family.
Research design
This project is part of a larger ethnographic study of Mexican transnational families conducted by Joanna between the years 2003 and 2006. The study involved two years of fieldwork and interviews with migrants in the United States and one year of fieldwork and interviews with children of migrants and their caregivers in the Mixteca and coastal regions of Puebla, Oaxaca and Guerrero, Mexico. In-depth fieldwork provided great insight into the experiences of children while their parents were away working in the United States. The youngest children in the study seemed to have quite flexible ideas of kinship; they often referred to caregivers in Mexico as ‘mamá’ or ‘mami’. At the same time, young children all knew that they had parents working in the United States and were able to talk to the researcher about their biological parents. Because the fieldwork and interviews focused solely on the experiences of children with parents away, the study provided no insight about how the definitions of family among children interviewed compared to those of other children in their communities living in different types of migrant families.
In January 2006, Joanna returned to Mexico to gather data from a wider range of children in migrant communities. To do so, she collected drawings at three primary schools (all public as there were no private schools in these towns) in two towns in western Mexico; one a small colonia outside of Acapulco and the other a town in Oaxaca of approximately 1700 residents located between Acapulco and the next largest port city, Puerto Escondido. While significant indigenous communities exist in surrounding communities, both towns have primarily mestizo, Spanish-speaking populations. In this second town Joanna had collected 560 surveys with students attending the local middle and high schools in 2005. These surveys show that 89 percent of all school students had family members in the United States, attesting to the prevalence of US migration in the region. Joanna had also previously spent time in both communities visiting with the children of some of the US migrants in her sample and their caregivers.
Although what follows is informed by the interviews and fieldwork done with various members of Mexican transnational families, we limit analysis to the drawings collected from students who ranged in age from 5 to 15 years old. Our interest in this article is to look at how children draw their families when different members of their families are migrants. Fifty-one percent of the study participants were male and 49 percent were female. Joanna invited every student present on the day she visited the class to participate in the drawing project; children not in attendance at school on that day are necessarily missing from the sample.
Joanna asked students to make two drawings; one of their families and one of the United States; for this article we focus solely on children’s family portraits. She provided a box of 240 colored pencils (with 12 colors) for students to use in making their drawings. Instructions were purposively minimal: to draw a picture of their families and label each person in the picture. After the students completed their drawings, Joanna asked each student for information about his or her family structure, including who they lived with and which of their relatives lived in the United States.
Analyzing the drawings
Back in the United States, we used an inductive approach to the content analysis of drawings. To enhance inter-rater reliability, we separately examined the drawings for predominate patterns along with another research assistant. We then grouped children as living in six types of Mexican families for analysis. First, we considered children that did not have migrants in the family. These students’ drawings serve as a reference group. Second, we considered patterns in the drawings among the following five categories of transnational families: (1) those in which members of children’s extended family only are in the United States; (2) children with siblings abroad, but no migrant parents; (3) children whose parental migrant is a father only; (4) children whose parental migrant is a mother only; and (5) children whose both parents currently live in the United States. Those in the sibling abroad category may or may not have extended family members away, and children of migrant parents may or may not have siblings and extended family members away. Although these categories are not mutually exclusive, they are best suited to capture the different levels of family involvement in international migration.
We also coded the drawings for those who the children included and excluded in their family portraits and the placement of these figures on the page (see Roe et al., 2006). For example, children often drew their family members in a serial pattern, where all the family members are drawn in a row with the mother or father first in line. We considered which parents were drawn closest to the children or at the center of the family portrait as well as whether or not they appeared together, but separated from the children. We also coded for the relative size (by scale) or prominence of parents in the drawings as compared to each other. We looked at the presence of houses in children’s family portraits, and whether or not figures were touching.
Finally, we conducted chi-square tests and cross-tabulations looking at variations in the family drawing by children’s transnational family type. We also ran analyses for variations by children’s age and gender, given that research suggests that girls and boys of different ages vary in their relational discourses (O’Connor et al., 2004). Five of the original 426 drawings were not included in the analyses due to the students’ failure to label the figures in their drawings, leaving a remaining 421 valid cases. We focus the rest of the article only on those variables (Table 1) in which significant differences were evident between children with different family migration patterns or that unveiled thematically interesting or theoretically meaningful trends.
Frequencies and percentages for key variables
Note: Unless otherwise indicated, figures represent the ‘yes’ category on all dummy-coded variables.
Children’s depictions of family
We find that children’s family drawings do not always reflect their own living situations or even cultural archetypes of family; instead, migration affects children’s imaginations of family most notably by reinforcing membership in the family. The particular type of transnational family in which children live patterns differences in children’s depictions of their families (see Table 2).
Variables by transnational family type (valid percentages)
Families without migrants
Children in families with no migrant members generally depict ‘archetypical’ families. That is, they mostly draw only their immediate – or ‘nuclear’ – family (79 percent), and include both a mother and father in their portraits. This is somewhat surprising given norms of familismo prevalent in Mexican families (Esteinou, 2004). Extended family members did not appear in most of the children’s drawings. Moreover, more common in these drawings than in any other group is the father appearing first in the serial arrangement of family members (see Figure 1). The placement of the father at one extreme gives the impression of a patriarchal head of household. The mother’s place is between the father and her children. (The placement of the mother as the first in the series is also quite common in this group, but continues to be prevalent among children in other family types.) Most children with no migrant relatives also drew both mother and father to the same scale, suggesting equal importance of each parent to the family unit. Finally, approximately half of the children living in these families drew houses around or near the family members. This suggests that children imagine their families tied to a physical structure or space – something disrupted by the notion of transnationalism.
This second-grader has no migrant relatives and lives with both parents and two siblings. The 8-year-old’s drawing is an example of a father first in the serial arrangement of the family members.
Extended family only
In some ways, drawings of children with extended family members only abroad are similar to those of children with no migrants. Fifty percent drew their parents on an equal scale and nearly half drew houses (see Figure 2). The presence of mothers and fathers in the drawings is fairly consistent. Yet there are also telling distinctions.
This third-grade girl whose aunt and uncle live in the United States drew an aunt and uncle in her portrait. The figures appear to be tied to a physical location: a house surrounding by trees and mountains.
Most significantly, there is a large increase in the presence of extended family – whether appearing alone or with nuclear family members – in the drawings, jumping from just 18 percent to 32 percent. Extended family members may become a more active component of children’s imaginations of family post-migration. This may be because of an increase in social presence that migrant relatives take on during periods of migration; that is, migrant relatives may call to talk to nieces, nephews, cousins and grandchildren, or send remittances and gifts back to Mexico. These activities uphold migration as a family strategy and, for children, activate symbolic family membership among those who have gone to el norte.
In fact, a small group of boys (five) – and no girls – with only extended relatives away drew only their extended relatives in their family portraits. These are the only drawings of any family group in which nuclear family members were not included. What explains this phenomenon? Perhaps boys identify with migrant relatives because they see themselves as future migrants. If migration is viewed as a family economic strategy to be carried out by young male relatives (Cohen et al., 2008; Massey et al., 1987), boys may have a heightened interest in relatives who are abroad.
Siblings abroad
Given that children with no migrant relatives included only siblings and parents in their drawings, we would expect children’s constructions of family to change when a member of their immediate family migrates. They do change in two ways.
First, nuclear family members continue to be most common in the drawings (77 percent). This suggests that migration may activate particular family roles in children’s imaginations; when siblings are away children are hyper-aware of their absence and are sure to draw them as part of the family (see Figure 3). Ironically, although children in this group draw their immediate family more than in other groups, the percentage drawing their mother and father – the family members children actually live with – drops.
This 10-year-old boy drew his two brothers and parents despite one brother living in the United States. There is no house in this fourth-grader’s drawing.
Second, a much smaller percentage of children with migrant siblings draw houses in their family portraits as compared to those with only extended family migrants or no family abroad (30, 45 and 49 percent respectively). The relative absence of houses suggests that the migration of immediate family members such as siblings disrupts the symbolic link between family and physical space. When an immediate family member migrates, children – like adults – begin to have a transnational imaginary of family life.
Fathers only
Historically, a father’s absence owing to migration is fairly common. Thus we might expect that children of male migrants do not draw their families all that differently from children with no migrants in the family. Indeed, in some ways this is the case. Fathers appear in these family portraits as frequently as they do for children with no migrants or extended family members away. Fewer children drew houses than in these two groups, but more did than when siblings are away (36 percent). This suggests some disruption of the symbolic binding of family to physical space, but not to the same extent as when siblings are abroad. Fathers’ migration may upset the spatial boundary of family, but is also commonplace for Mexican children.
However, differences as compared to non-migrant families are also evident. For one, children with fathers away far more often draw extended family members – although always appearing with nuclear family members – in their drawings (40 percent) than other children. Fathers’ reliance upon extended family members to facilitate migration may have some influence on children’s inclusion of extended family in their portraits.
Most significantly, mothers loom large in children’s family portraits when fathers are away. More than half of children in this group drew their mothers at a larger scale than their fathers (see Figure 4) and only 6 percent drew their fathers as larger than their mothers (more children in every other group, including those in which only mothers were away, drew their fathers to a larger scale than their mothers). Only 20 percent of children in this group drew their fathers as the first in the serial, compared to 25 percent of children with siblings abroad, 24 percent with extended family abroad and 32 percent with no migrant relatives. Mothers in these families take on many of the tasks, responsibilities and roles that fathers carried before migrating (see Mummert, 1988; Plaza, 2007). In essence, fathers lose status in families when they migrate, with mothers taking their place as the most central figures for children.
This 7-year-old’s father lives in the United States. Although the father is in the portrait, this second-grade girl drew her mother on a much larger scale than her father.
Mothers only
This is not the case when mothers migrate. Instead, migrant mothers appear more symbolically central than in the drawings of children in any other group. A full 50 percent drew their mothers as first in a serial arrangement. Sixty percent drew their mothers to a larger scale than their fathers. Mothers in these drawings are also most often the closest figures to the children (56 percent). Children’s depictions of mothers demonstrate an exaggerated role of the mother in the family as compared to the drawings of children living with both their parents. This may reflect mothers’ greater importance – real and symbolic – to family life for children even when they migrate.
Interesting is that children of sole migrant mothers are also the most likely to include extended family members, although again appearing with nuclear family members, in their drawings (46 percent). Children with migrant mothers also comprise the group most likely to not include either parent in their drawings (29 percent) (see Figure 5). Among this group are the lowest percentages of children who draw their mothers (71 percent) and especially their fathers (only 43 percent!) in their portraits.
This 11-year-old lives with his grandmother and four siblings. His parents are separated and his father lives nearby in Mexico. Like some others with migrant mothers, this fifth-grader did not include his mother – or his father – in his drawing.
We suspect that it is not migration per se, but rather the single-parent household that explains the types of family portraits common in this group. Sole migrant mothers in Mexican transnational families are typically single mothers, with divorce, death, or another form of separation occurring before a mother makes the move north (Dreby, 2010; see also Kanaiaupuni, 2000). Thus children of migrant mothers may be more likely to include extended family members such as grandmothers and aunts in their portraits because they were active members of their families even prior to the mother’s departure. Children’s drawings also reflect this family situation by excluding fathers, and at times both parents, in their drawings. For these children, perhaps migration itself does not disrupt children’s constructions of family. Rather, consistent with research with children of divorce, being a child in a single-parent home changes the way one imagines and constructs family regardless of the migration of other family members.
Both parents abroad
The family portraits of children with both parents living in the United States illustrate that migration is associated with the reinforcement, not disintegration, of family ties in the eyes of children. Despite both parents’ absence, children draw their parents as symbolically central figures in their families. The drawings of children in this group epitomize a concept of a transnational family that includes both nuclear and extended members of the family, is detached from physical boundaries and in which children are unified with migrant parents.
Most surprisingly, given their absence in children’s daily lives, is that mothers and fathers have a larger presence in these family portraits than for any other group. In stark contrast to children of sole migrant mothers, a larger percentage of children in this category included both of their parents. They did so even more than children with no migrant relatives, who tend to live in two-parent households. Whereas 88 percent of children with no migrants in the family drew their mother, 96 percent of children with both parents away drew their mother. Similarly, only 71 percent of children with no migrants in the family drew their fathers, while 92 percent with both parents away drew their fathers. Despite parents’ absence, they are highly present in children’s imaginations, regardless of children’s age or gender. Parenting activities across borders (e.g. sending money, calling) may highlight their role as parents in the context of migration (Dreby, 2010).
Children with both parents away also tend to draw mothers and fathers equidistant to the children in their portraits. Preference for one parent is not evident in how children arrange figures. However, like children of single migrant mothers, children with both parents away more commonly draw mothers to a larger scale than fathers and other figures (58 percent). Only 27 percent of children in both categories of families with migrant mothers drew their families with houses (see Figure 6). Mothers’ migrations appear to be the most significant in transforming children’s ideas of family as being tied to physical structures or space.
This 13-year-old lives with his grandparents, a sister and two uncles. His parents live in the United States. The layout is similar to Figure 1 with one exception: the sixth-grader did not draw his family in a physical setting.
The strength of family ties
Taken together, Mexican children’s family portraits show that migration – from children’s perspectives – does not sever symbolic membership in the family. To the contrary, children’s drawings suggest that migration highlights familial roles, activating these roles in the imaginations of non-migrant children. When children have extended family members away, they include them in their drawings of family. Likewise, when children’s siblings migrate, children more frequently include them in their drawings. And when mothers migrate, whether alone or with fathers, children draw mothers larger than other figures and mothers appear more frequently in the drawings than fathers.
Mexican children’s drawings of their families do not necessarily align with their living situations. Children in transnational families are quite inclusive of migrant family members, even though they are not physically in contact with them on a regular basis. Like other children separated from working parents, children in transnational families continue to view absent members as being crucial to the family unit. Moreover, children with siblings away more often draw siblings in their drawings than other children. Finally, children with both parents away are more likely than other children to draw their families as a ‘typical’ nuclear family, not less. This suggests that the act of migration itself activates the migrant family member in children’s cultural constructs of kinship.
In fact, the only group of children who drew non-nuclear depictions of their families were those who were already living in single-parent households prior to migration. In this case it is living in a single-parent household, not migration, which would seem to explain children’s flexible imaginary of family.
Our findings suggest that it is not separation per se, but rather migration that heightens a family member’s place in children’s concept of family membership. Research on transnational families generally supports the family-reinforcing effect of migration. International migration encourages family commitments across borders by activating one’s familial role; that is, family members migrate for the sake of non-migrant family members – what Robert C Smith (2006) refers to as ‘the immigrant bargain’. Migration is commonly rationalized as a family economic strategy. The migrants are therefore seen as sacrificing themselves for the sake of the family. Although individuals vary in the extent to which they fulfill the expectations of such a sacrifice, migration involves pressures to meet family obligations. In effect, non-migrant children appear aware of the familial expectations of migrants and thus define their families as inclusive of absent relatives during periods of separation.
Most significant, perhaps, is that children with migrant parents are the most likely to depict their mothers as highly symbolic members of their families whether or not their mothers live with them. Despite changes in gendered patterns of migration, mothers continue to be paramount to the family in the eyes of children. This provides some insight into why researchers have found children of migrant mothers to be the most distressed by their mothers’ absence. Not only do gendered expectations of migrant mothers and fathers affect children’s experiences while parents are away (see Dreby, 2010; Parreñas, 2005), but children also may view their mothers as central to their families even post-migration. When fathers leave home, mothers fulfill parental roles as they remain with the children. However, when mothers migrate, either alone or with husbands, there is a much greater potential for children to feel disappointed or disillusioned by their mothers’ absence.
This study is, of course, not without limitations. We do not have data on children’s socioeconomic status. Class is complex within and between transnational families, and affects outcomes among children (see Dreby and Adkins, 2010). Also, due to generic labeling of figures in children’s drawings, we cannot be sure that the aunts, uncles, cousins, or siblings that appear in the family drawing are the same as those who are currently in the United States. Instead, we maintain that migration activates particular familial ‘roles’ such as ‘sibling’, ‘aunt’, or ‘uncle’, without making claims about specific individuals. We also do not have information about how the length of time migrants spend abroad may affect children’s definitions of their family.
Nonetheless, our data provide important information on how children are active participants in making families into ‘imagined communities’ in transnational spaces (Anderson, 1983; Bryceson and Vuorela, 2002: 10). That migrant family members are so salient to non-migrant children provides insight into why international migration may have negative consequences for the youngest members of families. Children, like adults, actively create and reinforce family obligation across national boundaries. When international migration intensifies familial obligation, the strength of family ties in children’s minds may become, in and of itself, a source of tension.
Footnotes
This research was funded by the City University of New York Graduate Center’s Research Travel Grant Program, the Research Council at Kent State University and the Fulbright Association.