Laura Merla
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 82599 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Laura Merla |
| PRENOMES | Laura |
| SOBRENOME | Merla |
| ASSINATURA | MERLA L |
| AFILIAÇÕES | UCLouvain |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4823-9075 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 27 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 281 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 25 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 2 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2007 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 7 |
From fortresses to open islands
This article examines how separated parents establish boundaries between their respective households when sharing physical custody of their children. Framed through the metaphor of an archipelago, each parental home is conceptualized as an ‘island’, capturing how children navigate life across two distinct yet interconnected households. Drawing on interviews with 21 Belgian children (aged 10–16) from 17 families, we propose a typology of five pare…
Residential Calendars in Joint Physical Custody Arrangements Beyond the Week On/Week Off Model
This paper focuses on residential calendars in joint physical custody arrangements (JPC). Based on extensive fieldwork in the Piedmont Region involving 22 children aged 10 to 16 and their families, we identify two distinctive Italian trends departing from typical JPC schedules emphasizing weekly alternations for clarity and fairness: (1) increased frequency of transitions with shorter stays at each parent's home; and (2) frequent physical co‐pres…
Judicial treatment of applications for joint physical custody in Belgium
Joint physical custody (JPC) of children after parental separation is increasingly prevalent in many countries. The literature describes a series of criteria that are—or should be—considered by judges who must rule on applications for JPC. However, little is known about how family courts evaluate these criteria, or about the normative representations that shape their evaluations. Based on the perspectives of lawyers and judges in Belgian family c…
Exploring Parents’ Everyday Experiences With Digital Media
This article presents qualitative research findings on parents’ digital media practices. Through 32 in-depth interviews with parents of 0–6-year-olds in French-speaking Belgium, the study addresses digital inclusion by exploring the diverse ways parents experience and benefit (or not) from digital media. Our research uncovers the dual nature of digital media use in parenting, presenting both advantageous and problematic outcomes across four diale…
Taking shared parenting seriously
Shared physical custody (SPC) is a care arrangement following parental separation, whereby children alternatively reside with their mother and father. Very little is known about how family policies accommodate SPC, which is all the more unfortunate, as it represents a key opportunity to understand how family policies can efficiently facilitate shared parenting. To address this gap, this article presents a modest attempt at designing a new compara…
Enforced temporariness and skilled migrants' family plans
This paper examines the impact of the legal rhythms and temporalities of migration on the specific temporalities of family life, under conditions of enforced temporariness. It apprehends enforced temporariness as a mode of governance infused with chronopolitics, which - by producing specific experiences of time - deprives migrants from the right/capacity to lead their family life according to their plans and aspirations. Through a focus on highly…
Présentation
I. Une approche constructiviste relationnelle de la famille et de l’espace Aujourd’hui, la mobilité – qu’elle soit spatiale, sociale, relationnelle... – est largement devenue un impératif normatif transversal aux différentes sphères de la vie sociale, y compris familiale (Mincke/Montulet, 2019 ; Urry, 2007). Dans nos sociétés, elle se reflète notamment dans la diversification des configurations familiales, qui remet en question les constructio…
Institutional racism within the securitization of migration. The case of family reunification in Belgium
Institutional Racism (IR) in Europe is rarely mentioned in studies of race-based discrimination. Yet, structural racism occurs within most European societies. Due to the increasing securitization of immigration, countries have introduced several (in)formal strategies to exclude foreign populations. Given that, we propose an updated way of conceptualizing IR to uncover contemporary manifestations and practices of structural racist discrimination i…
Presentation
DOAJ is a unique and extensive index of diverse open access journals from around the world, driven by a growing community, committed to ensuring quality content is freely available online for everyone
Gérer l'alternance, ordonner un monde en mouvement
Au travers de l’analyse des discours de 21 adolescents belges âgés de 10 à 16 ans sur leur expérience vécue d’un mode de vie multilocal, cet article éclaire la manière dont la matérialité qui entoure ces jeunes leur permet d’ordonnancer leur monde en un espace vécu et d’établir des liens et des continuités dans l’expérience de la mobilité. Nous appuyant sur les material studies et leur application dans le champ d’étude de la famille, nous commenç…
"Introduction to the Special Issue "Transnational care
In this article, we introduce the key themes of our Special Issue on "Transnational care: families confronting borders". Central to this collection is the question of how family relations and solidarities are impacted by the current scenario of closed borders and increasingly restrictive migration regimes. This question is examined more specifically through the lens of care dynamics within transnational families and their (re-)configurations acro…
Making Multicultural Families in Europe
The social reproductive worlds of migrants
The articles in this special issue contribute new insights to a growing body of scholarship on the risks and opportunities migration presents for migrant families’ social reproduction, variously understood as the physical and social/cultural processes entailed in reproducing people, and the strategies migrants develop to navigate those risks and opportunities. Informed by the notion of ‘care circulation’ (Baldassar & Merla, 2014) collectively the…
Familles transnationales, familles solidaires
Le concept de défamilialisation à l’épreuve du care transnational. L’exclusion des travailleuses migrantes domestiques des politiques de care
Les flux migratoires féminins en relation avec le travail de soin aux autres (le care ) posent un défi théorique au concept de défamilialisation. Conçu pour témoigner de l’accès à l’indépendance économique des femmes et aux services de care dans un État social, il ignore totalement l’expérience des travailleuses migrantes. Cet article pose la question de leur propre défamilialisation dans un contexte de circulation transnationale du care , qui re…
Defamilialization of Whom? Re-Thinking Defamilialization in the Light of Global Care Chains and the Transnational Circulation of Care
Defamilialization represented an effective response to the corpus of gender-blind concepts in social policy as it placed women’s interest and their corresponding welfare needs at the forefront. But the concept faces new challenges. First, defamilialization as implemented in European countries relies on important flows of migrant care workers. Still it is not fully accessible to migrant care workers themselves. Second, defamilialization, usually i…
Concluding reflections
Aquest simposi ofereix una discussió crítica de les lògiques i dinàmiques entorn de la nova perspectiva de la «circulació de la cura» presentades per Loretta Baldassar i Laura Merla en el seu volum titulat Transnational Families, Migration and the Circulation of Care. En aquesta contribució, les autores aborden tres temes: la cura com a capital social, la necessitat de recuperar «la política» i la (des)-corporalitat de les pràctiques de cura. Sub…
ICT-based co-presence in transnational families and communities
Situating transnational families' care-giving arrangements
Recent studies reveal that state policies and international regulations influence the maintenance of transnational family solidarity. We aim to contribute to our understanding of how families' care-giving arrangements are situated within institutional contexts. We specify an analytical framework comprising a typology of care-giving arrangements within transnational families, a typology of resources they require for care giving, and a specificatio…
Transnational Families, Migration and the Circulation of Care
This chapter discusses the usefulness of situating the care circulation framework in a migratory context by discussing the interconnectedness between institutional contexts and capacity, obligation and negotiated commitments. The author shows that care arrangements that result from a dialectical relationship between these three elements are influenced by migrants and their kin's respective positioning in the migration, gendered care, welfare and …
Salvadoran Migrants in Australia
In this paper, I focus on the transnational care practices of Salvadoran refugees living in Perth (Western Australia) and who care for their ageing parents who have remained in their home country. The analysis is based on a conceptualization of transnational care as a set of capabilities that include, but are not limited to, mobility, social relations, time allocation, education and knowledge, paid work and communication (Merla and Baldassar, 201…
Familles salvadoriennes à l'épreuve de la distance
Cet article présente une analyse comparative de la participation des membres de deux familles salvadoriennes, dont l’une compte des enfants adultes installés en Australie, et l’autre en Belgique, au soin de leurs parents âgés. En dépit de la distance, ces migrants fournissent à leurs parents un soutien financier, émotionnel et pratique en mobilisant les membres de leur réseau familial transnational. L’article montre que c’est notamment en s’engag…
Présentation
Nous avons conçu ce numéro spécial autour d’un double objectif : accroître la visibilité des familles transnationales et du soin transnational, ce que d’aucuns ont appelé la sphère domestique transnationale (Gardner/Grillo, 2002) ou la sphère privée diasporique (Baldassar/Gabaccia, 2010), et interroger une certaine approche traditionnelle de l’étude des migrations centrée sur des questions économiques et qui néglige le rôle que les émotions peuve…
La gestion des émotions dans le cadre du devoir filial
Cet article explore la dimension émotionnelle du devoir filial dans un contexte transnational. Cette dimension émotionnelle renvoie ici au travail de gestion des émotions, c’est-à-dire les compétences et les efforts nécessaires pour gérer les émotions personnelles ainsi que celles des autres dans la sphère privée. Le travail de gestion des émotions est une dimension importante des pratiques de soin transnationales dans lesquelles les migrants sal…
La circulación de cuidados en las familias transnacionales
Este articulo presenta un acercamiento a las solidaridades familiares transnacionales en terminos de «circulacion de cuidados». Tal acercamiento se fundamenta en una vision multidimensional de los cuidados que trasciende los cuidados personales prodigados a una persona dependiente, tomando como unidad de analisis al conjunto de la red familiar, y poniendo asi de manifiesto la multiplicidad de actores y de roles que estos asumen en el mantenimient…
ICT-based co-presence in transnational families and communities
Situating transnational families' care-giving arrangements
Recent studies reveal that state policies and international regulations influence the maintenance of transnational family solidarity. We aim to contribute to our understanding of how families' care-giving arrangements are situated within institutional contexts. We specify an analytical framework comprising a typology of care-giving arrangements within transnational families, a typology of resources they require for care giving, and a specificatio…
Stay-at-Home Fathering
Rooted in two qualitative research studies of stay-at-home fathers (70 Canadian and 21 Belgian) at the beginning of the twenty-first century, this article explores the innovative ways that families seek to create work–family balance in two countries where relevant social policies are still focused on the encouraging of private family-based solutions to balancing paid and unpaid work. At the level of work–family policy, we note that both Canada an…
"Introduction to the Special Issue "Transnational care
In this article, we introduce the key themes of our Special Issue on "Transnational care: families confronting borders". Central to this collection is the question of how family relations and solidarities are impacted by the current scenario of closed borders and increasingly restrictive migration regimes. This question is examined more specifically through the lens of care dynamics within transnational families and their (re-)configurations acro…
Salvadoran Migrants in Australia
In this paper, I focus on the transnational care practices of Salvadoran refugees living in Perth (Western Australia) and who care for their ageing parents who have remained in their home country. The analysis is based on a conceptualization of transnational care as a set of capabilities that include, but are not limited to, mobility, social relations, time allocation, education and knowledge, paid work and communication (Merla and Baldassar, 201…
Enforced temporariness and skilled migrants' family plans
This paper examines the impact of the legal rhythms and temporalities of migration on the specific temporalities of family life, under conditions of enforced temporariness. It apprehends enforced temporariness as a mode of governance infused with chronopolitics, which - by producing specific experiences of time - deprives migrants from the right/capacity to lead their family life according to their plans and aspirations. Through a focus on highly…
The social reproductive worlds of migrants
The articles in this special issue contribute new insights to a growing body of scholarship on the risks and opportunities migration presents for migrant families’ social reproduction, variously understood as the physical and social/cultural processes entailed in reproducing people, and the strategies migrants develop to navigate those risks and opportunities. Informed by the notion of ‘care circulation’ (Baldassar & Merla, 2014) collectively the…
Concluding reflections
Aquest simposi ofereix una discussió crítica de les lògiques i dinàmiques entorn de la nova perspectiva de la «circulació de la cura» presentades per Loretta Baldassar i Laura Merla en el seu volum titulat Transnational Families, Migration and the Circulation of Care. En aquesta contribució, les autores aborden tres temes: la cura com a capital social, la necessitat de recuperar «la política» i la (des)-corporalitat de les pràctiques de cura. Sub…
La gestion des émotions dans le cadre du devoir filial
Cet article explore la dimension émotionnelle du devoir filial dans un contexte transnational. Cette dimension émotionnelle renvoie ici au travail de gestion des émotions, c’est-à-dire les compétences et les efforts nécessaires pour gérer les émotions personnelles ainsi que celles des autres dans la sphère privée. Le travail de gestion des émotions est une dimension importante des pratiques de soin transnationales dans lesquelles les migrants sal…
Taking shared parenting seriously
Shared physical custody (SPC) is a care arrangement following parental separation, whereby children alternatively reside with their mother and father. Very little is known about how family policies accommodate SPC, which is all the more unfortunate, as it represents a key opportunity to understand how family policies can efficiently facilitate shared parenting. To address this gap, this article presents a modest attempt at designing a new compara…
Le concept de défamilialisation à l’épreuve du care transnational. L’exclusion des travailleuses migrantes domestiques des politiques de care
Les flux migratoires féminins en relation avec le travail de soin aux autres (le care ) posent un défi théorique au concept de défamilialisation. Conçu pour témoigner de l’accès à l’indépendance économique des femmes et aux services de care dans un État social, il ignore totalement l’expérience des travailleuses migrantes. Cet article pose la question de leur propre défamilialisation dans un contexte de circulation transnationale du care , qui re…
Masculinité et paternité à l'écart du monde du travail
Cet article, rédigé à partir d’une recherche doctorale portant sur 21 pères au foyer, s’intéresse à la difficulté qu’il y a pour un homme de gérer une image positive de soi qui se détache de la référence au travail professionnel, et ce à la fois vis-à-vis de soi-même et dans les relations à autrui. Nous mettrons en lumière la subsistance des normes de la division sexuelle du travail qui transparaît au niveau des interactions avec autrui dans et e…
Masculinité et paternité à l'écart du monde du travail
Cet article, rédigé à partir d’une recherche doctorale portant sur 21 pères au foyer, s’intéresse à la difficulté qu’il y a pour un homme de gérer une image positive de soi qui se détache de la référence au travail professionnel, et ce à la fois vis-à-vis de soi-même et dans les relations à autrui. Nous mettrons en lumière la subsistance des normes de la division sexuelle du travail qui transparaît au niveau des interactions avec autrui dans et e…
Stay-at-Home Fathering
Rooted in two qualitative research studies of stay-at-home fathers (70 Canadian and 21 Belgian) at the beginning of the twenty-first century, this article explores the innovative ways that families seek to create work–family balance in two countries where relevant social policies are still focused on the encouraging of private family-based solutions to balancing paid and unpaid work. At the level of work–family policy, we note that both Canada an…
Présentation
Nous avons conçu ce numéro spécial autour d’un double objectif : accroître la visibilité des familles transnationales et du soin transnational, ce que d’aucuns ont appelé la sphère domestique transnationale (Gardner/Grillo, 2002) ou la sphère privée diasporique (Baldassar/Gabaccia, 2010), et interroger une certaine approche traditionnelle de l’étude des migrations centrée sur des questions économiques et qui néglige le rôle que les émotions peuve…
La gestion des émotions dans le cadre du devoir filial
Cet article explore la dimension émotionnelle du devoir filial dans un contexte transnational. Cette dimension émotionnelle renvoie ici au travail de gestion des émotions, c’est-à-dire les compétences et les efforts nécessaires pour gérer les émotions personnelles ainsi que celles des autres dans la sphère privée. Le travail de gestion des émotions est une dimension importante des pratiques de soin transnationales dans lesquelles les migrants sal…
Familles salvadoriennes à l'épreuve de la distance
Cet article présente une analyse comparative de la participation des membres de deux familles salvadoriennes, dont l’une compte des enfants adultes installés en Australie, et l’autre en Belgique, au soin de leurs parents âgés. En dépit de la distance, ces migrants fournissent à leurs parents un soutien financier, émotionnel et pratique en mobilisant les membres de leur réseau familial transnational. L’article montre que c’est notamment en s’engag…
Salvadoran Migrants in Australia
In this paper, I focus on the transnational care practices of Salvadoran refugees living in Perth (Western Australia) and who care for their ageing parents who have remained in their home country. The analysis is based on a conceptualization of transnational care as a set of capabilities that include, but are not limited to, mobility, social relations, time allocation, education and knowledge, paid work and communication (Merla and Baldassar, 201…
Transnational Families, Migration and the Circulation of Care
This chapter discusses the usefulness of situating the care circulation framework in a migratory context by discussing the interconnectedness between institutional contexts and capacity, obligation and negotiated commitments. The author shows that care arrangements that result from a dialectical relationship between these three elements are influenced by migrants and their kin's respective positioning in the migration, gendered care, welfare and …
Situating transnational families' care-giving arrangements
Recent studies reveal that state policies and international regulations influence the maintenance of transnational family solidarity. We aim to contribute to our understanding of how families' care-giving arrangements are situated within institutional contexts. We specify an analytical framework comprising a typology of care-giving arrangements within transnational families, a typology of resources they require for care giving, and a specificatio…
Defamilialization of Whom? Re-Thinking Defamilialization in the Light of Global Care Chains and the Transnational Circulation of Care
Defamilialization represented an effective response to the corpus of gender-blind concepts in social policy as it placed women’s interest and their corresponding welfare needs at the forefront. But the concept faces new challenges. First, defamilialization as implemented in European countries relies on important flows of migrant care workers. Still it is not fully accessible to migrant care workers themselves. Second, defamilialization, usually i…
Concluding reflections
Aquest simposi ofereix una discussió crítica de les lògiques i dinàmiques entorn de la nova perspectiva de la «circulació de la cura» presentades per Loretta Baldassar i Laura Merla en el seu volum titulat Transnational Families, Migration and the Circulation of Care. En aquesta contribució, les autores aborden tres temes: la cura com a capital social, la necessitat de recuperar «la política» i la (des)-corporalitat de les pràctiques de cura. Sub…
ICT-based co-presence in transnational families and communities
Familles transnationales, familles solidaires
Le concept de défamilialisation à l’épreuve du care transnational. L’exclusion des travailleuses migrantes domestiques des politiques de care
Les flux migratoires féminins en relation avec le travail de soin aux autres (le care ) posent un défi théorique au concept de défamilialisation. Conçu pour témoigner de l’accès à l’indépendance économique des femmes et aux services de care dans un État social, il ignore totalement l’expérience des travailleuses migrantes. Cet article pose la question de leur propre défamilialisation dans un contexte de circulation transnationale du care , qui re…
Making Multicultural Families in Europe
The social reproductive worlds of migrants
The articles in this special issue contribute new insights to a growing body of scholarship on the risks and opportunities migration presents for migrant families’ social reproduction, variously understood as the physical and social/cultural processes entailed in reproducing people, and the strategies migrants develop to navigate those risks and opportunities. Informed by the notion of ‘care circulation’ (Baldassar & Merla, 2014) collectively the…
"Introduction to the Special Issue "Transnational care
In this article, we introduce the key themes of our Special Issue on "Transnational care: families confronting borders". Central to this collection is the question of how family relations and solidarities are impacted by the current scenario of closed borders and increasingly restrictive migration regimes. This question is examined more specifically through the lens of care dynamics within transnational families and their (re-)configurations acro…
Présentation
I. Une approche constructiviste relationnelle de la famille et de l’espace Aujourd’hui, la mobilité – qu’elle soit spatiale, sociale, relationnelle... – est largement devenue un impératif normatif transversal aux différentes sphères de la vie sociale, y compris familiale (Mincke/Montulet, 2019 ; Urry, 2007). Dans nos sociétés, elle se reflète notamment dans la diversification des configurations familiales, qui remet en question les constructio…
Institutional racism within the securitization of migration. The case of family reunification in Belgium
Institutional Racism (IR) in Europe is rarely mentioned in studies of race-based discrimination. Yet, structural racism occurs within most European societies. Due to the increasing securitization of immigration, countries have introduced several (in)formal strategies to exclude foreign populations. Given that, we propose an updated way of conceptualizing IR to uncover contemporary manifestations and practices of structural racist discrimination i…
Presentation
DOAJ is a unique and extensive index of diverse open access journals from around the world, driven by a growing community, committed to ensuring quality content is freely available online for everyone
Gérer l'alternance, ordonner un monde en mouvement
Au travers de l’analyse des discours de 21 adolescents belges âgés de 10 à 16 ans sur leur expérience vécue d’un mode de vie multilocal, cet article éclaire la manière dont la matérialité qui entoure ces jeunes leur permet d’ordonnancer leur monde en un espace vécu et d’établir des liens et des continuités dans l’expérience de la mobilité. Nous appuyant sur les material studies et leur application dans le champ d’étude de la famille, nous commenç…
Enforced temporariness and skilled migrants' family plans
This paper examines the impact of the legal rhythms and temporalities of migration on the specific temporalities of family life, under conditions of enforced temporariness. It apprehends enforced temporariness as a mode of governance infused with chronopolitics, which - by producing specific experiences of time - deprives migrants from the right/capacity to lead their family life according to their plans and aspirations. Through a focus on highly…
Exploring Parents’ Everyday Experiences With Digital Media
This article presents qualitative research findings on parents’ digital media practices. Through 32 in-depth interviews with parents of 0–6-year-olds in French-speaking Belgium, the study addresses digital inclusion by exploring the diverse ways parents experience and benefit (or not) from digital media. Our research uncovers the dual nature of digital media use in parenting, presenting both advantageous and problematic outcomes across four diale…
La circulación de cuidados en las familias transnacionales
Este articulo presenta un acercamiento a las solidaridades familiares transnacionales en terminos de «circulacion de cuidados». Tal acercamiento se fundamenta en una vision multidimensional de los cuidados que trasciende los cuidados personales prodigados a una persona dependiente, tomando como unidad de analisis al conjunto de la red familiar, y poniendo asi de manifiesto la multiplicidad de actores y de roles que estos asumen en el mantenimient…
Taking shared parenting seriously
Shared physical custody (SPC) is a care arrangement following parental separation, whereby children alternatively reside with their mother and father. Very little is known about how family policies accommodate SPC, which is all the more unfortunate, as it represents a key opportunity to understand how family policies can efficiently facilitate shared parenting. To address this gap, this article presents a modest attempt at designing a new compara…
Residential Calendars in Joint Physical Custody Arrangements Beyond the Week On/Week Off Model
This paper focuses on residential calendars in joint physical custody arrangements (JPC). Based on extensive fieldwork in the Piedmont Region involving 22 children aged 10 to 16 and their families, we identify two distinctive Italian trends departing from typical JPC schedules emphasizing weekly alternations for clarity and fairness: (1) increased frequency of transitions with shorter stays at each parent's home; and (2) frequent physical co‐pres…
Political science (17 obras) · Sociology (13 obras) · Migration and Labor Dynamics (10 obras) · Humanities (8 obras) · Employment and Welfare Studies (5 obras) · Gender Studies (5 obras) · Migration, Identity, and Health (5 obras) · Migration, Refugees, and Integration (5 obras) · Philosophy (5 obras) · Psychology (5 obras)