Global Migration and Family Change in the Baltic Sea Region

Bibliographic Data

ID2980393
AuthorsIrena Juozeliūnienė (0000-0002-5718-5267, Irena Juozeliūnienė, Department of Sociology, Vilnius University, Universiteto g. 9/1, Vilnius, 01513 Lithuania, ().), Irma Budginaitė (Irma Budginaitė, Department of Sociology, Vilnius University, Universiteto g. 9/1, Vilnius, 01513, Lithuania, ().), Irma Budginaite-Mackine (0000-0001-7985-8349, Vilnius University)
Year2016
Volume47
Issue1
Pages65-86
Publication date2016-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Comparative Family Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0047-2328 • E-ISSN: 1929-9850
PublisherUniversity of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.3138/jcfs.47.1.65
OpenAlexW2594447654
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited18

Global migration rapidly modifies family life in the Baltic Sea region and, for the several last decades, has presented a challenge to migration scholars. The impact of migration on a family attracts the interest of researchers not only because the number of such families is on the rise, but also because it poses certain challenges to the academic discipline, especially when it comes to revising family theories rooted in the 'low-mobility' family discourse. The purpose of this article is to review the impact of global migration on family life in the Baltic Sea region, introduce the 'family change' perspective for studying migrant families and, to provide an example of how to apply this perspective, by examining the migratory experience of the Lithuanian families. The article demonstrates that the Baltic Sea region can be considered as heterogeneous in regard to migration patterns as well as challenges and opportunities facing its families. To facilitate the analysis of migrant families, the authors of the article propose the 'family change' perspective, which is based on the ideas about interactions, orders and identities articulated by symbolic interactionism, and further supplement these ideas with contemporary awareness about the imagined family configuration structure; the suffusion of intergenerational, kin, and personal relationships; and the analysis of family change with a perspective of memory and temporal dimensions. We draw data from the mixed method study conducted from 2012 to 2014 to analyze the migratory experience of Lithuanian families. We discuss familial resources as a latent relationship matrix that can be activated in the case of migration and emphasize the overlap of kin and non-kin ties in this matrix. We also reveal the importance of family relationships in conceptualizing migrant families and demonstrate how role behavior and related identities could constitute an axis for the study of migratory behavior

Baltic sea · Economic geography · Family life · Geography · Lithuanian · Perspective (graphical) · Social science · Sociology · Symbolic interactionism · Gender Studies · Intergenerational Family Dynamics and Caregiving · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Migration, Aging, and Tourism Studies

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