Engendering Transnational Voices: Studies in Family, Work and Identity

ENGENDERING TRANSNATIONAL VOICES: STUDIES IN FAMILY, WORK AND IDENTITY Guida Man and Rina Cohen, Eds. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2015 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Sustained and stretched across time and geographies, transnational families lie at the heart of the migration project. Engendering Transnational Voices is a welcome addition to this body of work that takes a nuanced look at the transnational^ lived lives of women, youth and the elderly through a feminist intersectional optic. Such a perspective allows for careful consideration of networks, discourses, social spaces, and circuits of care. In mapping distinct configurations of transnational existence, the collection expands current deployments of transnationalism to consider the complex socio-spatiality of migrant experience. The introductory chapter charts the expansive terrain of transnational migration literature, pointing to the mutually productive relationship between gender, migration and other axes of power. The book is organized along four interrelated thematics, theoretically and empirically traversing questions of identity, power, and processes of globalization, migration, and marginalization that coalesce to differentially impact transmigrants. The first section follows the (reconfiguration of transnational family life via home and host states' influence at the familial scale. Through excerpts from broader studies on twice-migrated South Asian skilled migrants and professional Chinese immigrant women respectively, Das Gupta and Man examine migration to Canada as marked by a fraught history of discriminatory practices that mediate migrants' labour market position, resulting in dramatic deskilling and downward mobility. Hari and Mandel et al. further unpack frameworks that circumscribe migrant lives, situating senior migration and co-residence as twin conduits of intergenerational care and financial transfers. Given the structural inequalities and systemic racism in the Canadian context, families mobilize transnational tactics of split families, parenting from afar, networks and/or intergenerational care arrangements to meet productive and reproductive goals. The subsequent section considers multidirectional, reciprocal and asymmetric circulations of care labour, demonstrating how a receding welfare state offloads costs of child and elder care onto individuals and households, particularly women. In tracing the transnational trajectories of Filipina migrant women, Francisco highlights the ways that transnational families adapt, through redistribution of care provisions and incorporation of kin networks. Elabor-Idemudia discusses how gendered-racialized ideologies script institutional processes that produce migrants' subordinate status while concomitantly benefiting from the developmental impact of remittances. Highlighting the intricacies of caring transnationally, Brigham investigates multiple modes through which migrant mothers negotiate identities, roles and social spaces, as Cohen presents dynamic strategies of 'cybermothering' and surrogates that support geographically-split families in retaining their sense of collectivity and kinship. …

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