Childhood and Parenting in Transnational Settings

This book describes children and youth on the one hand and parents on the other within the newly configured worlds of transnational families. Focus is put on children born abroad, brought up abroad, studying abroad, in vulnerable situations, and/or subject of trafficking. The book also provides insight into the delicate relationships that arise with parents, such as migrant parents who are parenting from a distance, elderly parents supporting migrant adult children, fathers left behind by migration, and Eastern-European parents in Nordic countries. It also touches upon life strategies developed in response to migration situations, such as the transfer of care, transnational (virtual) communication, common visits (to and from), and the co-presence of family members in each other’s (distant) lives. As such this book provides a wealth of information for researchers, policy makers and all those working in the field of migration and with migrants.

Viorela Ducu has a strong research interest in alternative family types, such as ethnically/nationally mixed and transnational families. At present, she is a post-doctoral researcher in the project “Intergenerational solidarity in the context of work migration abroad - The situation of elderly left at home” and principal investigator of the project Confronting difference through the practices of transnational families at the Centre for Population Studies, at the Babe?-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca.