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Transnational Families and their changes in the western world. Introduction In the contemporary world, labor migration is very fluent and people are moving to different geographic locations by crossing national borders. This is engaged with family relations and has various types of impacts on the translocal relations. In this paper, I will discuss how transnational migration effects on the family structure who have moved to a western nationstate. I will focus on the concept of family and how the non-western families are keeping originality of their family concept in their everyday practice or it is becoming blurred in different cultural locations? While the term transnationalism is fairly new and currently en vogue, sociologists of migration have long recognized that migrants maintain some form of contact with family and others in their homelands, especially through correspondence and the sending of remittances (Vertovec 2009 16). From the 1920s until recent times, however, most migration research focused upon the ways in which migrants adapted themselves to their place of immigration rather than upon how they continued to look back to their place of origin. Since the early 1990s the transnational turn has provided a new analytic optic which makes visible the increasing intensity and scope of circular flows of persons, goods, information and symbols triggered by international labour migration (Caglar 2001: 607; cf. Levitt and Srensen 2004, et al Vertovec 2009: 15-16). Christian Joppke and Ewa Morawska (2003: 20) acknowledge that Although not a new phenomenon in the history of international migration, contemporary immigrant transnationalism, of course, is not an exact replica of the old, but a different configuration of circumstances. In this transnational era, many so-called second generations or third generations of the migrant families are rarely treat themselves as migrant while they have resident passport (of the receiving country) and fluent in language with perfect accents. However, they are often socially constructed as immigrant in some western societies (this is an assumption based on the social reality in Sweden, and came to know from different people around the Stockholm who have experienced in this way in their life. But it requires a dept research to know detail). However, the growing number of bi-national marriages in different nation-states, expansion of labor market or
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migrating other nation-state with family for socio-political or economic reasons, prompts a number of questions: how is the family unit defined, how are gender relations organized, how do family members communicate and interact across the border. The interesting point is that crossborder marriages link kin groups of different national origins to a new social unit and create affiliations and obligations across different nation states, which we might define as transnational kin/family relation. Family: Traditional, Western and Transnational The concept of family is very much situational and depends on co-related components of the social structure. However, it is very important to define these three types of the family to compare with each other, though it is very hard to draw a borderline among them, especially at the present world. However, family is considered as the smallest form of the social unit. A family can define as a group of people affiliated by consanguinity, affinity, or co-residence in terms of kinship relation. It has a long historical background and it defined differently in different aspects of anthropology. In evolutionist perspective, nuclear family is the last form of social unit which was defined by Henry Morgan. On the other side, Malinowskis definition of family as universal was dominant for long period and lately it was challenged by many theorists especially because of father-centrism in the family. However, the idea of Western family is closely connected with the concept of nuclear family which consists with father, mother and children. Moreover, traditional nuclear family unit may not adequately reflect the reality of the modern Western family structure (Grillo 2008: 17). Furthermore the family and household structures in western world are being observed with rapid diversification. The traditional, mainstream idea of the nuclear family are becoming increasingly redundant in an era when cohabitation, separation, divorce and reconstituted families are becoming increasingly common (Bailey and Boyle 2004: 236 et al Grillo ibid). Conventionally, households are defined as a group of people who share the same residence and participate collectively, if not always co-operatively, in the basic tasks of reproduction and consumption (Chant & McIlwaine, 1995: 4). But in transnational households, more precisely, one parent, both parents or adult children may be producing income abroad while other family members carry out the functions of reproduction, socialization, and consumption in the country of origin (Parreas, 2001). Thus, transnationalism forces us to reconsider our
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understanding of households and families based on the idea of co-residency and physical unity, and to take into account the possibility of spatial separation. However, the families, which have migrated many years back and continuing relations to various geographical locations, are also treated as transnational family. On the other side, traditional non-western family refers to larger family with many children and paternal or maternal kin. Both, western and non-western families (nuclear or extended or single parent) might be a part of transnational family through their connections and networks.

Tradition verses Social Reality Everybody who moves to some other place, bring along with his/her knowledge, experience, value and cultural beliefs to the new place. Many of them try to keep their tradition in their everyday life in different geographic locations. However, in case of family structure and practice, it also observed is the same manner and many ethnographic evidence shows such examples (see Sheffer 1986, Safran 1991, Chow 1993, R. Cohen 1997) where migrated families want to keep their traditions and build a diasporic community to keep practice their everyday practice. Moreover, at the present world, many transnational families are going through a transjectory period where they are practicing both ways at the same time. Many ideas and values have changed after migration and those have following impact on the other nodes of the society. Vertovec (2009) exemplified with gender role and the impacts on the transnational families. He quoted Al-Ali (2002) his book: everyday routinized activities and practices within transnational families have obvious significance for gender relations (Al-Ali 2002: 250 et al Vertovec 2009: 64). Transnational families demonstrate how culturally constructed concepts of gender operate within and between diverse settings. In various related ways, the position of women in households and thereby daily gender relations may be fundamentally altered and liberating, especially when it is the wives and daughters who have migrated to become the breadwinners for the families who have stayed (ibid). In other cases a patriarchal grip on women within families may be reinforced due to the perceived threats, posed by transnational existence, to cultural notions of feminine virtue. It should be stressed that the significance of gender also manifests in numerous spheres outside family and household, of course, especially in transnational community associations, religious congregations and places of work.

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Furthermore, in some cases, immigrant families refuse to receive other cultural nodes and diversifications in their everyday life. However, in contemporary world different families have been observing including single-parent families, same sex unions, serial monogamy and households based on friendship rather than sexual partnerships etc., which are completely different from the traditional family or traditional nuclear family. Immigrant families or transnational families (who have migrated from non-western world) are very often refusing these cultural nodes and claiming to be stick in their cultural values. It becomes complicated for the second generation while they are growing up in a multicultural society and where they are observing these issues as normal in a sense. However, it will have afterword impacts on the second or third generations while these family members are sharing and receiving different cultural values and norms. In some cases, traditional nuclear family is treated as granted for the ideal type of family especially for the immigrants to keep the small family structure. Furthermore, immigrant family replete with stereotypes of arranged or forced marriage, patriarchy, domestic violence, and honor killings that is the most prevailing representation in debates about cultural difference, its threats and the limits of diversity (Vertovec 2009). As a result, it creates social segregation among different geographical people who are living in same place or in same nationstate.

Conclusion Throughout this paper, I wanted to argue, transnational families are facing social differences and sometimes they are stereotyped with some categories but struggling with their native ideologies. However, they are mixing with the current society and adopting the new cultures, but they are continuously facing trouble with the ideologies of here and there (no all the families or every individuals). It would be very interesting to look deep inside, how these transnational families are facing, adjusting, or avoiding these new social realities throughout everyday practice.

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References: Chant, S. & McIlwaine, C. (1995). Women of a lesser cost. Female labour, foreign exchange and Philippine development. London: Pluto Press. Chow, R. (1993) Writing Diaspora: Tactics of Intervention in ContemporaryCultural Studies, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. De Genova, Nicholas (2002). Migrant 'Illegality' and Deportability in Everyday Life. Annual Review of Anthropology, 31. Grillo, Ralph (ed) (2008). The Family in Question. Immigrants and Ethnic Minorities in Multicultural Europe. IMISCOE Research. Amesterdam University Press Vertovec, Steve (2009). Transnationalism. London: Routledge Parreas, R.S. (2001). Servants of globalization. Women, migration, and domestic work. Stanford: StanfordUniversity Press.

Inda, Jonathan Xavier (2005). Targeting Immigrants: Government, Technology, and Ethics, Amsterdam University Press. Shahram Khosravi (2007). The Illegal Traveler: an auto-ethnography of borders. Social Anthropology, vol. 15, No 3 Sheffer, G. (1986) A new field of study: modern diasporas in international politics, in Modern Diasporas in International Politics, G. Sheffer (ed.), London: Croom Helm, pp. 115

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