Navigating childrearing, fatherhood, and mobilities: A transnational relational analysis

Abstract

To overcome the pitfall of methodological nationalism, I propose a transnational relational analysis to examine how people raise children in multi-layered, multi-sited transnational social fields, involving the interconnection of different sorts of mobilities and immobilities. Drawing on three cases of fatherhood in the contexts of migration and transnationalism – the transnational middle class in Taiwan, Taiwanese immigrants with professional jobs in the US, and Taiwanese fathers who married wives from China or Southeast Asia – this article illustrates how fathers navigate childrearing and negotiate masculinity in relation to local and transnational reference groups. A transnational relational analysis interrogates the experiences of global householding in a relational manner, revealing visible and invisible links between those who move and those who stay. The framework offers a theoretical tool to unpack the social process and emotional politics in which individuals navigate spatial and social divides to search for security and dignity and to bring to the fore the global formation of class, race, and gender relations.