| Summary: | Migration is an increasingly visible phenomenon and many households across the world rely on the mobility of its family members for subsistence or economic gain. While migrant families are subjected to complex changes and periods of separation, the effect of migration on their (un)happiness has not received much attention from anthropologists. The aim of this doctoral thesis is to explore the relationship between migration, emotions and happiness for transnational and migrant parents living in Iceland. This ethnographic thesis examines the forms of togetherness and belonging that transnational families in Iceland have created, and the ways in which these practices inform the happiness of transnational and migrant parents. Drawing on the analysis of the narratives of 33 participants, I discuss how migrant and transnational parents engage in family-making practices at a distance and the ways parental emotions are constituted in migration. Building on transnational perspectives and drawing on specific examples taken from interviews conducted with transnational and migrant parents in Iceland, I suggest focusing on emotions as a basis for reasoning to understand the multiplicity and diversity of contemporary family forms and parenthood. Chapters 5-6 of the thesis examine the affective experiences of family separation among transnational migrant parents in Iceland. It demonstrates how transnational parenthood is embedded in various moral economies of care and duties which influence the kin practices and emotions experienced by transnational parents who live away from their children. Chapters 7-9 of the thesis delve into the lives of both transnational parents and migrant parents who raise their children in Iceland and who are involved in transnational family life. It recounts their experiences of childcare, education, employment, parenting practices and ideologies and explains how the transnational perspective often results in a bifocality that necessitates a negotiation between the participants’ beliefs and practices ...
|
|---|