Search results

This chapter focusses on multi-local families and more specifically on the ways in which children of separated parents, living in joint physical custody arrangements, define and construct their ‘home’ in a context of circular mobility. It is based on two case studies drawn from ongoing fieldwork conducted in Belgium with children aged 10–16 in the context of the ERC Starting Grant project ‘MobileKids’. The main aim is to understand how family relations structure children’s ‘life spaces’ and ‘lived space’ (di Meo, 2012). The authors explore in particular the meanings and feelings that family relations confer to the space of the ‘house’ in children’s experiences, including both the physicality of the place of residence, and the relations and emotions that children attach to it (Forsberg, Autonen-Vaaraniemi, & Kauko, 2016, p. 435). The authors also highlight the various strategies that children develop to mediate/influence their family relations through ‘space’, including strategies of spatial appropriation and territorialisation. The authors conclude by summarising the main findings and considering future developments.

In transnational families worldwide, different family members have varying degrees of mobility, as well as different physical and emotional experiences with relatives and places throughout their lives. For this reason, in recent decades, increasing attention has been placed upon the experiences of migrants' descendants growing up across borders.

Based on data from a multi-sited ethnography and a survey, this chapter explores the experiences of children growing up in Chinese transnational families split between Zhejiang province and their parents' immigration countries, located mainly in Europe. First, it introduces the migration context and methods, presenting the profiles and basic information of the 77 Chinese migrants' descendants who participated in a ‘Roots-seeking Journey’ summer camp held in their family area of origin in China, in 2018. Second, it explores their heterogeneous early childhood paths and conditions, paying particular attention to mobility, care strategies, intergenerational relations and transnational ties. Finally, this chapter introduces the concept of fluid childhoods, and reflects on the key role of care-related mobility and communication technologies in shaping their early life paths and experiences as well as further transnational engagement.

Home-based work results in a specific spatiotemporal arrangement: one location serves as both the family home and the workplace. This mode of work shapes the everyday family life and at the same time has to be adjusted to suit the divergent needs of all family members involved, especially if children live in the same household. So far, research on home-based work has predominantly examined home-based workers’ and adults’ perspectives. Therefore, this chapter puts children’s perspectives at the centre of the inquiry and recognises the wider web of family relations and home by focussing on the spatiotemporal coordination of everyday family life.

This chapter examines how children conceptualise parental home-based work in relation to their everyday family life and home, and how they participate in family practices in the context of home-based work.

The contribution is based on original empirical data that were collected during fieldwork with 11 families in Austria. It builds on observations of daily routines in these families, photointerviews and guided tours through the home with kindergarten and primary school-aged children as well as qualitative interviews with home-based workers living in these households.

From children’s perspectives, the findings show various independences between paid work and family life when work and home coincide. The in-depth analysis of these everyday situations emphasises how children actively modify and shape everyday family life and home in the context of parental home-based work arrangements. Family practices are constantly done and in so doing turn temporarily both the house and the workspace into a home.