Session Information
07 SES 12 B, Family Practices and Orders of Migration
Symposium
Contribution
For a time, dealing with families was of marginal interest within migration research (cp. Krüger-Potratz, 2013, p. 13), although it has long been established that ‘international migration typically does not take place as an individual decision of (job-seeking) monads, but as a collective undertaking of family associations’ (Nauck, 2004, p. 102, our translation). What appears necessary then, is a change of perspective in migration research, that is to say, not only to consider individuals but also or particularly their familial networks and family practices. This is precisely what the proposed symposium addresses.
At the ECER Conference 2015 and within the symposium ‘Recent studies on New Migration of Families’, we (Panagiotopoulou & Rosen) focused on current, or rather New Migration from Greece on the grounds of the European financial crisis and highlighted the ensuing challenges for education systems. Taking up this discussion, we wish to deepen the connection between family and migration research in the field of educational science in 2016, emphasising family orders of migration experiences as a thematic focus by extending our perspective to European and extra European migration movements. We thereby intend to address not only the diversity of current family migration, but the similarities and differences within the respective familial negotiations of migration experiences as well.
Only few theoretical concepts allowing a connection between family and migration research within the field of educational science are available up to now. Thus, one of the goals of the symposium is to present and discuss such theoretical concepts on the basis of current research projects. For instance, new orders of family structures can be grasped when examined under theoretical perspectives such as ‘transnationality’ (see contribution by Sara Fürstenau) and ‘multilocality’ (see contribution by Thomas Geisen), thus challenging dominant concepts of family that ‘presuppose a high degree of spatial and temporal togetherness within the core family’ (Fürstenau, 2016, p. 152, our translation). Further, active and permanent practices by family members can be grasped using another theoretical concept, namely ‘doing family’ (cp. Müller, 2013, p. 392). David Morgan, who has elaborated this concept, emphasises ’‘doing‘ rather than simply having or being’ family – and adds with regard to the academic community that ‘even if it still sounds a little strange it reminds us that family is about process and doing’ (Morgan, 2011, p. 5 quoted from Geisen, 2014, p. 50). Because these theoretical concepts correspond with ethnographic research strategies (see contribution by Dominik Krinninger and Hans-Rüdiger Müller), they challenge another of the symposium’s central topics, which is the question of adequate empirical approaches for family and migration research within educational science.
Moreover, the three contributions provide results on the symposium’s greater question, that is how family is constructed under the conditions of migration, which family orders of migration are thereby completed and what strategies are being developed. By doing so, we focus our research interest on the interpretations of migration experiences by individual family members as well as on how these experiences are being negotiated between generations.
References
Fürstenau, S. (2015). Transmigration und transnationale Familien. Neue Perspektiven der Migrationsforschung als Herausforderung für die Schule. In R. Leiprecht & A. Steinbach (Eds.), Schule in der Migrationsgesellschaft. Ein Handbuch. Volume 1 (pp. 143-165). Schwalbach/Ts.: Debus Pädagogik Verlag. Geisen, Th. (2014). Multilokale Existenzweisen von Familien im Kontext von Migration. Herausforderungen für Forschung und Theorieentwicklung. In Th. Geisen, T. Studer & E. Yildiz (Eds.), Migration, Familie und Gesellschaft. Beiträge zur Theorie, Kultur und Politik (pp. 27-57). Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Krüger-Potratz, M. (2013). Vier Perspektiven der Beobachtung im Themenfeld Migration – Familie – Bildung. In Th. Geisen, T. Studer & E. Yildiz (Eds.), Migration, Familie und soziale Lage. Beiträge zu Bildung, Gender und Care (pp. 13-22). Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Müller, H.-R. (2013). Familienerziehung und Familienkultur. In D. Edelmann & M. Stamm (Eds.), Handbuch frühkindliche Bildungsforschung (pp. 391-406). Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Nauck, B. (2004). Familienbeziehungen und Sozialintegration von Migranten. In K. J. Bade & M. Bommes (Eds.), Migration – Integration – Bildung. Grundfragen und Problembereiche (pp. 83-104). IMIS-BEITRÄGE, 23/2004. Retrieved January 11, 2016, from https://www.imis.uni-osnabrueck.de/fileadmin/4_Publikationen/PDFs/imis23.pdf.
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