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Transnational families and the well-being of children and caregivers who stay in origin countries
Social Science & Medicine 132 (2015) 208e214
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Introduction
Transnational families and the well-being of children and caregivers who stay in origin countries Transnational families are a current and widespread phenomenon around the globe. A common form is where one or both parents migrate and children are left in the country of origin to be raised by a caregiver, be it the other parent, an extended family member, or in some cases a non-kin related person. Such arrangements are the result of stringent migration policies in migrant receiving countries, which make it difficult for families to migrate together. In others, they are the preferred choice of family members especially in societies where extended family members continue to play an important role in the raising of children. With a growing awareness of the existence of such families in both academic and policy arenas, there is an emerging concern about the effects of separation on children's well-being in terms of their physical and psychological health outcomes. Moreover, research is just beginning to pay attention to the well-being of those who care for migrants' children. Migration involves over 3 percent of the world's population (United Nations, 2013). In some developing countries, this results in rates of children who stay at origin while a parent migrates to reach as high as 25% of the under 18 years old population (UNICEF, 2006). It is therefore important to consider how migration affects those who stay behind in discussions of the effects of migration on development in origin countries, which have tended to focus on economic gains and on households as a whole, rather than effects on individual family members (Mazzucato and Schans, 2011; Ratha et al., 2011). Studies on transnational families only emerged in the early 2000s when in-depth studies of transnational migration turned to the effects of migration for family members who are separated by geographical borders (Bryceson and Vuorela, 2002). Previous to this, the omission of transnational families from the purview of researchers had several sources. Migration research was characterized by methodological nationalism (Wimmer and Glick Schiller, 2002) in which migration was studied from the perspective of one nation-state: either the migrant origin country, or the destination country. This meant that migrant families were studied as living together in the destination country or only those members that migrated were focused upon; or, conversely, only those household members who remained at origin were the object of study (Mazzucato and Schans, 2011). Research on families and child psychology, instead, was largely guided by theories such as attachment (Bowlby, 1973) or object relations (Winnicott, 1958) theories in which children's development is affected by relationships with people in their proximity. Family relationships at great geographical distances thus were considered either as irrelevant or unpractical (Baldassar and Baldock, 1999; Mazzucato and Schans, 2011; Zontini, 2004). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.11.030 0277-9536/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Transnational family research changed this perspective by arguing that when family members migrate, they remain linked with families and communities in their home country, continuing to engage in family practices and maintain feelings of home and emotional proximity even across great geographical distances (Bryceson and Vuorela, 2002). Research on transnational families, largely stemming from anthropological, feminist, and qualitative sociology scholars, has focused on spousal (Charsley, 2005; Pribilsky, 2001) and parentechild relationships, with a special focus on migrant mothers and the children they leave behind (Bernhard et al., ~ as, 2001, 2005; Schmalzbauer, 2004). 2009; Dreby, 2007; Parren Separately and more recently, family sociology and child psychology studies have turned to the study of transnational families in the 2010s with studies on Chinese internal migration and Mexican e US migration taking the lead (Donato et al., 2003; Fan et al., 2010; Liu and Ge, 2009; Nobles, 2011). The predominant focus of such studies, largely employing quantitative methodologies, has been on the well-being of the children who stay behind. These two areas of study have remained largely separate; however, much stands to be gained by bringing them to bear on one another. Furthermore, the focus of both strands has been on migrant parents and their children, whereas the role of the caregiver who stays in the country of origin to care for a migrant's child is almost always missing or peripheral. This special issue focuses on one form of transnational families: that in which one or both parents migrate internally or internationally and leave one or more children aged 18 or below in the origin country in the care of a caregiver who is either the other parent, a member of the extended family, or, in some instances, a non-kin relation. The papers focus on the psychological well-being and health outcomes of the members of transnational families who remain in the origin country: children and their caregivers. The papers have been selected from among those presented at an international conference, held in Maastricht on March 27e29, 2013. The conference was co-financed by the Dutch Scientific Organisation (NWO), the New Opportunities for Research Funding Cooperation Agency in Europe (NORFACE), and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) at the closing of the Transnational Child Raising Arrangements programs (TCRA and TCRAfEu). Two of the papers were added after the conference. The objective of the conference was to bring junior and senior scholars on transnational family research from different disciplinary traditions together to present state-of-the-art research and reflect on what can be gained by bringing different approaches together (http:// fasos-research.nl/tcra/tcraf-eu/conference).
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This special issue includes contributions from anthropology, family sociology, child psychology, demography, and social geography, using qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-method approaches. It also includes some of the first cross-country comparative studies on the effects of international migration on transnational families and covers various migration flows: Mexicans to the USA; Africans to Europe; national migration within China; Southeast Asian migration within the region and to the Middle East; and migration from Eastern Europe to Russia and Western Europe. Extensive and recent overviews on the study of transnational families from different disciplinary perspectives already exist (Glick, 2010; Mazzucato and Schans, 2011; Mazzucato, 2013, 2014). This introduction will instead focus on identifying some of the key areas where transnational family research can push forward, and it situates the contributions to this special issue within these cutting-edge areas. 1. Parental migration and child outcomes Most transnational family studies that focus on children's wellbeing find that children are negatively impacted by their parents' migration. Dreby (2007), while emphasizing the agency that children have in influencing their parents' migration process, highlights that Mexican children feel abandoned. They develop behaviors to ‘get back’ at their parents such as young children refusing to speak to them on the phone or older children ignoring ~ as (2005) their authority. This in turn makes parents suffer. Parren emphasizes Filipino children's suffering and loneliness and finds that they fare worse when mothers migrate. While pointing to some factors that can attenuate negative outcomes, the literature clearly emphasizes the negative effects of parental migration on children (Yeoh and Lam, 2007). More recent child psychology and family sociology studies have looked quantitatively at the issue and to some degree confirm these negative outcomes. Jia and Tian (2010) find that Chinese children have a higher risk of poor mental health when their parents migrate. Similar to the Mexican and Filipino studies above, Wen and Lin (2012) and Liu and Ge (2009) find that in China children are worse off when their mothers migrate as compared to when their fathers migrate. Children continue to feel the negative impact of separation on their psychological well-being, even when they are reunited with their parents overseas (Suarez-Orozco et al., 2002). Yet not all children in transnational families fare worse. Recent studies show that there are both micro and meso-level factors that impinge on how being in a transnational family affects children. It is therefore important for research to identify the characteristics that cause variation between families. 1.1. Important micro and meso-level mediators Recent scholarship on transnational families identifies characteristics other than parental migration that may impinge on child well-being outcomes that relate to micro-level factors such as child, parent, and caregiver characteristics and meso-level factors that relate to family, school, and community. For example, Wen and Lin (2012) find worse outcomes for children with migrant parents, but also find that the family's socio-economic status, children's peer and school support, and the child's psychological traits and socializing skills mediate the relationship between child well-being and parental migration, and, in fact, are more important in explaining decreased health behavior and lower school engagement among left-behind children than the parents' migratory status. Furthermore, they find no evidence of decreased emotional wellbeing amongst left-behind children. Fan et al. (2010) note that left-behind children show more psychopathological and less pro-
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social behavior than their counterparts who live with their biological parents. Yet, these differences disappear after controlling for age, education levels, the socio-economic status of parents and caregivers, and teacher involvement. The authors show that leftbehind children tend to come from poorer families with older and less educated caregivers. Concomitantly, qualitative transnational family studies have turned their attention to contextual factors that impinge on the negative relationships between parental migration and child well-being. Fresnoza-Flot (2009) studied undocumented Filipino mothers to show how being undocumented affects their ability to parent from afar, and is reflected in the quality of their relationships with their children. As such, these recent studies help add nuance to findings and show that in certain circumstances other factors can be more important in explaining low levels of well-being amongst children than their parents' migratory status per se (Mazzucato, 2014). A promising area in need of more research is the role of the meso-environment especially as it relates to the family, school, and community networks of support available for children and caregivers in the origin country. As Nobles et al. (2015) note, the effects of parental migration on those who stay behind can differ greatly for rural and urban-based families, and we still know little about these differences and what drives them. In this special issue, various contributions show the importance of the mesoenvironment in which a child grows up. Wu et al. (2015) find that social capital at the family and community levels mediates the relationship between parental migration and children's well-being. Children whose parents are migrants have lower levels of social capital, which in turn, further increases their levels of depression. Hamilton and Choi's (2015) paper shows that community-level migration characteristics such as out-migration rates, levels of remittance receipts and return migration impact infant health outcomes, albeit in different ways. However, research on the role of intervening factors is at an early stage so it is important for research to continue to scrutinize the role of intervening factors that may be just as important, if not more, in explaining child well-being as parental migration. 1.2. Multiple dimensions of well-being While well-being has been researched in terms of mental and physical health dimensions for children and caregivers, recent studies look at multiple measures within each dimension to capture the multi-dimensional experiences of people who stay behind. For example, authors consider different components of emotional well-being such as emotional symptoms, hyperactivity, conduct problems, peer problems, and pro-social behavior (Fan et al., 2010; Graham and Jordan, 2011; Vanore et al., 2015) and find differences between components. Accurately and appropriately measuring well-being is an important aspect of transnational family research. In this special issue, Nobles et al. (2015) include different measures of well-being for non-migrant mother caregivers in Mexico, such as sadness, crying, sleeplessness, and depression. Hamilton and Choi (2015) measure health outcomes by looking at both infant low birthweight and macrosomia (high birthweight). The latter has not been the subject of research until now, but both conditions put children's later healthy development at risk. In these studies, parental migration affects outcomes differently, in some instances showing no differences with non-transnational families. Wen et al. (2015) establish and validate a measure of Positive Youth Development for Chinese adolescent youths, which is a strengths-based conception of youth rather than traditional models where adolescence is viewed in terms of deficit behaviors and emotions. It incorporates latent constructs of competence, confidence,
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caring, character, and social connection. They find that parental migration actually leads to positive results, thus differing from many of the previous Chinese studies that emphasize negative outcomes. Not only do multiple measures make a difference, but also who is reporting on them. Jordan and Graham (2012) showed that different results apply for different measures depending on whether the child himself or herself or the caregiver reports them. In general, they find that while assessments of happiness are similar, school performance tends to be assessed higher by caregivers than by children. Previous research has tended to focus on adults' assessments of children's well-being, whereas more recent research (Dreby, 2007; Graham and Jordan, 2011) and papers in this special issue (Mazzucato et al., 2015; Vanore et al., 2015; Wen et al., 2015; Wu et al., 2015) focus on children's own assessments. 1.3. Defining transnational families Most studies have focused on one dimension of transnational families, that is, who migrates: whether the mother, father, or ~ as’ (2005) ethnographic studies both. Dreby's (2010) and Parren find that when mothers migrate, children are worse off. Jia and Tian (2010) and Graham and Jordan (2011) both confirm such findings using survey data. Yet there are other dimensions of transnational families that may explain variation in outcomes amongst ~ as (2005) emphathose who stay behind. Dreby (2010) and Parren size that communication between parent and child is fundamental; Fresnoza-Flot (2009) highlights that parents' legal status abroad influences the way in which they can relate to their children; Schmalzbauer (2004) argues that grandmothers especially help children to cope and develop positive feelings towards their parents, suggesting that kin relationship may make a difference for children's well-being. These findings suggest that it is not only which parent migrates that can serve to define a transnational family but also the legal status of the parent, who the caregiver is, and the quality of communication between child and parent and between caregiver and parent. Yet many of these insights have yet to be investigated in large-scale studies. Aside from investigating whether ‘who the migrant parent is’ makes a difference in child well-being outcomes, Mazzucato et al. (2015) and Vanore et al. (2015) in this special issue additionally look at whether ‘who the caregiver is’ affects outcomes. Mazzucato et al. (2015) investigate other dimensions as well: the destination of the migrant parent; and the stability of the caregiving arrangement. They find that indeed, different outcomes are associated with different transnational family configurations, showing that it is important to look at the specific characteristics of transnational families in order to identify variation in outcomes amongst children who stay behind. 2. Caregivers While much of the work on transnational families has focused on the well-being of migrant parents and the children in origin countries, not much attention has been given to the well-being of the caregiver, especially when he or she is not the other parent. Yet, as argued by Schmalzbauer (2004) caregivers play a fundamental role in affecting how children feel about their parents' migration which in turn impacts the well-being of children. In Vietnam, the emotional work of carers was found to be crucial for alleviating the emotional hardships of children with migrant parents (Hoang and Yeoh, 2012). Ghanaian children felt comfortable with having two mothers, their migrant mother and their caregiver, as long as they felt that each was fulfilling their role in taking care
of them (Poeze and Mazzucato, 2014). In their comparative study, Jordan and Graham (2012) find that caregiver mental health can affect children's well-being. In this special issue, Vanore et al. (2015) find that higher levels of caregiver's human capital affect children's well-being positively. While these studies point to the importance of caregivers, they are not the central focus of study. Furthermore, most of these studies focus on the other parent as caregiver, and to a certain extent grandparents (Dreby, 2007; Jordan and Graham, 2012; Schmalzbauer, 2004). A few studies that examine the role of grandparents as caregivers find that children in the care of grandparents fare worse than their counterparts being cared for by the other parent (Jia and Tian, 2010). Yet there are also other people in the extended family who act as caregivers. Recent work has shown that non-relatives are also caregivers. In Ghana, for example, a new practice of paid caregivers has been documented (Dankyi, 2014). In the same vein Fan et al. (2010) find that there are differences between Chinese children who are cared for by a relative, a non-relative, and those who live with their biological parents after a period of separation. Children whose caregivers are non-relatives are at the greatest risk of showing emotional and behavioral problems. In this special issue Vanore et al. (2015) explore the effects of having a parental caregiver vs. a non-parental caregiver on children's well-being in Moldova. They find that there is no difference in children's well-being except for in boys' emotional symptoms, where those cared for by a non-parent caregiver had a higher probability of an abnormal score. In three African countries, Mazzucato et al. (2015) in this special issue, investigate different types of kin relationships: the other parent, a grandparent, an uncle or aunt and others. They find that the type of kin relationship does not make a difference for child well-being. While the above studies focus on how caregivers affect children's well-being, hardly any studies focus on how parental migration affects the mental health of the caregivers themselves. One study of Chinese grandparents' health found that grandparents in two-generation households, that is, where a parent is absent and the grandparents are taking care of grandchildren, do not experience lower levels of self-reported health (Chen and Liu, 2012). In fact, a light workload of caring for the grandchild, was found to have a protective effect on grandparents' health. In this special issue, two contributions focus particularly on the well-being of caregivers. Graham et al. (2015) look at the well-being of mother and father caregivers in the Philippines, Vietnam, and Indonesia when the other parent migrates. They find that Indonesian caregivers in transnational families show poorer mental health than caregivers in non-transnational families. More generally, in all three countries, stay-behind mothers show poorer mental health than stay-behind fathers. Nobles et al. (2015) investigate the well-being of Mexican mothers when fathers migrate to the United States. They find a modest decrease in emotional well-being of mothers for symptoms like sadness, crying, difficulty sleeping, and loneliness, but no effects in levels of depression. In both of these studies, the samples primarily consist of mothers or fathers as caregivers. An insufficient number of other caregiver types were available in the samples to be able to explore the well-being of caregivers such as grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts, uncles, or non-relatives. Yet in China, as in many parts of Africa, grandparents are often caregivers, leaving an important area for investigation: how the well-being of grandparents and other caregivers is affected by parental migration. 3. Broader contexts The emphasis of recent transnational family studies has been on micro and meso-level characteristics that affect the well-being of
Introduction / Social Science & Medicine 132 (2015) 208e214
those who stay behind, be it individual characteristics of children, caregivers, or migrant parents, the social support networks of care, and family and school characteristics. Broader contextual factors need more investigation, such as the role of policies in countries where migrant parents reside or the cultural, economic, and political contexts of the origin countries. Comparing different countries can help identify the effects of broader political, economic, and normative contexts. 3.1. Policies and political contexts Graham and Jordan (2011) and Graham et al. (2012) are the only ones to our knowledge to have compared the well-being of children in different migrant-sending countries. They compare well-being outcomes for children in four countries in Southeast Asia and find that children of migrant fathers are more likely to have poor psychological well-being in Indonesia and Thailand but not in the Philippines or Vietnam. They venture a possible explanation for these differences: in those countries where parental migration has been in place for longer periods, such as in the Philippines, the issue has received greater attention from government and non-governmental agencies, resulting in specific programs that address their needs. In this special issue, Mazzucato et al. (2015) also explore differences between countries by providing one of the first comparative analyses of African data. The general pattern that emerges is that Angolan children's responses to parental migration are worse and greater in magnitude than in Ghana and Nigeria, controlling for possible confounders. The authors draw from conflict and post-conflict psychology literature to suggest that the upheaval that families have endured during the war in Angola (1975e2002) has made children more vulnerable in the face of parental migration. While not conclusive, these crosscountry comparative studies point to the need to systematically investigate the effects of broader contextual factors in the countries of origin. Policies in the countries where migrant parents reside can also be influential. Some studies show that being undocumented is one of the driving forces affecting migrant parents' well-being (Haagsman et al, 2013) and their ability to parent from afar (Bernhard et al., 2009; Fresnoza-Flot, 2009). Biao (2007) conducted a review of Chinese studies on rural left-behind children and some additional interviews of migrants and left-behind members of their families. His is one of the few studies on China that concludes that lower outcomes for children of migrant parents are the result of broader Chinese policy contexts, rather than parental migration, per se. He argues that rural children in general in China are disadvantaged with respect to their urban counterparts, irrespective of parental migration. Furthermore, the Hokou system, which disadvantages rural migrants who move to the cities, is a larger determinant of poorer child outcomes than a lack of parental presence. Importantly, in this issue, Dreby (2015) investigates how policies in migrant destination countries influence children's well-being. She analyzes the differences in two types of parent-child separations caused by US immigration policy: enforcement policies that involve detention and repatriation especially of Mexican male migrants, and migration restriction policies which make it difficult for Mexican migrants to legally enter the USA. She finds that separation caused by the former set of policies leads to anxiety and economic instability for children who ‘stay behind’ in the USA when their fathers are repatriated, while the second type of separation leads to resentment among children who ‘stay behind’ in Mexico, especially when children's expectations of their parents' migration go unfulfilled. Graham et al. (2015) and Mazzucato et al. (2015) in this special issue find that the destination of migrant parents makes a difference to the well-being of caregivers or children who stay at
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origin. Graham et al. (2015) find that when parents migrate to the Middle East, caregivers have worse mental health. They suggest that more research is needed to further investigate the processes behind this association and if it is due to particular destinations within the region and/or to the types of employment available to migrants in these overseas destinations. Internal migration is important in many African countries; Mazzucato et al. (2015) investigated whether children's well-being differed when parents migrate internally or internationally. They find that international parental migration is associated with worse outcomes than internal parental migration in Angola but not in Ghana and Nigeria. These differences between countries again attest to the need to take country-specific contexts into account. 3.2. Normative contexts Normative contexts in which families operate in the origin countries are also of importance. Especially as recorded in African contexts, cultural norms around family and child rearing may lead parents to prefer to leave or send their children back to their countries of origin (Bledsoe and Sow, 2011; Whitehouse, 2009). As noted earlier, Poeze and Mazzucato (2014) show that in Ghana, children feel comfortable with the idea of having two mothers, as long as they feel cared for by both their caregiver and their mother overseas, as the concept of two mothers is one that is part and parcel of social parenthood norms. In this special issue, Mazzucato et al. (2015) find that in Angola, Nigeria, and Ghana, if aunts or uncles are caregivers, this is not associated with worse psychological well-being for children than when children are cared for by both parents. In Nigeria and Ghana, having a grandparent as caregiver is also not associated with worse outcomes. The authors seek explanations for their findings in the norms and practices of child raising in many parts of Africa where it is common for children to be raised by people other than their biological parents, irrespective of migration. This creates a normative context in which children do not feel stigmatized if they are growing up in a family without their biological parents. Feelings of stigma instead have been recorded amongst children in the ~ as, 2005), which is one of the reasons given Philippines (Parren for Filipino children's lower well-being when their parents have migrated. Gender discourses and normative contexts have been found to be influential in affecting children's well-being through the expectations they create amongst children. For example, some studies argue that maternal migration leads to worse well-being outcomes ~ as, 2005), for children (Gao et al., 2010; Liu and Ge, 2009; Parren while others do not find this difference (Graham and Jordan, 2011; He et al., 2012; Vanore et al., 2015). Graham et al. (2012), ~ as (2005) and Dreby (2007) suggest that gender normative Parren discourses in the Philippines and in Mexico affect children's perspectives on the migration of their mothers; this leads to a stronger feeling of abandonment amongst children when mothers migrate compared with when fathers migrate. Others have turned to more structural explanations, arguing that female migrants have access to different job markets overseas (Hondagneu-Sotelo and ~ as, 2001), and that their conditions of employAvila, 1997; Parren ment and earnings affect their ability to parent from abroad, and to visit their children. Mazzucato et al. (2015) in this issue, also find that mother migration is associated with lower psychological well-being of children in two of the three study countries, yet female migrants' children are in less stable care arrangements than male migrants' children. This suggests that there are other explanations than lack of motherly care that contribute to lower well-being outcomes of children of migrant mothers. Vanore et al. (2015) do not find differences in children's well-being according to whether
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their mother or their father migrates. This highlights that the effect of maternal migration differs by country, and for Moldova in particular, this is an important finding as it runs counter to pervasive public discourse about the negative effects of maternal migration on children. The relationships between gender of the migrant parent and well-being outcomes of those at origin warrants more research. 4. New avenues for research The discussion above points to some innovative areas to advance transnational family research. 4.1. The use of mixed method approaches There is a need to pay attention to the complex and multiple ways that people experience well-being. Combining people's own accounts of their feelings and emotions regarding transnational family life, with measures of well-being such as happiness, life satisfaction, and emotional well-being that are posed separately from talking about transnational family life, as is done in survey research, can be a fruitful way to capture the different dimensions of people's lived experiences. While interviews are strong in bringing out people's emotions and associations with transnational family life, quantitative measures are helpful for isolating what aspects of well-being are associated with migration and which may be associated with characteristics other than migration. Furthermore, conducting observational research is fundamental for triangulating between how people talk about their condition with how they act in transnational families. Graham et al. (2015), in this issue, for example, use survey data to identify a particular association and then investigate it qualitatively through interviews to understand why such an association exists. The Transnational Child Raising Arrangements between Africa and Europe (TCRA and TCRAf-Eu) programs combined different projects using particular methodologies that concomitantly informed each other, such as in the development of survey questions through insights from ethnographic data collection (www. tcra.nl). Additionally, when particular associations were found in survey data, such as the importance of legal status for parental well-being (Dito et al., 2012), ethnographic research including observation was conducted focusing on how this aspect has affected parenting and caregiving practices in transnational families (Poeze et al., 2013). 4.2. Longitudinal approaches Whatever methods are employed, it remains a challenge to appropriately attribute well-being outcomes to migration. Most research on transnational families, irrespective of the methods used, be it large scale surveys or in-depth ethnographic research, is conducted once a family member has migrated. The possibility exists that some characteristic that is not measured or observed leads people to migrate and also affects the well-being of those who stay behind. By not observing or capturing this characteristic we may over-attribute well-being effects, whether positive or negative, to migration. For example, if migration is a way to escape a problematic marital situation that existed a priori (Constable, 2003; Hirsch, 2003), then the marital situation, and not migration, may be what is driving the effects on a child's well-being. It is therefore important to take this into consideration when evaluating the effect of parental migration on a child's well-being. Only a few quantitative studies on child well-being in transnational families take parental marital status into account (Nobles, 2011) and no
study, using quantitative or qualitative methods has thus far analyzed the pre-migration situation. In this special issue Hamilton and Choi (2015) and Nobles et al. (2015), both use data from different survey waves and employ special techniques such as instrumental variables and fixed effects modeling to account for possible selectivity of migrants into migration. Indeed, both find that without these methods, their results would be under or overestimated, respectively. Yet even with such methods, it is difficult to rule out the possibility that there may be other attributes that affect the outcomes. A second time-related issue is that the effects of parental migration change over the life course. While young children have been found to be particularly affected by parental migration, later in life, young adults seem to be able to better deal with the absence (Fan et al., 2010; Liu and Ge, 2009). Chen and Liu (2012) use a longitudinal design to not only look at health levels but also health decline amongst caregiver grandparents over a 15-year interval. Wu et al. (2015) in this special issue are among the first to systematically investigate children with different histories of transnational family life. They distinguish between those that currently are separated from their parents due to migration, those that have previously been separated but are now reunited in their communities of origin and those who had migrated with their parents but have subsequently returned to their origin region without at least one parent. Interestingly, they find that being reunited, or otherwise put, moving out of left behind status, is associated with lower levels of depression than children who have always lived with their parents at origin. This implies that a time dimension can change the way children's well-being is impacted by parental migration. In both cases, longitudinal research seems to offer the best solutions. Following families before they migrate allows an understanding of how conditions at the onset may affect the well-being of those who stay behind. Following their well-being over time makes it possible to detect how changing conditions can affect changes in well-being as well as how migration can have differing impacts on different phases of the life course. 4.3. Cross-country comparative approaches As Dreby (2015) and Mazzucato et al. (2015) in this special issue show, the political, economic, and normative contexts in the destination and the origin countries can have a direct influence on the well-being of transnational family members in the origin country. Comparing countries helps identify commonalities of transnational family life across countries and cultures but also how different contextual elements affect the well-being of family members left behind. As indicated above, more research is needed to clearly identify how policy contexts in migrant destination countries impact the well-being of those who stay at origin and likewise, how customs, economic, and political conditions at home affect the well-being of transnational family members living at origin. Questions needing more research are, how do family norms, and political and economic contexts in origin countries affect the ways transnational families operate? Likewise, how do destination country contexts affect the well-being of transnational family members in origin counties? These questions can be best investigated with research designs that include different origin countries with parents who have migrated to the same destination country, for the first question; and transnational families from the same origin country with members who migrated to a select number of destination countries, for the second question. Relatedly, there is a need to study transnational families in conflict and post-conflict countries (Muller, 2009; Mazzucato et al., 2015) as their members seem to experience well-being outcomes that are specific to their situations.
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4.4. Multi-sited methods and teamwork Multi-sited research allows gaining an understanding of how broader societal contexts in both origin and destination countries influence the way transnational families operate. Multi-sited research is research that includes different localities connected by one and the same social unit such as a family, a network, or civic actors. This is different from cross-country comparative research mentioned above where different families in different countries are compared. Multi-sited research can be challenging as it requires being in different locations and to gain sufficient contextual knowledge of each location in order to situate a study. This has been described as the challenge of combining breadth with depth (Mazzucato, 2009). One way to deal with this is to work in teams in which researchers from different disciplines, located in different geographical locations, share knowledge and data in order to gain a clearer understanding of how transnational families operate. This involves a praxis of research that requires communication, collaboration, and sharing of data amongst researchers, and of coauthoring publications (Mazzucato, 2009). It also requires new ways of training social science researchers to be more conversant in working in teams, in speaking across disciplines and in working with researchers from different countries. In this special issue, many of the contributions are co-authored, some combine authors from different disciplines and some are collaborations between authors from the different countries studied. Co-authorship with scholars from the Global South is an important issue that needs to be better addressed in academic collaborations, especially in a field such as transnational family research, where many families originate in the Global South and where local collaborations can enhance our knowledge of local contexts and family norms. Acknowledgments The research for this article was funded by the WOTRO Science for Development division of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (WOTRO/NWO, grant W 01.65.316). References Baldassar, L., Baldock, C., 1999. Linking migration and family studies: transnational migrants and the care of ageing parents. In: Agozino, B. (Ed.), Theoretical and Methodological Issues in Migration Research. Ashgate, Aldershot, UK, pp. 57e74. Bernhard, J.K., Landolt, P., Goldring, L., 2009. Transnationalizing families: Canadian immigration policy and the spatial fragmentation of care-giving among Latin American newcomers. Int. Migr. 47 (2), 3e31. Biao, X., 2007. How far are the left-behind left behind? A preliminary study in rural China. Popul. Space Place 13 (3), 179e191. Bledsoe, C., Sow, P., 2011. Back to Africa: second chances for the children of West African immigrants. J. Marriage Fam. 73, 747e762. Bowlby, J., 1973. Separation, Anxiety and Anger. Basic Books, New York. Bryceson, D.F., Vuorela, U., 2002. The Transnational Family: New European Frontiers and Global Networks. Oxford, Berg. Charsley, K., 2005. Unhappy husbands: masculinity and migration in transnational Pakistani marriages. J. R. Anthropol. Inst. (N.S.) 11 (1), 85e105. Chen, F., Liu, G., 2012. The health implications of grandparents caring for grandchildren in China. J. Gerontol. Ser. B Psychol. Sci. Soc. Sci. 67 (1), 99e112. Constable, N., 2003. A transnational perspective on divorce and marriage: Filipina wives and workers. Identities 10 (2), 163e180. Dankyi, E.K., 2014. Transnational Child Raising Arrangements: an Ethnographic Study of Transnational Caregivers in Ghana (Ph.D. thesis). University of Ghana. Dito, B., Mazzucato, V., Schans, D., 2012. The Effects of Transnational Parenting on the Subjective Health and Well-being of Ghanaian Migrants in The Netherlands. Paper Presented at OIKOS Young Economists Academic Conference (19e21 August, 2012) Geneva. Donato, K., Kanaiaupuni, S.M., Stainback, M., 2003. Sex differences in child health: effects of Mexico e U.S. migration. J. Comp. Fam. Stud. 34, 455e477. Dreby, J., 2007. Children and power in Mexican transnational families. J. Marriage Fam. 69, 1050e1064. Dreby, J., 2010. Divided by Borders. Mexican Migrants and Their Children. University of California Press, Berkeley.
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Dreby, J., 2015. U.S. immigration policy and family separation: the consequences for children's well-being. Soc. Sci. Med. 132, 245e251. Fan, F., Su, L., Gill, M.K., Birmaher, B., 2010. Emotional and behavioral problems of Chinese left-behind children: a preliminary study. Soc. Psychiatry Psychiatr. Epidemiol. 45, 655e665. Fresnoza-Flot, A., 2009. Migration status and transnational mothering: the case of Filipino migrants in France. Glob. Netw. A J. Transnatl. Aff. 9 (2), 252e270. Gao, Y., Li, L.P., Kim, J.H., Congdon, N., Lau, J., Griffiths, S., 2010. The impact of parental migration on health status and health behaviours among left behind adolescent school children in China. BMC Public Health 10, 56. Glick, J., 2010. Connecting complex processes: a decade of research on immigrant families. J. Marriage Fam. 72, 498e515. Graham, E., Jordan, L.P., 2011. Migrant parents and the psychological well-being of left-behind children in Southeast Asia. J. Marriage Fam. 73, 763e787. Graham, E., Jordan, L.P., Yeoh, B.S., 2015. Parental migration and the mental health of those who stay behind to care for children in South-East Asia. Soc. Sci. Med. 132, 225e235. Graham, E., Jordan, L.P., Yeoh, B.S., Lam, T., Asis, M., 2012. Transnational families and the family nexus: perspectives of Indonesian and Filipino children left behind by migrant parent(s). Environ. Plan. A 44 (4), 793e815. Haagsman, K., Mazzucato, V., Dito, B., 2013. Transnational Families and the Subjective Well-being of Migrant Parents: Angolan and Nigerian Parents in The Netherlands. Paper Presented at NORFACE Conference “Migration: Global Development, New Frontiers” (10e13 April, 2013) London. Hamilton, E.R., Choi, K.H., 2015. The mixed effects of migration: community-level migration and birthweight in Mexico. Soc. Sci. Med. 132, 278e286. He, B., Fan, J., Liu, N., Li, H., Wang, Y., Williams, J., Wong, K., 2012. Depression risk of ‘left-behind children’ in rural China. Psychiatry Res. 200 (2), 306e312. Hirsch, J.S., 2003. A Courtship After Marriage: Sexuality and Love in Mexican Transnational Families. University of California Press, Berkeley. Hoang, L.A., Yeoh, B.S., 2012. Sustaining families across transnational spaces: Vietnamese migrant parents and their left-behind children. Asian Stud. Rev. 36 (3), 307e325. Hondagneu-Sotelo, P., Avila, E., 1997. ‘I'm here, but I'm there’. The meanings of Latina transnational motherhood. Gend. Soc. 2 (5), 548e571. Jia, Z., Tian, W., 2010. Loneliness of left-behind children: a cross-sectional survey in a sample of rural China. Child Care Health Dev. 36, 812e817. Jordan, L.P., Graham, E., 2012. Resilience and well-being among children of migrant parents in South-East Asia. Child. Dev. 83 (5), 1672e1688. Liu, Z., Ge, X., 2009. Left too early: the effects of age at separation from parents on Chinese rural children's symptoms of anxiety and depression. Am. J. Public Health 99, 2049e2054. Mazzucato, V., 2009. Bridging boundaries with a transnational research approach: a simultaneous matched sample methodology. In: Falzon, M.A. (Ed.), Multi-sited Ethnography: Theory, Praxis and Locality in Contemporary Social Research. Ashgate, Hampshire, pp. 215e232. Mazzucato, V., 2013. Transnational families. In: Ness, I. (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration. Blackwell Publishing, Oxford. Mazzucato, V., 2014. Child well-being and transnational families. In: Michalos, A. (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-being Research. Springer, Dordrecht, pp. 749e755. Mazzucato, V., Cebotari, V., Veale, A., White, A., Grassi, M., Vivet, J., 2015. International parental migration and the psychological well-being of children in Ghana, Nigeria, and Angola. Soc. Sci. Med. 132, 215e224. Mazzucato, V., Schans, V., 2011. Transnational families and the well-being of children: conceptual and methodological challenges. J. Marriage Fam. 73 (4), 704e712. Muller, P., 2009. Scattered Families: Transnational Family Life of Afghan Refugees in the Netherlands in the Light of the Human Rights-based Protection of the Family (Ph.D. thesis). Utrecht University. Nobles, J., 2011. Parenting from abroad: migration, non-resident father involvement, and children's education in Mexico. J. Marriage Fam. 73 (4), 729e746. Nobles, J., Rubalcava, L., Teruel, G., 2015. After spouses depart: emotional wellbeing among nonmigrant Mexican mothers. Soc. Sci. Med. 132, 236e244. ~ as, R.S., 2001. Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration and Domestic Parren Work. Standford University Press, Stanford. ~ as, R.S., 2005. Children of Global Migration: Transnational Families and Parren Gendered Woes. Standford University Press, Standford. Poeze, M., Dankyi, E., Mazzucato, V., 2013. Navigating Care Relationships: Ghanaian Migrant Parents and Their Children's Caregivers in Ghana. Paper Presented at CRFR International Conference e Researching Families and Relationships: Innovations in Methods, Theory and Policy Interventions, 10e12 June 2013, Edinburgh. Poeze, M., Mazzucato, V., 2014. Ghanaian children in transnational families: understanding the experiences of left-behind children through local parenting norms. In: Baldassar, L., Merla, L. (Eds.), Transnational Families, Migration and the Circulation of Care. Routledge, London, pp. 149e169. Pribilsky, J., 2001. Nervios and ‘modern’ childhood: migration and changing contexts of child life in the Ecuadorian Andes. Child. A Glob. J. Child Res. 8 (2), 251e273. Ratha, D., Mohapatra, S., Scheja, E., 2011. Impact of Migration on Economic and Social Development. A Review of Evidence and Emerging Issues. World Bank, Washington, D.C. Policy Research Working Paper 5559.
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Schmalzbauer, L., 2004. Searching for wages and mothering from afar: the case of Honduran transnational families. J. Marriage Fam. 66, 1317e1331. Suarez-Orozco, C., Todorova, I.L.G., Louie, J.M.C.P., 2002. Making up for lost time: the experience of separation and reunification among immigrant families. Fam. Process 41 (4), 625e643. UNICEF, 2006. Promoting the Rights of Children Affected by Migration: UNICEF Report Following the HLD on International Migration and Development. UNICEF, New York. United Nations, 2013. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, Trends in International Migrant Stock: the 2013 Revision. www.POP/DB/ MIG/Stock/Rev.2013. Vanore, M., Mazzucato, V., Siegel, M., 2015. ‘Left behind’ but not left alone: Parental migration & the psychosocial health of children in Moldova. Soc. Sci. Med. 132, 252e260. Wen, M., Li, X., Lin, D., Su, S., 2015. Positive youth development in rural China: the role of parental migration. Soc. Sci. Med. 132, 261e269. Wen, M., Lin, D., 2012. Child development in rural China: children left behind by their migrant parents and children of nonmigrant families. Child. Dev. 83, 120e136. Whitehouse, B., 2009. Transnational childrearing and the preservation of transnational identity in Brazzaville, Congo. Glob. Netw. 9, 82e99.
Wimmer, A., Glick Schiller, N., 2002. Methodological nationalism and beyond: nation-state building, migration and the social sciences. Glob. Netw. 2 (4), 301e334. Winnicott, D., 1958. Through Pediatrics to Psycho-analysis. Hogarth Press, London. Wu, Q., Lu, D., Kang, M., 2015. Social capital and the mental health of children in rural China with different experiences of parental migration. Soc. Sci. Med. 132, 270e277. Yeoh, B., Lam, T., 2007. The costs of (im)mobility: children left behind and children who migrate with a parent. In: United Nations ESCAP, Perspectives on Gender and Migration. United Nations, New York, pp. 120e149. Zontini, E., 2004. Immigrant women in Barcelona: coping with the consequences of transnational lives. J. Ethn. Migr. Stud. 30 (6), 1113e1144.
Valentina Mazzucato Department of Technology and Society Studies, Maastricht University, Grote Gracht 90-92, 6211SZ Maastricht, The Netherlands E-mail address: [email protected]. Available online 14 November 2014
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Introduction
Transnational families and the well-being of children and caregivers who stay in origin countries Transnational families are a current and widespread phenomenon around the globe. A common form is where one or both parents migrate and children are left in the country of origin to be raised by a caregiver, be it the other parent, an extended family member, or in some cases a non-kin related person. Such arrangements are the result of stringent migration policies in migrant receiving countries, which make it difficult for families to migrate together. In others, they are the preferred choice of family members especially in societies where extended family members continue to play an important role in the raising of children. With a growing awareness of the existence of such families in both academic and policy arenas, there is an emerging concern about the effects of separation on children's well-being in terms of their physical and psychological health outcomes. Moreover, research is just beginning to pay attention to the well-being of those who care for migrants' children. Migration involves over 3 percent of the world's population (United Nations, 2013). In some developing countries, this results in rates of children who stay at origin while a parent migrates to reach as high as 25% of the under 18 years old population (UNICEF, 2006). It is therefore important to consider how migration affects those who stay behind in discussions of the effects of migration on development in origin countries, which have tended to focus on economic gains and on households as a whole, rather than effects on individual family members (Mazzucato and Schans, 2011; Ratha et al., 2011). Studies on transnational families only emerged in the early 2000s when in-depth studies of transnational migration turned to the effects of migration for family members who are separated by geographical borders (Bryceson and Vuorela, 2002). Previous to this, the omission of transnational families from the purview of researchers had several sources. Migration research was characterized by methodological nationalism (Wimmer and Glick Schiller, 2002) in which migration was studied from the perspective of one nation-state: either the migrant origin country, or the destination country. This meant that migrant families were studied as living together in the destination country or only those members that migrated were focused upon; or, conversely, only those household members who remained at origin were the object of study (Mazzucato and Schans, 2011). Research on families and child psychology, instead, was largely guided by theories such as attachment (Bowlby, 1973) or object relations (Winnicott, 1958) theories in which children's development is affected by relationships with people in their proximity. Family relationships at great geographical distances thus were considered either as irrelevant or unpractical (Baldassar and Baldock, 1999; Mazzucato and Schans, 2011; Zontini, 2004). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.11.030 0277-9536/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Transnational family research changed this perspective by arguing that when family members migrate, they remain linked with families and communities in their home country, continuing to engage in family practices and maintain feelings of home and emotional proximity even across great geographical distances (Bryceson and Vuorela, 2002). Research on transnational families, largely stemming from anthropological, feminist, and qualitative sociology scholars, has focused on spousal (Charsley, 2005; Pribilsky, 2001) and parentechild relationships, with a special focus on migrant mothers and the children they leave behind (Bernhard et al., ~ as, 2001, 2005; Schmalzbauer, 2004). 2009; Dreby, 2007; Parren Separately and more recently, family sociology and child psychology studies have turned to the study of transnational families in the 2010s with studies on Chinese internal migration and Mexican e US migration taking the lead (Donato et al., 2003; Fan et al., 2010; Liu and Ge, 2009; Nobles, 2011). The predominant focus of such studies, largely employing quantitative methodologies, has been on the well-being of the children who stay behind. These two areas of study have remained largely separate; however, much stands to be gained by bringing them to bear on one another. Furthermore, the focus of both strands has been on migrant parents and their children, whereas the role of the caregiver who stays in the country of origin to care for a migrant's child is almost always missing or peripheral. This special issue focuses on one form of transnational families: that in which one or both parents migrate internally or internationally and leave one or more children aged 18 or below in the origin country in the care of a caregiver who is either the other parent, a member of the extended family, or, in some instances, a non-kin relation. The papers focus on the psychological well-being and health outcomes of the members of transnational families who remain in the origin country: children and their caregivers. The papers have been selected from among those presented at an international conference, held in Maastricht on March 27e29, 2013. The conference was co-financed by the Dutch Scientific Organisation (NWO), the New Opportunities for Research Funding Cooperation Agency in Europe (NORFACE), and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) at the closing of the Transnational Child Raising Arrangements programs (TCRA and TCRAfEu). Two of the papers were added after the conference. The objective of the conference was to bring junior and senior scholars on transnational family research from different disciplinary traditions together to present state-of-the-art research and reflect on what can be gained by bringing different approaches together (http:// fasos-research.nl/tcra/tcraf-eu/conference).
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This special issue includes contributions from anthropology, family sociology, child psychology, demography, and social geography, using qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-method approaches. It also includes some of the first cross-country comparative studies on the effects of international migration on transnational families and covers various migration flows: Mexicans to the USA; Africans to Europe; national migration within China; Southeast Asian migration within the region and to the Middle East; and migration from Eastern Europe to Russia and Western Europe. Extensive and recent overviews on the study of transnational families from different disciplinary perspectives already exist (Glick, 2010; Mazzucato and Schans, 2011; Mazzucato, 2013, 2014). This introduction will instead focus on identifying some of the key areas where transnational family research can push forward, and it situates the contributions to this special issue within these cutting-edge areas. 1. Parental migration and child outcomes Most transnational family studies that focus on children's wellbeing find that children are negatively impacted by their parents' migration. Dreby (2007), while emphasizing the agency that children have in influencing their parents' migration process, highlights that Mexican children feel abandoned. They develop behaviors to ‘get back’ at their parents such as young children refusing to speak to them on the phone or older children ignoring ~ as (2005) their authority. This in turn makes parents suffer. Parren emphasizes Filipino children's suffering and loneliness and finds that they fare worse when mothers migrate. While pointing to some factors that can attenuate negative outcomes, the literature clearly emphasizes the negative effects of parental migration on children (Yeoh and Lam, 2007). More recent child psychology and family sociology studies have looked quantitatively at the issue and to some degree confirm these negative outcomes. Jia and Tian (2010) find that Chinese children have a higher risk of poor mental health when their parents migrate. Similar to the Mexican and Filipino studies above, Wen and Lin (2012) and Liu and Ge (2009) find that in China children are worse off when their mothers migrate as compared to when their fathers migrate. Children continue to feel the negative impact of separation on their psychological well-being, even when they are reunited with their parents overseas (Suarez-Orozco et al., 2002). Yet not all children in transnational families fare worse. Recent studies show that there are both micro and meso-level factors that impinge on how being in a transnational family affects children. It is therefore important for research to identify the characteristics that cause variation between families. 1.1. Important micro and meso-level mediators Recent scholarship on transnational families identifies characteristics other than parental migration that may impinge on child well-being outcomes that relate to micro-level factors such as child, parent, and caregiver characteristics and meso-level factors that relate to family, school, and community. For example, Wen and Lin (2012) find worse outcomes for children with migrant parents, but also find that the family's socio-economic status, children's peer and school support, and the child's psychological traits and socializing skills mediate the relationship between child well-being and parental migration, and, in fact, are more important in explaining decreased health behavior and lower school engagement among left-behind children than the parents' migratory status. Furthermore, they find no evidence of decreased emotional wellbeing amongst left-behind children. Fan et al. (2010) note that left-behind children show more psychopathological and less pro-
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social behavior than their counterparts who live with their biological parents. Yet, these differences disappear after controlling for age, education levels, the socio-economic status of parents and caregivers, and teacher involvement. The authors show that leftbehind children tend to come from poorer families with older and less educated caregivers. Concomitantly, qualitative transnational family studies have turned their attention to contextual factors that impinge on the negative relationships between parental migration and child well-being. Fresnoza-Flot (2009) studied undocumented Filipino mothers to show how being undocumented affects their ability to parent from afar, and is reflected in the quality of their relationships with their children. As such, these recent studies help add nuance to findings and show that in certain circumstances other factors can be more important in explaining low levels of well-being amongst children than their parents' migratory status per se (Mazzucato, 2014). A promising area in need of more research is the role of the meso-environment especially as it relates to the family, school, and community networks of support available for children and caregivers in the origin country. As Nobles et al. (2015) note, the effects of parental migration on those who stay behind can differ greatly for rural and urban-based families, and we still know little about these differences and what drives them. In this special issue, various contributions show the importance of the mesoenvironment in which a child grows up. Wu et al. (2015) find that social capital at the family and community levels mediates the relationship between parental migration and children's well-being. Children whose parents are migrants have lower levels of social capital, which in turn, further increases their levels of depression. Hamilton and Choi's (2015) paper shows that community-level migration characteristics such as out-migration rates, levels of remittance receipts and return migration impact infant health outcomes, albeit in different ways. However, research on the role of intervening factors is at an early stage so it is important for research to continue to scrutinize the role of intervening factors that may be just as important, if not more, in explaining child well-being as parental migration. 1.2. Multiple dimensions of well-being While well-being has been researched in terms of mental and physical health dimensions for children and caregivers, recent studies look at multiple measures within each dimension to capture the multi-dimensional experiences of people who stay behind. For example, authors consider different components of emotional well-being such as emotional symptoms, hyperactivity, conduct problems, peer problems, and pro-social behavior (Fan et al., 2010; Graham and Jordan, 2011; Vanore et al., 2015) and find differences between components. Accurately and appropriately measuring well-being is an important aspect of transnational family research. In this special issue, Nobles et al. (2015) include different measures of well-being for non-migrant mother caregivers in Mexico, such as sadness, crying, sleeplessness, and depression. Hamilton and Choi (2015) measure health outcomes by looking at both infant low birthweight and macrosomia (high birthweight). The latter has not been the subject of research until now, but both conditions put children's later healthy development at risk. In these studies, parental migration affects outcomes differently, in some instances showing no differences with non-transnational families. Wen et al. (2015) establish and validate a measure of Positive Youth Development for Chinese adolescent youths, which is a strengths-based conception of youth rather than traditional models where adolescence is viewed in terms of deficit behaviors and emotions. It incorporates latent constructs of competence, confidence,
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caring, character, and social connection. They find that parental migration actually leads to positive results, thus differing from many of the previous Chinese studies that emphasize negative outcomes. Not only do multiple measures make a difference, but also who is reporting on them. Jordan and Graham (2012) showed that different results apply for different measures depending on whether the child himself or herself or the caregiver reports them. In general, they find that while assessments of happiness are similar, school performance tends to be assessed higher by caregivers than by children. Previous research has tended to focus on adults' assessments of children's well-being, whereas more recent research (Dreby, 2007; Graham and Jordan, 2011) and papers in this special issue (Mazzucato et al., 2015; Vanore et al., 2015; Wen et al., 2015; Wu et al., 2015) focus on children's own assessments. 1.3. Defining transnational families Most studies have focused on one dimension of transnational families, that is, who migrates: whether the mother, father, or ~ as’ (2005) ethnographic studies both. Dreby's (2010) and Parren find that when mothers migrate, children are worse off. Jia and Tian (2010) and Graham and Jordan (2011) both confirm such findings using survey data. Yet there are other dimensions of transnational families that may explain variation in outcomes amongst ~ as (2005) emphathose who stay behind. Dreby (2010) and Parren size that communication between parent and child is fundamental; Fresnoza-Flot (2009) highlights that parents' legal status abroad influences the way in which they can relate to their children; Schmalzbauer (2004) argues that grandmothers especially help children to cope and develop positive feelings towards their parents, suggesting that kin relationship may make a difference for children's well-being. These findings suggest that it is not only which parent migrates that can serve to define a transnational family but also the legal status of the parent, who the caregiver is, and the quality of communication between child and parent and between caregiver and parent. Yet many of these insights have yet to be investigated in large-scale studies. Aside from investigating whether ‘who the migrant parent is’ makes a difference in child well-being outcomes, Mazzucato et al. (2015) and Vanore et al. (2015) in this special issue additionally look at whether ‘who the caregiver is’ affects outcomes. Mazzucato et al. (2015) investigate other dimensions as well: the destination of the migrant parent; and the stability of the caregiving arrangement. They find that indeed, different outcomes are associated with different transnational family configurations, showing that it is important to look at the specific characteristics of transnational families in order to identify variation in outcomes amongst children who stay behind. 2. Caregivers While much of the work on transnational families has focused on the well-being of migrant parents and the children in origin countries, not much attention has been given to the well-being of the caregiver, especially when he or she is not the other parent. Yet, as argued by Schmalzbauer (2004) caregivers play a fundamental role in affecting how children feel about their parents' migration which in turn impacts the well-being of children. In Vietnam, the emotional work of carers was found to be crucial for alleviating the emotional hardships of children with migrant parents (Hoang and Yeoh, 2012). Ghanaian children felt comfortable with having two mothers, their migrant mother and their caregiver, as long as they felt that each was fulfilling their role in taking care
of them (Poeze and Mazzucato, 2014). In their comparative study, Jordan and Graham (2012) find that caregiver mental health can affect children's well-being. In this special issue, Vanore et al. (2015) find that higher levels of caregiver's human capital affect children's well-being positively. While these studies point to the importance of caregivers, they are not the central focus of study. Furthermore, most of these studies focus on the other parent as caregiver, and to a certain extent grandparents (Dreby, 2007; Jordan and Graham, 2012; Schmalzbauer, 2004). A few studies that examine the role of grandparents as caregivers find that children in the care of grandparents fare worse than their counterparts being cared for by the other parent (Jia and Tian, 2010). Yet there are also other people in the extended family who act as caregivers. Recent work has shown that non-relatives are also caregivers. In Ghana, for example, a new practice of paid caregivers has been documented (Dankyi, 2014). In the same vein Fan et al. (2010) find that there are differences between Chinese children who are cared for by a relative, a non-relative, and those who live with their biological parents after a period of separation. Children whose caregivers are non-relatives are at the greatest risk of showing emotional and behavioral problems. In this special issue Vanore et al. (2015) explore the effects of having a parental caregiver vs. a non-parental caregiver on children's well-being in Moldova. They find that there is no difference in children's well-being except for in boys' emotional symptoms, where those cared for by a non-parent caregiver had a higher probability of an abnormal score. In three African countries, Mazzucato et al. (2015) in this special issue, investigate different types of kin relationships: the other parent, a grandparent, an uncle or aunt and others. They find that the type of kin relationship does not make a difference for child well-being. While the above studies focus on how caregivers affect children's well-being, hardly any studies focus on how parental migration affects the mental health of the caregivers themselves. One study of Chinese grandparents' health found that grandparents in two-generation households, that is, where a parent is absent and the grandparents are taking care of grandchildren, do not experience lower levels of self-reported health (Chen and Liu, 2012). In fact, a light workload of caring for the grandchild, was found to have a protective effect on grandparents' health. In this special issue, two contributions focus particularly on the well-being of caregivers. Graham et al. (2015) look at the well-being of mother and father caregivers in the Philippines, Vietnam, and Indonesia when the other parent migrates. They find that Indonesian caregivers in transnational families show poorer mental health than caregivers in non-transnational families. More generally, in all three countries, stay-behind mothers show poorer mental health than stay-behind fathers. Nobles et al. (2015) investigate the well-being of Mexican mothers when fathers migrate to the United States. They find a modest decrease in emotional well-being of mothers for symptoms like sadness, crying, difficulty sleeping, and loneliness, but no effects in levels of depression. In both of these studies, the samples primarily consist of mothers or fathers as caregivers. An insufficient number of other caregiver types were available in the samples to be able to explore the well-being of caregivers such as grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts, uncles, or non-relatives. Yet in China, as in many parts of Africa, grandparents are often caregivers, leaving an important area for investigation: how the well-being of grandparents and other caregivers is affected by parental migration. 3. Broader contexts The emphasis of recent transnational family studies has been on micro and meso-level characteristics that affect the well-being of
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those who stay behind, be it individual characteristics of children, caregivers, or migrant parents, the social support networks of care, and family and school characteristics. Broader contextual factors need more investigation, such as the role of policies in countries where migrant parents reside or the cultural, economic, and political contexts of the origin countries. Comparing different countries can help identify the effects of broader political, economic, and normative contexts. 3.1. Policies and political contexts Graham and Jordan (2011) and Graham et al. (2012) are the only ones to our knowledge to have compared the well-being of children in different migrant-sending countries. They compare well-being outcomes for children in four countries in Southeast Asia and find that children of migrant fathers are more likely to have poor psychological well-being in Indonesia and Thailand but not in the Philippines or Vietnam. They venture a possible explanation for these differences: in those countries where parental migration has been in place for longer periods, such as in the Philippines, the issue has received greater attention from government and non-governmental agencies, resulting in specific programs that address their needs. In this special issue, Mazzucato et al. (2015) also explore differences between countries by providing one of the first comparative analyses of African data. The general pattern that emerges is that Angolan children's responses to parental migration are worse and greater in magnitude than in Ghana and Nigeria, controlling for possible confounders. The authors draw from conflict and post-conflict psychology literature to suggest that the upheaval that families have endured during the war in Angola (1975e2002) has made children more vulnerable in the face of parental migration. While not conclusive, these crosscountry comparative studies point to the need to systematically investigate the effects of broader contextual factors in the countries of origin. Policies in the countries where migrant parents reside can also be influential. Some studies show that being undocumented is one of the driving forces affecting migrant parents' well-being (Haagsman et al, 2013) and their ability to parent from afar (Bernhard et al., 2009; Fresnoza-Flot, 2009). Biao (2007) conducted a review of Chinese studies on rural left-behind children and some additional interviews of migrants and left-behind members of their families. His is one of the few studies on China that concludes that lower outcomes for children of migrant parents are the result of broader Chinese policy contexts, rather than parental migration, per se. He argues that rural children in general in China are disadvantaged with respect to their urban counterparts, irrespective of parental migration. Furthermore, the Hokou system, which disadvantages rural migrants who move to the cities, is a larger determinant of poorer child outcomes than a lack of parental presence. Importantly, in this issue, Dreby (2015) investigates how policies in migrant destination countries influence children's well-being. She analyzes the differences in two types of parent-child separations caused by US immigration policy: enforcement policies that involve detention and repatriation especially of Mexican male migrants, and migration restriction policies which make it difficult for Mexican migrants to legally enter the USA. She finds that separation caused by the former set of policies leads to anxiety and economic instability for children who ‘stay behind’ in the USA when their fathers are repatriated, while the second type of separation leads to resentment among children who ‘stay behind’ in Mexico, especially when children's expectations of their parents' migration go unfulfilled. Graham et al. (2015) and Mazzucato et al. (2015) in this special issue find that the destination of migrant parents makes a difference to the well-being of caregivers or children who stay at
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origin. Graham et al. (2015) find that when parents migrate to the Middle East, caregivers have worse mental health. They suggest that more research is needed to further investigate the processes behind this association and if it is due to particular destinations within the region and/or to the types of employment available to migrants in these overseas destinations. Internal migration is important in many African countries; Mazzucato et al. (2015) investigated whether children's well-being differed when parents migrate internally or internationally. They find that international parental migration is associated with worse outcomes than internal parental migration in Angola but not in Ghana and Nigeria. These differences between countries again attest to the need to take country-specific contexts into account. 3.2. Normative contexts Normative contexts in which families operate in the origin countries are also of importance. Especially as recorded in African contexts, cultural norms around family and child rearing may lead parents to prefer to leave or send their children back to their countries of origin (Bledsoe and Sow, 2011; Whitehouse, 2009). As noted earlier, Poeze and Mazzucato (2014) show that in Ghana, children feel comfortable with the idea of having two mothers, as long as they feel cared for by both their caregiver and their mother overseas, as the concept of two mothers is one that is part and parcel of social parenthood norms. In this special issue, Mazzucato et al. (2015) find that in Angola, Nigeria, and Ghana, if aunts or uncles are caregivers, this is not associated with worse psychological well-being for children than when children are cared for by both parents. In Nigeria and Ghana, having a grandparent as caregiver is also not associated with worse outcomes. The authors seek explanations for their findings in the norms and practices of child raising in many parts of Africa where it is common for children to be raised by people other than their biological parents, irrespective of migration. This creates a normative context in which children do not feel stigmatized if they are growing up in a family without their biological parents. Feelings of stigma instead have been recorded amongst children in the ~ as, 2005), which is one of the reasons given Philippines (Parren for Filipino children's lower well-being when their parents have migrated. Gender discourses and normative contexts have been found to be influential in affecting children's well-being through the expectations they create amongst children. For example, some studies argue that maternal migration leads to worse well-being outcomes ~ as, 2005), for children (Gao et al., 2010; Liu and Ge, 2009; Parren while others do not find this difference (Graham and Jordan, 2011; He et al., 2012; Vanore et al., 2015). Graham et al. (2012), ~ as (2005) and Dreby (2007) suggest that gender normative Parren discourses in the Philippines and in Mexico affect children's perspectives on the migration of their mothers; this leads to a stronger feeling of abandonment amongst children when mothers migrate compared with when fathers migrate. Others have turned to more structural explanations, arguing that female migrants have access to different job markets overseas (Hondagneu-Sotelo and ~ as, 2001), and that their conditions of employAvila, 1997; Parren ment and earnings affect their ability to parent from abroad, and to visit their children. Mazzucato et al. (2015) in this issue, also find that mother migration is associated with lower psychological well-being of children in two of the three study countries, yet female migrants' children are in less stable care arrangements than male migrants' children. This suggests that there are other explanations than lack of motherly care that contribute to lower well-being outcomes of children of migrant mothers. Vanore et al. (2015) do not find differences in children's well-being according to whether
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their mother or their father migrates. This highlights that the effect of maternal migration differs by country, and for Moldova in particular, this is an important finding as it runs counter to pervasive public discourse about the negative effects of maternal migration on children. The relationships between gender of the migrant parent and well-being outcomes of those at origin warrants more research. 4. New avenues for research The discussion above points to some innovative areas to advance transnational family research. 4.1. The use of mixed method approaches There is a need to pay attention to the complex and multiple ways that people experience well-being. Combining people's own accounts of their feelings and emotions regarding transnational family life, with measures of well-being such as happiness, life satisfaction, and emotional well-being that are posed separately from talking about transnational family life, as is done in survey research, can be a fruitful way to capture the different dimensions of people's lived experiences. While interviews are strong in bringing out people's emotions and associations with transnational family life, quantitative measures are helpful for isolating what aspects of well-being are associated with migration and which may be associated with characteristics other than migration. Furthermore, conducting observational research is fundamental for triangulating between how people talk about their condition with how they act in transnational families. Graham et al. (2015), in this issue, for example, use survey data to identify a particular association and then investigate it qualitatively through interviews to understand why such an association exists. The Transnational Child Raising Arrangements between Africa and Europe (TCRA and TCRAf-Eu) programs combined different projects using particular methodologies that concomitantly informed each other, such as in the development of survey questions through insights from ethnographic data collection (www. tcra.nl). Additionally, when particular associations were found in survey data, such as the importance of legal status for parental well-being (Dito et al., 2012), ethnographic research including observation was conducted focusing on how this aspect has affected parenting and caregiving practices in transnational families (Poeze et al., 2013). 4.2. Longitudinal approaches Whatever methods are employed, it remains a challenge to appropriately attribute well-being outcomes to migration. Most research on transnational families, irrespective of the methods used, be it large scale surveys or in-depth ethnographic research, is conducted once a family member has migrated. The possibility exists that some characteristic that is not measured or observed leads people to migrate and also affects the well-being of those who stay behind. By not observing or capturing this characteristic we may over-attribute well-being effects, whether positive or negative, to migration. For example, if migration is a way to escape a problematic marital situation that existed a priori (Constable, 2003; Hirsch, 2003), then the marital situation, and not migration, may be what is driving the effects on a child's well-being. It is therefore important to take this into consideration when evaluating the effect of parental migration on a child's well-being. Only a few quantitative studies on child well-being in transnational families take parental marital status into account (Nobles, 2011) and no
study, using quantitative or qualitative methods has thus far analyzed the pre-migration situation. In this special issue Hamilton and Choi (2015) and Nobles et al. (2015), both use data from different survey waves and employ special techniques such as instrumental variables and fixed effects modeling to account for possible selectivity of migrants into migration. Indeed, both find that without these methods, their results would be under or overestimated, respectively. Yet even with such methods, it is difficult to rule out the possibility that there may be other attributes that affect the outcomes. A second time-related issue is that the effects of parental migration change over the life course. While young children have been found to be particularly affected by parental migration, later in life, young adults seem to be able to better deal with the absence (Fan et al., 2010; Liu and Ge, 2009). Chen and Liu (2012) use a longitudinal design to not only look at health levels but also health decline amongst caregiver grandparents over a 15-year interval. Wu et al. (2015) in this special issue are among the first to systematically investigate children with different histories of transnational family life. They distinguish between those that currently are separated from their parents due to migration, those that have previously been separated but are now reunited in their communities of origin and those who had migrated with their parents but have subsequently returned to their origin region without at least one parent. Interestingly, they find that being reunited, or otherwise put, moving out of left behind status, is associated with lower levels of depression than children who have always lived with their parents at origin. This implies that a time dimension can change the way children's well-being is impacted by parental migration. In both cases, longitudinal research seems to offer the best solutions. Following families before they migrate allows an understanding of how conditions at the onset may affect the well-being of those who stay behind. Following their well-being over time makes it possible to detect how changing conditions can affect changes in well-being as well as how migration can have differing impacts on different phases of the life course. 4.3. Cross-country comparative approaches As Dreby (2015) and Mazzucato et al. (2015) in this special issue show, the political, economic, and normative contexts in the destination and the origin countries can have a direct influence on the well-being of transnational family members in the origin country. Comparing countries helps identify commonalities of transnational family life across countries and cultures but also how different contextual elements affect the well-being of family members left behind. As indicated above, more research is needed to clearly identify how policy contexts in migrant destination countries impact the well-being of those who stay at origin and likewise, how customs, economic, and political conditions at home affect the well-being of transnational family members living at origin. Questions needing more research are, how do family norms, and political and economic contexts in origin countries affect the ways transnational families operate? Likewise, how do destination country contexts affect the well-being of transnational family members in origin counties? These questions can be best investigated with research designs that include different origin countries with parents who have migrated to the same destination country, for the first question; and transnational families from the same origin country with members who migrated to a select number of destination countries, for the second question. Relatedly, there is a need to study transnational families in conflict and post-conflict countries (Muller, 2009; Mazzucato et al., 2015) as their members seem to experience well-being outcomes that are specific to their situations.
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4.4. Multi-sited methods and teamwork Multi-sited research allows gaining an understanding of how broader societal contexts in both origin and destination countries influence the way transnational families operate. Multi-sited research is research that includes different localities connected by one and the same social unit such as a family, a network, or civic actors. This is different from cross-country comparative research mentioned above where different families in different countries are compared. Multi-sited research can be challenging as it requires being in different locations and to gain sufficient contextual knowledge of each location in order to situate a study. This has been described as the challenge of combining breadth with depth (Mazzucato, 2009). One way to deal with this is to work in teams in which researchers from different disciplines, located in different geographical locations, share knowledge and data in order to gain a clearer understanding of how transnational families operate. This involves a praxis of research that requires communication, collaboration, and sharing of data amongst researchers, and of coauthoring publications (Mazzucato, 2009). It also requires new ways of training social science researchers to be more conversant in working in teams, in speaking across disciplines and in working with researchers from different countries. In this special issue, many of the contributions are co-authored, some combine authors from different disciplines and some are collaborations between authors from the different countries studied. Co-authorship with scholars from the Global South is an important issue that needs to be better addressed in academic collaborations, especially in a field such as transnational family research, where many families originate in the Global South and where local collaborations can enhance our knowledge of local contexts and family norms. Acknowledgments The research for this article was funded by the WOTRO Science for Development division of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (WOTRO/NWO, grant W 01.65.316). References Baldassar, L., Baldock, C., 1999. Linking migration and family studies: transnational migrants and the care of ageing parents. In: Agozino, B. (Ed.), Theoretical and Methodological Issues in Migration Research. Ashgate, Aldershot, UK, pp. 57e74. Bernhard, J.K., Landolt, P., Goldring, L., 2009. Transnationalizing families: Canadian immigration policy and the spatial fragmentation of care-giving among Latin American newcomers. Int. Migr. 47 (2), 3e31. Biao, X., 2007. How far are the left-behind left behind? A preliminary study in rural China. Popul. Space Place 13 (3), 179e191. Bledsoe, C., Sow, P., 2011. Back to Africa: second chances for the children of West African immigrants. J. Marriage Fam. 73, 747e762. Bowlby, J., 1973. Separation, Anxiety and Anger. Basic Books, New York. Bryceson, D.F., Vuorela, U., 2002. The Transnational Family: New European Frontiers and Global Networks. Oxford, Berg. Charsley, K., 2005. Unhappy husbands: masculinity and migration in transnational Pakistani marriages. J. R. Anthropol. Inst. (N.S.) 11 (1), 85e105. Chen, F., Liu, G., 2012. The health implications of grandparents caring for grandchildren in China. J. Gerontol. Ser. B Psychol. Sci. Soc. Sci. 67 (1), 99e112. Constable, N., 2003. A transnational perspective on divorce and marriage: Filipina wives and workers. Identities 10 (2), 163e180. Dankyi, E.K., 2014. Transnational Child Raising Arrangements: an Ethnographic Study of Transnational Caregivers in Ghana (Ph.D. thesis). University of Ghana. Dito, B., Mazzucato, V., Schans, D., 2012. The Effects of Transnational Parenting on the Subjective Health and Well-being of Ghanaian Migrants in The Netherlands. Paper Presented at OIKOS Young Economists Academic Conference (19e21 August, 2012) Geneva. Donato, K., Kanaiaupuni, S.M., Stainback, M., 2003. Sex differences in child health: effects of Mexico e U.S. migration. J. Comp. Fam. Stud. 34, 455e477. Dreby, J., 2007. Children and power in Mexican transnational families. J. Marriage Fam. 69, 1050e1064. Dreby, J., 2010. Divided by Borders. Mexican Migrants and Their Children. University of California Press, Berkeley.
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Valentina Mazzucato Department of Technology and Society Studies, Maastricht University, Grote Gracht 90-92, 6211SZ Maastricht, The Netherlands E-mail address: [email protected]. Available online 14 November 2014