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Abstract
This article is an ethnographic analysis of transnational family links between adult migrant children living in Australia and their kin in Italy, from the 1950s to the present. A key focus of the article is the persistence of bonds of emotion across distance. Drawing on Finch and Mason's research on caregiving relationships and Hochschild's work on emotional labour, it explores both the positive experiences as well as the tensions associated with the transnational exchange of moral and emotional support. The findings confirm the perseverance of bonds of emotion across distance and thus challenge arguments about the declining bonds within translocal families as a result of globalising processes. The role that new communication technologies play in sustaining these bonds is offered as a possible explanation to account for the apparent increase in the frequency of transnational emotional interaction over time. The article also calls for further work on the influence of physical co-presence or absence on emotional interaction over distance.
I thank Maruška Svašek, Zlatko Skrbiš, Thomas Wilson, Jonathan Hill, Linda Smith, and, in particular, Identities' anonymous reviewers for their useful comments.
Notes
1. Pseudonyms have been used in this article.
2. This project, “Transnational care-giving: cross-cultural aged-care practices between Australian immigrants and their parents living abroad,” was conducted with Cora Baldock and Raelene Wilding from 2000 to 2005 and was funded by the Australia Research Council Large Grant A00000731.
3. Stephen Bennetts, PhD candidate in the School of Social and Cultural Studies at UWA, conduced five of the Italy sample interviews on my behalf.
4. For further discussion on these three cohorts, see CitationBaldassar, Baldock and Wilding (2007) and CitationBaldassar (2007).
5. The numbers of Italian migrants in Western Australia reflect the figures for the country as a whole. At the beginning of the twentieth century, there were approximately 8,000 Italians in Australia, most of whom lived in rural districts. Between 1922 and 1930, some 25,000 people left Italy for Australia. The Italy-born population of Australia rose from 33,632 in 1947 to 120,000 in 1954 and expanded to 228,000 by 1961, reaching a peak of 289,476 in 1971. By the census of 1996, the figure had declined to 238,263 and in 2001 it had fallen to 218,718 (1.2 percent of the total Australian population) due to a combination of deaths occurring in the ageing population, repatriations and limited migration from Italy to Australia. In 1996, the second generation (at least one parent born in Italy) numbered 334,036, almost 100,000 more than the first generation. In 2001, the figure had risen to 355,200, representing 44.4 percent of the total Italian-Australian population and over 136,000 more than the first generation, which comprised 30.9 percent. An estimated 197,600 Australian-born of Australian-born parents claimed Italian ancestry (CitationABS 2003). The total Italian-Australian population in 2001 was 800,256 representing 4.6 percent of the population (CitationABS 2001). For further information about Italian migration to Australia, see CitationDIMIA (2003), CitationCastles et al. (1992), Citationand Rosoli (1978).
6. According to the 2001 census, Western Australia is home to about 23,062 Italy-born persons (1.3 percent of the total WA population), 68,000 people whose parent or parents were born in Italy and around 100,000 people who claim Italian ancestry.
7. The high rates of repatriation inspired a government inquiry; see CitationMartin (1978: 31), CitationPrice (1971: A9–A10), and CitationIACCSP (1973).
