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Abstract
This article deals with the circumstances experienced by those children who not only were affected by the emigration of their parents, but who also showed a high mobility volume themselves. This was accomplished by focusing on children of Turkish migrants from the “guest worker” era in Germany. Due to multiple migration processes, they have had to adapt to diverse transnational family arrangements early in their lives. In general, many children of Turkish migrants were characterized by transnational childhoods. By examining cases where children were initially left behind in the care of their grandparents in Turkey and followed their parents to Germany later on, the article points out how those migrant children experienced both “close strangers” and “distant intimates.” The article thus contributes to the understanding of the relationship between sociality and spatiality in migration processes.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Thomas Faist and Andreas Wenninger for their comments on an earlier version of this article. Also many thanks to Jacob Reilley for his language assistance.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Even if there is no comprehensive data on the Turkish migrant children’s cross-border mobilities, relationships, and practices, the qualitative interviews in the TRANS-NET project, as well as further studies (Baykara-Krumme, Citation2014; Schunck, Citation2014; Wilhelm, Citation2014) suggest that transnationality is a widespread phenomenon among children and grandchildren of Turkish migrants.
2. While Tarkan was interviewed in Germany, the interview with his father was conducted in Turkey by the Turkish TRANS-NET project team.
3. The official currency in Germany until it was replaced by the Euro in 2002.
4. All cited quotations are derived from the German TRANS-NET survey. For each quotation, the pseudonym of the interviewee, the participant number, and the line number in the interview transcript are provided. The quotations are translated by the author.
5. As shown for mother-child relationships, the separation of migrant families may continue for many years. A study on Philippine female migrants illustrates that the duration of separation between mothers and children in most cases extends to more than two years and sometimes even to sixteen years (Parreñas, Citation2001, p. 367 and 370). Similarly, an investigation on female migrants from Latin America comes to the conclusion that it may take more than ten years until the migrant mothers are reunified with their children (Hondagneu-Sotelo & Avila, Citation1997, p. 549).
6. This double challenge for migrants is summarized by a Latin American female migrant in the USA as follows: “I’m here, but I’m there” (Hondagneu-Sotelo & Avila, Citation1997, p. 558).
7. Also from the parents’ perspective, familial separations are discussed as difficult situations. For example, Esin, who left her Germany-born daughter in the care of her grandmother in Turkey, states: “For me, those have been sad years” (Esin, 07, 35). For changes in the relationship between mothers and their children due to separations see Piperno (Citation2007, p. 65).
8. The fact that the child had no visual memory of the parent is especially true if parents left when children were very young, as shown in the Ghanaian case (Poeze & Mazzucato, Citation2014, p. 159).
9. Parents were also perceived as strangers after family reunification in the United Kingdom, as evidenced in the interviews conducted by Ann Phoenix with former migrant children from the Caribbean (Phoenix, Citation2010, p. 73).
10. Interestingly, in interviews the link between spatial separations and emotionality is made particularly with regard to mothers, while the role of the distant fathers is usually left out (see also Wilhelm, Citation2014, p. 71). The child’s expectation concerning the educational task of the mother may be tracked back to the generally ascribed responsibility of women for intimacy in the family (König, Citation2012, pp. 107–108). Thus, the experiences of left-behind children have to be seen within the context of societal norms on parenting (Poeze & Mazzucato, Citation2014).
11. In this context, it is important to note that, compared to more recent family separations set out in existing literature on transnational families, in general no intensive exchange between parents and children across national borders took place during the “guest worker” era. The comparatively recent increase in exchange can be traced back to transformations in transportation and communication technology, which increased the accessibility between emigration and immigration countries (see among others Foner, Citation2001, pp. 42–44; Levitt, Citation2001, pp. 22–24; Portes, Guarnizo, & Landolt, Citation1999, pp. 223–224). Phenomena such as “Skype mamas” (Brunner, Sawka, & Onufriv, Citation2013) are therefore relatively new.
12. In other migration contexts it is also commonly the grandmother who takes the responsibility of caring for her grandchildren. In addition, migrants rely on other close relatives and paid caregivers to care for their children (Hondagneu-Sotelo & Avila, Citation1997, p. 559).