Transnational grandchildhood: negotiating intergenerational grandchild–grandparent ties across borders

ABSTRACT

Recent research on migration has paid particular attention to transnational family relations. Numerous studies have dealt with the transnational organisation of caregiving, transnational motherhood, transnational fatherhood, etc. In these studies, the children presented are typically those left behind by their migrant parents. In the research on second-generation transnational childhood, little attention is paid to how transnational family relations are perceived by the children themselves. The aim of this paper is to introduce the notion of transnational grandchildhood, which captures the meanings and practices of intergenerational family ties that children maintain with their grandparents in the country of their origin. The paper draws upon interviews with second-generation Vietnamese children living with their parents in the Czech Republic and away from their grandparents in Vietnam. The paper should initiate a scholarly discussion about transnational intergenerational relationships. This paper contributes to the research on children’s understanding of transnational kinship ties and transnational intergenerational relations with their grandparents.

KEYWORDS:

• Transnational grandchildhood
• second generation
• transnational family
• kinship ties

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Adéla Souralová http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2599-4094

Notes

1 Approximately 58,000 Vietnamese immigrants live in the Czech Republic. The number has increased six-fold since 1994. Vietnamese are the third largest group of immigrants and comprise 12% of the immigrant population and the immigration from Vietnam to the Czech Republic has its roots in socialist cooperation from before 1989 (Brouček 2003; Baláž and Williams 2007).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Grantová Agentura České Republiky [grant number GA18-08273S].