How affinities matter in the lives of European transnational families: Studying intra-European mobility through the lens of potent connections

Simola, Anna
(2023) Research seminar of the Morgan Centre for Research into Everyday Lives — Location: University of Manchester, the UK (16.May.2023)

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The presentation introduces on-going research that advances the study of transnational families by bringing this literature into closer dialogue with the theoretical developments in the field of the sociology of personal life. Drawing particularly on Mason’s (2018) work on affinities as potent connections, the study develops a new approach for studying transnational mobility and family life in the specific context of EU free movement. While existing research on transnational families research has predominantly focused on the practices of ‘doing family’, the study places affinities at the centre of the analysis. The objective is to understand how such intangible, positively or negatively charged forces shape family members ways of perceiving, imagining, sensing and living their lives in the transnational social space. The study’s primary data consist of 35 in-depth interviews conducted with Finnish and Spanish EU-migrants of different ages and social backgrounds living in Belgium, who maintain connections with family members living in their country of origin. The data also include photographs of family members and familial environments, as well as sensory-emotional ‘travel diaries’. The interviews offer insight into transnational family life in the context of broader cultural-historical transformations, most notably the development of the EU free movement regime and, more recently, the Covid-19 pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the global environmental emergency. Overall, the study’s aim is to illuminate, in the context of transnational mobility, the complexity, multi-dimensionality, multi-sensoriality and the overall importance of affinities that connect people with the people, places and socio-cultural environments that matter to them.
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Simola, A. (2023). How affinities matter in the lives of European transnational families: Studying intra-European mobility through the lens of potent connections. Research seminar of the Morgan Centre for Research into Everyday Lives, University of Manchester, the UK. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/269697