2015 may well be seen as a transitional year in terms of cross-border migration. Already in 2013, 232 million people – 3.2 per cent of the world's population – lived outside their country of origin, a 30% increase this century, and well over half moved to advanced economies. These include people who cross borders in search of better economic and social opportunities, but also an increasing number who are forced to flee crises. And earlier this year, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres reported that 60 million people that have been displaced by conflict and mistreatment noting that the recent surge of refugees entering Europe has contributed to the problem.
The “interlinked mega-crises” in Iraq and Syria have uprooted 15 million people. And in the last 12 months, 500,000 people have fled their homes in South Sudan, 190,000 in Burundi, 1.1 million in Yemen and 300,000 in Libya. Tens of thousands are fleeing gang violence in Central America. And there has been little or no improvement in the crises in Central African Republic, Nigeria, Ukraine and Congo,” said Guterres.
Given the rising refugee humanitarian crisis and the increasing mobility across international borders especially into and with the European Union, the conference ‘Transnational and Transborder Familial and Gender Relations’ hosted by the International Gender Studies Centre at Oxford was particularly timely.
Key questions addressed how migration and mobility shape and transform patterns of gender and intergenerational dynamics within the family, both in contexts of forced migration from the developing world and in the emerging intra-European mobility scenario. While mobility in developed countries is shown to rearrange and transfigure intergenerational dynamics, forced migration may lead to vulnerability and exploitation. A lively discussion followed papers on the impact of female migration particularly from South-East Asia and South America on family dynamics; changing sexual practices as a result of migration; the impact of regulation of immigration law on family networks; and the changing forms of intergenerational care within migrant populations.
Our research here at Oxford on family migration and heritage transmission was presented by Emanuela Bianchera. The ethnographic study ‘Intergenerational support and cultural transmission: a study of Italian Transnational Families in South Wales’, shows how inter-generational exchanges amongst migrants reconfigure rather than disappear across countries and act as key drivers in cultural maintenance. In particular we have found that grandparents are crucial gatekeepers of heritage transmission, maintaining this important cultural dynamic for displaced younger people.
Read more about this multi-disciplinary study involving myself as PI, Dr Robin Mann, Research Fellow at WISERD, Bangor University, and Emanuela Bianchera, who worked on this project while she was a Research Fellow at the OIPA, and is now a Knowledge Management Specialist at UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti.
Refugees http://www.unfpa.org/migration#sthash.ZejI5Wjv.dpuf
Intergenerational relationships in bilingual families http://www.ageing.ox.ac.uk/research/programmes/demography-society/
Trends in International Migrant Stock: The 2013 Revision (United Nations database,POP/DB/MIG/Stock/Rev.2013) http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/theme/international-migration/
Transnational and Transborder Familial and Gender Relations’ conference at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford, 23-25 September 2015
Further details at: http://www.lmh.ox.ac.uk/IGSC/Home/Activities/Conferences.aspx
About the Author:
Sarah Harper is Professor of Gerontology at the University of Oxford, Director of the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing and Senior Research Fellow at Nuffield College.
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