Áron Telegdi-Csetri, Viorela Ducu

The Stranger at Home – “Hybrid” Children Returning to Romania

Áron Telegdi-Csetri, Viorela Ducu


Article information

Volume: XIII Issue: 1, Pages: 105-124
https://doi.org/10.24193/RJPS.2019.1.05
Áron Telegdi-Csetri
Babeş-Bolyai University, Centre for Population Studies
68 Avram Iancu st., 400083, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
telegdi_a@yahoo.com
Viorela Ducu
Babeş-Bolyai University, Centre for Population Studies
68 Avram Iancu st., 400083, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
viorela.ducu@transnationalfamilie.ro


Abstract

This article aims to analyse the ways in which Romanian transnational families manage children born and either partly or entirely raised abroad, who end up living in Romania. Within this framework, questions arise concerning the status of transnational children, transnational childhood, and implicitly, transnational families. First, we analyze the double embeddedness of these children regarding it as something their families need to recognize as such and tackle as a double-rootedness irreducible to one or the other of their identities. Second, the temporality of these migrant families is interpreted as a potential exit from a temporary transnational suspension into a better articulated, and perhaps explicitly assumed transnational dynamic. In the course of the argument, new connections between childhood, transnationalism, and family practices are addressed.

Keywords: transnational families, translocal childhoods, differentiated embedding, lived citizenship, temporary transnational suspension

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