Canadian Journal of Sociology Online November-December 2005
Recent scholarship on childhood has reminded us that it is incumbent on scholars to take children seriously as social and political actors, avoiding the temptation to make them merely abstract texts off of which to read the social (Stephens 1995; Thorne et al 1998). The opening chapter of Children of Global Migration seems, at first, to reproduce this problem. Parreñas' title promises children, yet just beyond the cover pages, the introductory chapter lays its sights on "the constitution of gender in the formation of migrant transnational households, meaning households located in two or more nation-states" (4). Just as one begins to wonder if children will simply serve as entre to another treatment of Filipina transnational migration as a case of stratified reproduction (Colen 1995), Parreñas pleasantly surprises. By the second half of the book, Parreñas is examining child-parent relations from multiple perspectivesthose of migrant mothers and fathers, the children and spouses "left behind," and their relatives and teachers. At the apex of her story (chapters 5 - 7), Parreñas weaves her interviews and observations with children into her narrative in such a way that one cannot imagine or view gendered relations in the family without them, nor consider the reconstitution of gender relations in transnational households without imagining the impact on and by children.
Parreñas further pulls off what is difficult to do in transnational political economies of kinship, and that is to tangibly link the emotional and psychological well-being of individuals to the broad legal and political structures of migration. After examining the gendered economy of care that links conditions in the Philippines to those of the transnational locations to which Filipina labor is exported (chapter 1-3), Parrenas moves fairly smoothly to analyzing effects on children's well-being; given the burgeoning scholarship on the labor migration of Filipina women, it is refreshing that Parreñas considers the effects of men's migration as well.
Parreñas treats the reproduction of gendered relations (especially of women as nurturing "lights of the home" and of men as provisioning "pillars of the home") as the bridging mechanism between a global political economy and the experiences of children. As various members of the family adjust to being in a transnational household, Parreñas argues, they more often end up entrenching rather than transforming naturalized gender roles. Children are often left confused or stuck, potentially resentful of fathers who exacerbate distance by eschewing nurturing roles, and mothers who can never measure up as nurturers despite working extra hard to do so across years and oceans of separation. Theorizing gender relations as a mediating factor is convincing to the extent that Parreñas considers transnational household relations within multiple symbolic and material practicese.g., the translation of masculine breadwinning into the construction of a family home, the female relatives in the Philippines who travel long distances to do the household chores men will not do, the moralizing discourses teachers and neighbors direct at children whose mothers have 'abandoned' them, and the legal frameworks in receiving nations (especially the United States) that block family reunification.
At the same time, Parreñas' central concern with the constitution of gender sometimes relies on universalized notions of gender and family. Perhaps the most notable gloss in Parreñas' treatment of her subject stems from her use of American theories of gender and family, e.g., that of Scott Coltrane and Arlie Hochschild. Given the importance of this scholarship, it is understandable that Parreñas draws on it; but it is curious that she does so without creating a two-way street: using her specific case of transnational households to challenge or extend or even provincialize this American scholarship. As a result, the nuclear heteronormative family remains intact as a hegemonic feature of "society." On a related note, Parreñas sometimes assumes a dichotomy of public and private spheres when her work might instead problematize it. Other literature on the reconstitution of gender relations in transnational households, such as that of Aihwa Ong or Hondagneu-Sotelo, would force these questions closer to the surface.
In her conclusion, Parreñas points to the need for more gender bending in transnational households, especially for the sake of children. She can appeal here to households in her study in which mothers and fathers did indeed cross gender boundaries, allowing for better parent-child relations. Parreñas also calls for re-shaping immigration policies in receiving countries to better accommodate family reunification. Curiously, the Filipino state disappears in these final arguments, when in fact its own policiesin regard to both gender and migrationare by Parreñas' own admission, a lynchpin in this story.
Children of Global Migration is accessibly written and clearly argued, lending itself to a useful classroom text in undergraduate courses on family, gender, immigration, childhood, and/or ethnography. It is yet another significant work in Parreñas' growing corpus of transnational scholarship.
Sara Dorow
University of Alberta
http://www.cjsonline.ca/reviews/transnatlfamilies.html
November 2005
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