Families’ Emotion Work in Transnational Settings: The Case of Military Families

Atwood Kristin ()
Additional contact information
Atwood Kristin: Department of Sociology, University of Calgary, 2500 University Dr. N.W., Calgary, AB T2N 1N4, Canada

New Global Studies, 2013, vol. 7, issue 3, 1-22

Abstract: Combining literature on transnational families, migrant workers, and expatriates, I suggest a reconceptualization of military service personnel’s labour during overseas deployment as transnational. Further, I argue that during deployments, military families are thus transnational families who experience unique issues related to their geographical separation. To illustrate this, I explore the way in which military families access information and communications technology in order to maintain relationships across geographical distances, emphasizing the emotional labour of military service personnel and their families. I conclude that conceiving of military service personnel as transnational labourers enables a more nuanced understanding of transnational labour in the context of globalization, one which acknowledges a “grey area” between an ideological dichotomy that places poor manual labourers from developing countries (migrants) in contrast to rich knowledge workers from developed countries (expatriates) with little recognition of the diversity of transnational lives in between.

Keywords: military families; migrant labour; transnational families; emotion work; expatriates; middling transnationalism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/ngs-2012-006 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:nglost:v:7:y:2013:i:3:p:1-22:n:1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/ngs/html

DOI: 10.1515/ngs-2012-006

Access Statistics for this article

New Global Studies is currently edited by Nayan Chanda, Akira Iriye and Saskia Sassen

More articles in New Global Studies from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().