Dai “lavoratori ospiti” alle famiglie transnazionali. Com’è cambiato il “posto” della famiglia nei migration studies

In the last 20 years, family has gained a very important role, both for the extension of the research field and the rethinking of integration models: the challenge is to adopt a new analytical perspective, represented by the family and its strategies to survive and develop, a fundamental decisional unit as far as migration choices and strategies are concerned. Identified as one of the major social processes through which the globalisation breaks into the various social institutions and structures, unhinging old approaches soaked of methodological nationalism, international migrations legitimate the emerging transnational paradigm: the transnational family is a very good example of the persistence of transnational belonging and practices along with the passing of generations; in the meantime, it reveals the salience of the feedback effects produced by migration in one and in the other side of the migration process. Finally, emblematic example of the gap between the social processes and their regulation, migrations question our societies about the human and social costs of globalisation, particularly in relation with the migrants children’s experience.