‘Global Householding’ in Mixed Families: The Case of Thai Migrant Women in Belgium

The global formation and simultaneous maintenance of households in different societies, known as ‘global householding’ (Douglas 2010), has been widely documented in the study of labour migration but remains understudied in the context of marriage migration. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with Thai marriage migrant women in Belgium, this chapter will highlight the conflicting dimensions of global householding in ethnically mixed families, which involves simultaneously ‘doing family’ ‘here’ (with one’s nuclear family) and ‘there’ (with one’s extended families). Data analysis reveals that Thai migrant women negotiate distances (e.g. spatial, emotional) with their family of origin in Thailand. Specifically, they strive to be “dutiful daughters” to their parents through the provision of various forms of care, notably material, and which also involves various forms of co-presence (virtual, physical, symbolic). Such transnational caregiving is often rife with tensions arising from the power dynamics and contradicting visions of familial duties within the couple. In order to confront these tensions in their conjugal relationships, Thai migrant women negotiate their cultural and symbolic distances with their husbands through various strategies. One of them agreed to become a full-time housewife as her husband wished, in exchange his financial support to her aging parents. Others decided to engage in the labour market to support their families back home and be able to invest there. Finally, those who found themselves in difficult economic situations resorted to mobilising their social networks, for instance by asking other siblings to take care of their parents in Thailand