Distances and family ties in a transnational context: a dialectical relationship between geographic and affective distances/proximities

This paper explores the inter-relations between family ties, and two forms of distances/proximities: geographic and affective, through a conceptual framework developed in collaboration with François & Janssen (Merla et al. 2014). The discussion is based on the hypothesis that there is a complex and dialectical relationship between geographic and affective distances, as well as between the various dimensions that compose each one of them. The framework for the analysis of distances and family ties identifies three inter-connected dimensions in geographic distance (‘objective’, ‘subjective’ and ‘(re)appropriated’ ) and two dimensions in affective distance (‘felt’ and ‘reappropriated'). The framework also identifies four contextual elements that influence the interconnections between these various dimensions in family relations: the political-institutional context, which refers to the ways in which institutions such as the State, companies, the Church etc. regulate family relations; the cultural-normative context, which provides norms and models that influence individual and family practices as well as the philosophies that underlie the institutional regulation of family relations; the technological context, that is, on the one hand, the technical aspects related to mobility and communication that can lead to space-time compression and, on the other hand, the intervention of science and technology in human reproduction; and finally, the relational context that refers both to individual psychological contexts, and relational systems that is, conjugal and family dynamics and significant others. In this paper I illustrate this framework with examples drawn from fieldwork I conducted with Salvadoran transnational families in Europe and Australia