Mapping the role of ‘transnational family habitus’ in the lives of young people and children

In this article we develop the concept of ‘transnational family habitus’ as a theoretical tool for making sense of the ways in which children and young people of migrant background are ‘doing families’ transnationally. Drawing on over a decade long cumulative research on Caribbean and Italian families in the UK, as well as on a new joint research project, the article firstly investigates the opportunities and consequences of a transnational family habitus on family arrangements, kinship relationships and identity within a transnational context. Secondly, it analyses the role of these young people’s structural location in Britain in shaping the boundaries of their transnational family habitus. We argue that a transnational family habitus should be seen as an asset, which can potentially disrupt conventional understandings of belonging and processes of inclusion and exclusion. However, we also detail how social divisions of class, race, and increasingly migration status, shape such habitus