LIVING AWAY FROM HOME

This paper explores the premarital sexual behaviour and its covariates of young single women working in the garment manufacturing industry in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Because gender and sexuality norms inhibit women from disclosing proscribed lifestyles, measures to mitigate response biases were an integral part of the research design. The prevalence of premarital sex is higher than was previously known, with being older, having a less well-off family background, absence of guardians, peer sexual influence, and leisure and risk behaviour as risk factors. Dating solo—the most proximate behaviour to premarital sex—is engaged in more by women who live without guardians in Phnom Penh, who come from less well-off backgrounds, and who have been exposed to peer sexual influence. Parental influence upon daughters' premarital chastity and partner selection has long been significant. With rural–urban migration, this has been replaced by economic and peer influences, as evident in the high rates of dating, and other leisure and risk behaviour.     

INTERGENERATIONAL TIME AND MONETARY SUPPORT AMONG URBAN INDIAN FAMILIES

Intra-household time transfer is an important intergenerational support, less emphasised but more prominent than monetary transfers in the Indian family system. This paper attempts to study, empirically, the nature and pattern of time transfers between co-residing and non-co-residing parents and their adult married children in an urban setting in India. From the analysis of 673 representative sampled households, we have found that reciprocative time transfers between adult children and their parents constitute a central feature of the intergenerational support system, regardless of co-residency status. Significant correlates of time transfers to elderly parents are age, presence of other siblings in the household, headship status, and monetary support received from and made to parents. However, there is no evidence of inter-substitution between time and money between the two generations, i.e. married adult children and their parents. Time support is more frequent and intense when parents reside in the same city, whereas monetary transfers dominate when parents reside in a distant city or village.     

MARRIAGE MIGRANTS AS EMIGRANTS

This article examines the emigration dimension of marriage migration in Asia by focusing on remittances received by parents from daughters who married and migrated abroad. Based on a study of 250 migrant-sending households in Vietnam with a daughter living in an Asian country as a ‘foreign wife’, the analysis provides empirical evidence that emigrant spouses make substantial financial contributions to their natal families through remittances. A multivariate analysis of the determinants of remittance-sending shows that a woman's characteristics and living conditions abroad largely determine whether or not she remits, while the relative poverty level of her natal family has limited influence. Findings call for a broader conceptualization of ‘women who marry foreigners’ or ‘foreign brides’ as emigrants who contribute to the social development of their sending countries.     

Family caregiving for older adults: gendered roles and caregiver burden in emigrant households of Kerala,India

The Indian state of Kerala leads the demographic transition and characteristically showcases emigration of predominantly male adult children, leaving behind parents, spouses and children. When men emigrate, gendered contexts burden women, especially spouses and daughters-in-law, with caregiving duties including elder care. Employing the social exchange perspective and drawing on in-depth interviews of left-behind caregivers to older adults in emigrant households, we explore reciprocal motives, expectations and perceptions of burden. Findings resonate gendered expectations of care and social sanction that ensure women do much of the caregiving. Daughters-in-law sacrificed careers and endured separation from husbands to transition into caregiving roles, costs borne to effectuate their husband's filial role. Perceived non-reciprocity, unbalanced exchanges and unmet expectations increased perceptions of burden for caregivers. Temporary financial autonomy could hardly alleviate perceptions of burden among women caregivers who perceived emotional and functional support exchanges from husbands, older adults themselves or other family members as supportive.     

Parental Migration,Intergenerational Obligations and the Paradox for Left-Behind Boys in Rural China

Drawing on in-depth interviews with caregivers of left-behind children (LBC) in rural China, this article seeks to explore their understanding of migration motives and the social process of taking on care-giving roles for LBC. The authors argue that there are underlying socio-cultural explanations pertaining to economic motives for migration; such as, making contributions to social events (weddings and funerals) in village life, and fulfilling social obligations for left-behind sons’ futures. Parents migrate to save for sons’, but not daughters’, adult lives. Grandparents, particularly on the paternal side, are expected to fulfil social obligations to care for left-behind grandchildren, even without immediate financial returns. These suggest that left-behind boys, and in particular boys cared for by paternal grandparents, may be at greater risk than other LBC, as they may receive even fewer resources in the form of remittances from migrant parents in their early childhood.     

Making the emotional connection: transnational eldercare circulation within Sri Lankan-Australian transnational families

The scholarship on care for older parents within transnational families focuses mainly on the experience of unskilled migrants and is presented largely from the perspective of caregivers. Few studies consider the case of affluent, skilled migrants, and their wealthy older parents who also cross borders to visit and provide care for their migrant adult–children. Through Baldassar and Merla’s concept of ‘care circulation’ and the lens of emotional transnationalism, the article illustrates that despite affluent transnational family members’ mobility and access to resources that should facilitate successful circulation of care, care is not easily exchanged at an intimate level. Drawing upon 30 transnational family case studies of skilled migrants residing in Australia and their urban, high to middle-income older parents from Sri Lanka, I argue that older parents construct both caring across distance and in proximity as an attentiveness to their emotional care needs, and the time and effort taken to engage in emotion work; a task that is more challenging for migrant sons than daughters. The article reveals the manner in which gendered care practices both enable and inhibit care circulation between transnational migrants and their older parents.     

Disability and Active Life Expectancy Among Older Cambodians

Older adults in Cambodia are survivors of harsh living conditions, including poverty and periods of extreme violence. Although these experiences may affect health outcomes, little data has existed to monitor Cambodia's older population. The current paper uses data from the 2004 Study of the Elderly in Cambodia (SEC) and focuses on disability status. The data is the first of its kind for Cambodia—a comprehensive survey employing a representative sample of adults 60 and older living across the country. Disability prevalence by age and sex, Active Life Expectancy (ALE) and common correlates of disability, using Activity of Daily Living (ADL) items, are examined. In addition, disability prevalence rates are compared to those for older adults living in other countries in South-east Asia. The results indicate that older Cambodians are more disabled than their counterparts living elsewhere. Possible reasons include long-term influence of social disruption and poverty. Women live longer than men, but spend a greater proportion of their remaining life in states of disability and severe disability. Correlates of disability show that younger age, being male, having higher income satisfaction, being married and living in urban areas associate with lower probabilities of reporting disability. A contribution of the analysis is the examination of a basic measure of health among a population of which little is known.     

Changing intergenerational contracts: gender,cohorts and elder care in central rural China, 2005–2013

In the absence of stable pension systems, elder care arrangements in rural China depend on intergenerational contracts. The existing scholarship on elder care in rural China tends to treat the elderly as a homogeneous group and depict them mainly as ‘care recipients’. Based on a diachronic qualitative study in central rural China between 2005 and 2013, this research examines the changing intergenerational contracts between two cohorts of rural elderly and their adult children. These cohorts hold different positions in terms of family structure, number and sex composition of adult children, living arrangement, physical situation, economic standing and appreciation of intergenerational exchange. These differences further produce different social exchange patterns and disparate elder care modalities between genders and cohorts. Drawing upon insights from gender theory on social gerontology, this research identifies the ‘agency’ of older rural women and explores ageing issues among older rural men. This study also presents policy implications by identifying the most disadvantaged group in terms of elder care support.     

‘I Could Eat My Baby to Bits’; passion and desire in lesbian mother–children love

Mother–children love and adult–sexual love tend to be differentiated by the absence/presence of passion and desire. In the course of my research on lesbian parent families, the artificiality of this distinction has become transparent. In attempting to describe ‘mother love’ mothers said repeatedly they loved their children ‘to bits’, wanting to ‘eat them up’, feeling ‘utterly passionate’ towards them. This challenges the traditional sexual–sexless boundaries between parents and children. The intensity of ‘maternal love’ often means that mother–child intimacy becomes a site of delicate negotiations between desire and love. The legal–moral boundaries that are invoked prohibit intergenerational desire, upholding the incest taboos that dominate Western culture. However the construction of these boundaries neither stop adult–child ‘border skirmishes’ nor quash children's ‘natural’ exploration of their sexuality. I explore how bodies and bodily boundaries are used to manage sexuality and desire in families. I consider how mothers negotiate their way through the contradictions of mother–children love, incorporating the passion and desire of this love. I suggest mothers' acknowledgment of their passion does not mean that ‘maternal love’ is potentially sexual/incestuous, but instead questions its conceptual framing. I suggest that future research on mother–children love might usefully look outside the traditional discourses used to describe and delineate love, towards ones that incorporate non‐sexual desire.     

Rethinking conceptualisations of adult-imposed restriction and children's experiences of autonomy in outdoor space

This paper calls for more sensitive understandings of children's experiences of autonomy and restriction in outdoor space. The study with children and adults living in a suburban area of Cape Town, South Africa, suggests that the imposition of adult structure and surveillance on childhood should not be automatically perceived as negative. The children's experiences were more nuanced and must be contextualised with reference to the predominant concern with (in)security in these suburban geographies. The notion of accompanied mobility is then considered to suggest how children's outdoor mobility might be framed as a collective or community responsibility, as opposed to an individualistic concern of parents.     

Is Intergenerational Solidarity Really on the Decline? Cautionary Evidence from Thailand

Development is commonly assumed to undermine intergenerational solidarity in developing countries. Evidence from a series of surveys in Thailand calls this assumption into question. Intergenerational support networks have remained intact despite extensive social and economic development. Despite the recent universalisation of the Old Age Allowance Programme (OAA), filial monetary support remains relatively unchanged. Although children are less frequently cited as their main source of income, this likely arises because increased income from other sources, especially OAA payments, has simply displaced children with regards to the largest source. Non-monetary material support and visits and phone calls remain common. In numerous respects parents and adult children adapted to social and economic changes in ways that maintain family relationships and support exchanges. Nevertheless, in the future, older Thais will have fewer and increasingly geographically dispersed children raising important challenges, especially regarding how long-term personal care needs will be met.     

Debt‐Bonded Brick Kiln Workers and Their Intent to Return: Towards a Labour Geography of Smallholder Farming Persistence in Cambodia

Despite the increasing preponderance of non‐farm work in Cambodia, labour migrants across a range of working conditions remain linked to their rural homesteads through durable financial and social arrangements. This article explores this phenomenon through the case of debt‐bonded brick kiln workers in Phnom Penh, formerly smallholder farmers in villages. Drawing on the field of labour geography, the article first examines the process by which labourers became debt‐bonded, thus situating them within the country’s broader agrarian transition and recasting peasants as rural labour. It then explores workers’ perceptions of rural life, suggesting that the unfreedom of kiln work, contrasted with the fixedness and potential for mobility in rural life, makes workers aspire to return to their land. The article ultimately highlights how the persistence of smallholder farmers can be understood as an issue of poor work under neoliberalism in Cambodia, and draws light on the agency of labour in understanding this.     

Cruel and unusual

From early April to late June 2018, the nearly 2,600 immigrant children – mostly refugees fleeing violence and poverty in Central America – were forcibly taken from their parents at the United States’ southern border following implementation of the Trump administration's ‘zero tolerance’ policy. The policy took effect when the US Justice Department began aggressively prosecuting undocumented immigrants crossing the US‐Mexico border. Following a public outcry and growing protests, President Trump issued an executive order declaring an end to family separations on 20 June. Several days later, a federal court mandated that the government reunite those immigrant families affected by the ‘zero tolerance’ policy. In mid‐August, more than 550 children who had been detained following the implementation of the policy remained in federal custody. Thousands more ‘unaccompanied minors’ – typically teenagers who were caught crossing the border without adults –remain in indefinite detention. This editorial analyzes this situation from an anthropological perspective by reviewing relevant ethnographic literature on undocumented Latin American immigrants in the US.     

The joint family and its discontents: interrogating ambivalence in intergenerational relationships

Drawing from an interview based household survey of 453 older parent(s) and adult children (sons and daughters-in-law) in the Ahmedabad district, this study utilised the solidarity-conflict-ambivalence models to understand both the perceptions and experience of joint living. Overall, findings reinforce popular imagination of the socially-sanctioned joint family as a site of reassuring continuity with high levels of congruence in reporting relational sentiments. Evidence of intergenerational stake phenomenon was observed in responses of older adults when compared with the mature child. In addition to examining normative ambivalence, I contend that joint family relations embody a concept of ‘ambiguity’ – an uncertain, somewhat conflictual emotive space that offers members a temporary escape without confronting the contradictions in the objective demands of expected roles. In conclusion, I assert the need to go beyond the western tools of measurement to capture a deeply complex emotive space with its regularities, irrationalities and incoherences in the experience of everyday life.     

Lifetimes of Disposability and Surplus Entrepreneurs in Bagong Barrio,Manila

Working in collaboration with Migrante International and drawing on testimony of residents in the remittance‐dependent, migrant‐sending community of Bagong Barrio in Caloocan City in Metro Manila, Philippines, we examine the systematic production of lifetimes of disposability that drives labour migration across the generations. The closure of factories and contractualisation of work in the 1980s created the conditions in which labour migration is not a choice but a necessity. Diligent use of remittances to pay for the education of their children in many cases has produced a new generation of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), and investment in housing often is another route to OFW status. Alongside this narrative of ongoing precarity, we listen closely to the testimony of residents for ways of living that are both subsumed within and somewhat excessive to accounts that might render their lives as merely waste or wasted.     

Mobility,Stasis and Transnational Kin: Western Later-life Migrants in Southeast Asia

Studies of transnational families tend to filter understandings of mobility and stasis through a bi-national framework that juxtaposes the movement of migrants across international borders with the immobility of in-place kin within equally static national spaces. This article examines the concept-metaphors of mobility and stasis through the eyes of later-life (over 50 year-old) Western migrants living in Penang, Malaysia and Bali, Indonesia. By treating “in-place” kin as mobile subjects I examine the extent to which the movement of individuals and families within and across a range of national borders affects the lives, concerns and movements of these older, Western migrants and retirees in Southeast Asia. By examining the concept-metaphors from the perspective of these migrants I illustrate the extent to which such people both succumb to yet exceed scholarly imaginings of im/mobility and juxtapositions between mobile selves and immobile others. Migrant thinking about these concept-metaphors, I suggest, complicates an ongoing tendency within the field of transnational family studies to view mobility and stasis as categorical opposites and offers fresh insights into the role and relevance of these concept-metaphors in the lives of Western migrants in Southeast Asia and their transnational relations with teenage and adult children, ageing parents and grandchildren.     

Childhoods past and present: anxiety and idyll in reminiscences of childhood outdoor play and contemporary parenting practices

ABSTRACT

Outdoor play is considered an essential aspect of a ‘proper childhood’. However, unsupervised outside play is declining, a decline attributed to parental anxieties about children’s safety. However what drives these anxieties and how this impacts on contemporary outdoor play is less clear. Our paper seeks to explore this through an analysis of adult narratives generated through digital map-making and forum discussion about where they played as children and where they would allow a child to play unsupervised now. Our analysis explores the nature of these narratives and pivotal moments in which adults articulated the disconnect between their own recollections of idyllic spatial freedom and the spatial restrictions they place on contemporary children. This offers a rich understanding of how parents navigate conflicting cultural imperatives on risk-avoidance and children’s rights to a ‘good’ childhood.     

Alone or together in the neighbourhood? School choice and families’ access to local social networks

This study explores how the everyday geographies of city life and families’ access to social networks in the neighbourhood influence families’ school choices. The data consist of thematic interviews with parents of 8–14-year-old children (n?=?170) in three urban areas located in the cities of Paris (France), Milan (Italy) and Espoo (Finland) and are analysed via qualitative content analysis. The findings indicate that the families’ access to local social networks influences the reasoning behind school choice to the local school. The children’s relationships with other children and adults in the neighbourhood are considered important, but additionally, the parents’ networks with other parents in the area, mediated by the school, play their role. School choices as practices should therefore be analysed not merely as choices of an institution, as they comprise various aspects concerning the surrounding neighbourhood as a physical and social space.     

"Oh Yes I Can.""Oh No You Can't": Children and Parents' Understandings of Kids' Competence to Negotiate Public Space Safely

Children's safety is an issue high on the public agenda in both the UK and North America. In particular, the "stranger-danger" discourse plays an important part in constructing children as "vulnerable" and "at risk" in public space. This paper begins by exploring how adults define whether their children are competent to negotiate public space unsupervised and how they control and manage their children's use of space. It then goes on to consider children's own understandings of their ability to negotiate public space safely, exploring how they subvert restrictions placed on them by parents and how they define their parents' levels of competence to make decisions about their spatial ranges. In doing so the paper demonstrates the instability and contested meanings of the binary concepts —"adult" and "child."