Flexible kinship: shaping transnational families among the Chinese in Tahiti

Abstract

This article examines the practices of ‘flexible kinship’ used by Chinese migrants in colonial Tahiti. ‘Flexible kinship’ draws attention to the strategic uses that are made of kinship in the context of migration and diaspora: the adjustments to cultural, political, and legal borders that lead to changes in family forms and in the relations between kin. Using a multi‐generational perspective, I examine how families were shaped by successive changes and reversals in legal‐political and economic events and conjunctures over the long twentieth century. I argue for the importance of addressing transnational border‐crossing practices that involve not just a spatial extension of networks but also legal strategies within the host locality. I further show that if it is true that the Confucian hierarchical order has conditioned transnational practices of flexible kinship, then this hierarchy has not only bent to the circumstances, it has to a great extent been weakened. Finally, I argue that the history of familial adjustments has shaped a habitus that maximizes economic and legal security, especially among women.

Time and Relational Possibility: Cultural Anthropology in 2017

“…This is especially clear in a body of work that looks at marginality: both that experienced by migrants and that experienced by minorities of various kinds within states that they can claim as home. In a series of articles on the experiences of migrants, we learn how they navigate kinship when families are transnational (Trémon ; see also Sandoval‐Cervantes ), privacy in the constrained conditions of displacement (Hernann ), indeterminacy as they await asylum decisions (Fassin, Wilhelm‐Solomon, and Segatti ), moral interdiscursivity (Dick ), and racism in their new homes (Amrute ).…”

Migration, mobility and the dynamics of kinship: New barriers, new assemblages

“…These migrants have often left their children to other family members in their countries of origin in order to migrate, work and send remittances that will ensure a better future for their children (Coe, 2014; Parreñas, 2005). Examples like this illustrate not only how important kinship is for global capitalism but also how kinship adjusts to conditions created by global inequalities (see also Trémon, 2017).…”

Internal Diversity

“…Strikingly, however, the diachronic perspective shows that the memory or experience of kinship practices and the resulting strategies of capital creation are not fixed, but underlie temporalities; they change within the life course (Trémon 2017). Thus, similar to Siavash, it is Solmaz who, among the siblings, is closest to other Iranians, as she recently renewed contacts with some members of her extended family, occasionally goes to Iranian cultural events, and regularly visits a friend of her father who is still alive.…”