Translocal Childhoods and Family Mobility in East and North Europe

This collection explores mobile childhoods: from Latvia and Estonia to Finland; from Latvia to the United Kingdom; from Russia to Finland; and cyclical mobility by the Roma between Romania and Finland. The chapters examine how east-to-north European family mobility brings out different kinds of multilocal childhoods. The children experience unequal starting points and further twists throughout their childhood and within their family lives. Through the innovative use of ethnographic and participatory methods, the contributors demonstrate how diverse migrant children’s everyday lives are, and how children themselves as well as their translocal families actively pursue better lives. The topics include naming and food practices, travel, schooling, summer holidays, economic and other inequalities, and the importance of age in understanding children’s lives. Translocal Childhoods and Family Mobility in East and North Europe will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including sociology, anthropology and human geography.

1. Introduction: Children in Translocal Families; Laura Assmuth, Marina Hakkarainen, Aija Lulle and Pihla Maria Siim -- 2. And so the Journey Begins: An Embodied Approach to Children’s Translocal Materialities; Agnese Bankovska and Pihla Maria Siim -- 4. Doing Translocal Families through Children’s Names; Marta Balode and Aija Lulle -- 5. Sensitive Ethnography: A Researcher’s Journey with Translocal Roma Families; Airi Markkanen -- 6. Summer Spaces: Infrastructures, People and Animals in the Baltic Summers; Aija Lulle and Pihla Maria Siim -- 8. Experiencing Inequality: Children Shaping their Economic Worlds in a Translocal Context; Marina Hakkarainen -- 9. School as Institution and as Symbol in Estonian Migrant Families’ Lives in Finland; Laura Assmuth and Pihla Maria Siim -- 10. Children’s Agency in Translocal Roma Families; Anca Enache -- 11. ‘Becoming Better’ through Education: Russian-speaking Youngsters Narrate their Childhood Agency in Finland; Marina Hakkarainen -- 11. Age Matters: Encountering the Dynamism of a Child’s Agency from Cradle to Emerging Adulthood; Aija Lulle -- 12. The Journey Continues; Laura Assmuth, Anca Enache, Marina Hakkarainen, Aija Lulle, Airi Markkanen and Pihla Maria Siim. .