Caroline Zickgraf

The Implications of Socio-Economic Background for Moroccan Transnational Family Practices

Families separated by migration are nothing new, but only recently have these familial relationships that have stretched over time and distance been systematically analyzed. The most pivotal shift in migration studies that has promulgated the detailed examination of cross-border family life is the rise of the transnational paradigm (Basch, Glick Schiller, and Szanton Blanc 1994, Glick Schiller 1997, 2004, Guarnizo and Smith 1998, Vertovec 2004, 2009)- Transnational scholars moved away from a settlement-oriented perspective on migration processes to one that involved both the sending and receiving societies simultaneously. This opened up theoretical discussion and empirical case studies about how the lives of migrants and their non-migrant counterparts are embedded in a social space that is not intrinsically linked to the geographical space of their daily lives (Faist 2000). The detachment of social space from geographical space is particularly apparent in the domain of family life.