Families on the Move II: Nomadic, Non-Linear and Children’s Mobilities

Abstract

There is clearly more to family mobilities than residential moves and commuting, though academic research on family mobility has developed a bias towards themes that are intrinsically about the relationship between family and the economy (Morgan, 1996). Thus residential moves are often, though not always, theorised as a mechanism for job advancement; from Colin Bell’s accounts in the 1960s of middle-class spiralists to more recent European Union-funded projects that focus on the difficulties of reconciling job mobility and family life (Schneider and Collet, 2009; Schneider and Meil, 2008), there is a tendency to promote the economic functionality of family life and the hegemony of the dyadic couple. Accounts of family mobility are often too reliant on the observation of permanent moves and the couple as the main nexus of intimate relations. The intricacies of intimate and family life can be hidden in accounts that only consider mobility in the context of employment. Family mobility cannot, though, be reduced to considering a dyadic reading of family, but it entails a complex and intricate meshing of family life that involves both other family members (for example, parents/grandparents) and significant others (for example, friends, including children’s social networks).