Bringing transnational families from the margins to the centre of family studies in Britain

Britain, alongside other Western contemporary societies, has undergone important social and demographic transformations resulting from increased migration, ethnic plurality and multiculturalism. One important change is that family life is increasingly practised across national borders. Research on transnational families, specifically within the field of migration studies, has been pivotal in highlighting the maintenance of family networks across national borders and geographical distance, as well as the mechanisms, processes and practices sustaining these family relations. Yet, rather surprisingly, a detailed analysis of family relationships that are practised across international borders is a marginal field of enquiry within British family studies. In this article, therefore, we argue the case for bringing transnational family studies into the ‘mainstream’ academic field of family studies, by highlighting the importance of transnational families as an analytical concept for understanding contemporary family life in Britain. We do so by drawing on examples from our respective studies on Caribbean and Italian transnational family relationships to (re)frame concepts typically associated with British family studies, such as for example what is meant by the ‘normative family’, everyday practices involved in ‘doing family’ and the notion of ‘families of choice’.