The Transnational Family. Between Preserving the Old and Acquiring a New Way of Life
The Transnational Family. Between Preserving the Old and Acquiring a New Way of Life

Summary/Abstract: For many social and human scientists the analysis of family organization, which historically had different organizational structures in different societies, was pivotal to understanding social communities and their culture. In the Balkans the most prominent one was the so-called extended or patriarchal family. During the 1960s, ethnologist Mark Krasniqi recognized in Kosovo several varieties of extended families, like: (1) temporarily divided families; (2) permanent or stationary families; (3) families with mixed professions (agrarian – administration – industry) etc. Deborah Fahy Bryceson and Ulla Vuorela define “transnational families […] as families that live some or most of the time separated from each other, yet hold together and create something that can be seen as a feeling of a collective welfare and unity, namely ‘familyhood’, even across national borders”. Transnational families among Kosovo Albanians have become ordinary phenomena. They are subjected to transition that is usually permeated with the tensions between preserving the old and acquiring the new way of life. Through participant observation and conversations with a few transnational families questions such as: What elements are preserved? What affects this preservation? What are the changes? might be answered and possibly help better understanding of both the practices in present time transnational families, and contexts which simultaneously involve issues of identity.

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