From Linked Lives to Entangled Biographies: Intergenerational Transmission and Transnational Transitions in Biographical Trajectories of Migrant Families

Research on transnational families has highly contributed to the understanding of cross-border life worlds beyond the methodological nationalism. It, however, has seldom engaged with the question of temporality of transnational practices from a longitudinal intergenerational perspective. In my paper, I take up this issue and discuss it from a life course informed, reconstructive biographical research perspective. I ask how and when transnational transitions take place, how they are biographically narrated and what role cross-border practices, family memories and intergenerational transmission play in these narrations. In consequence, I argue for the need to research the life worlds and biographical trajectories of the members of migrant families from a longitudinal, temporal perspective in order to understand the pivotal role of intergenerational transmission in biographical, transnational transitions. I focus my discussion on exemplary life course transitions and family trajectories. I draw on biographical-narrative case studies from a multigenerational research project on social upward mobility experiences and their intergenerational negotiations in the context of labor migrants and their descendants living in Germany.