“Doing family” on a global stage

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to further explore the relationship between “doing family”, mobilities and space through a focus on expatriate families, a group not having received discrete attention so far. Drawing on theoretical concepts of subject-oriented family sociology and human geography as well as data from long-term fieldwork in a German community in an exclusive suburb in southern Tokyo, this paper asks: how and where do these highly mobile, elite individuals do family? What significance do specific places and spaces have for these individuals and their doing family? Are practices and/or notions of family changing, and, if so, how? How can doing family be mapped and situated? The findings reveal the emergence of key practices, including “displays” of family, that are highly structured by gender. They further show the emergence of transnational spaces that are accompanied by the production of embodied, conceptual and geographical fixities on three levels. This paper therefore argues that it is important to situate this group’s doing family in both the specific context of the German community in a global city in Japan and in the broader context of the global stage. These findings show the need for place-, space- and context-sensitive analyses even among a group of highly mobile families.

Keywords

• family practices and displays
• Tokyo
• transnational professionals
• mobilities
• fixities