Locating Multiethnic Families in a Globalizing World

To derive new insights into the growing number of multiethnic, immigrant, transnational families in the United States and abroad, we need to incorporate the concept of globalization into our analysis. As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, an ever-growing number of heterogeneous individuals are associating with each other and being exposed to new lifestyles, behaviors, and cultural values. This exposure is leading to increased heterogamous relationships and families. The fluidity, flow, and dynamism that characterizes contemporary social life is a critical aspect of understanding multiethnic, immigrant, transnational families. To conduct research and design policies that encourage the well-being of families, we need to integrate into family scholarship a focus on economics, migration, and varied beliefs and values.Key Words: cultural values, family change, globalization, policy design.Globalization has become a dominant theoretical concept in the social sciences. Globalization has not, however, entered mainstream discourse when it comes to the scholarship and provision of services to families. This has not served the field of family studies well. To develop the understanding of multiethnic families and the increased diversity of U.S. society, it is critical that the concept of globalization and its concomitant effects become a significant part of the family-oriented scholarly discourse.A critical consequence of globalization is the growing heterogeneity of societies around the globe, especially in the industrialized world (Nagar, Lawson, McDowell, & Hanson, 2002; Scholte, 2000). The recent escalation of migration and the new forms of transnationalism with which it is accompanied are characterized by various types of inclusion and exclusion based on economic inequalities and markers such as race, ethnicity, national origin, and gender (Bryceson & Vuorela, 2002). This growth in the diversity of the population and the potential for increased multiethnic relationships and families poses unique challenges as we move into the future (Adams, Sewell, & Hall, 2004). In particular, multiethnic, immigrant, transnational families that maintain their roots in home societies and forge new relationships in host societies complicate simplistic, often taken-for-granted categories such as race, ethnicity, citizenship, and biculturalism (Bryceson & Vuorela, 2002). Multiethnic families are challenged to integrate those members living in host societies as well as other kin who may potentially be dispersed among multiple home societies. Attitudes and opportunities in the receiving and sending societies, the flow of money between regions and family members, and sources of stress from the migration and resettlement complicate our understandings of the context and lived experiences of multiethnic, immigrant, transnational families. Little empirical scholarship currently investigates these dynamics, and most of our theoretical frameworks are unable to incorporate and shed light onto their complexity (Jayakody, Thornton, & Axinn, 2008; Rodrik, 1997; Schwartz, Unger, Zamboanga, and Szapocznik, 20 1 0; Trask, 2010). As Schwartz et al. (2010, p. 246) said:More research is clearly needed to delineate the ways in which heritage-culture and receivingculture practices, values, and identifications are interrelated and change in similar or different ways - as well as the ways in which these patterns differ on the basis of characteristics of the migrants themselves, the context in which they have settled, and the extent of discrimination and other stressors that they have experienced.Even acculturation theory, which attempts to account for the process of bidirectional change when two ethno-cultural groups come into contact with each other, is insufficient for understanding the flows, dynamism, and multiple influences that are creating complex family arrangements, identities, and ethnicities (Bourhis, Moise, Perreault, & Senecal, 1997; Schwartz et al. …