Emotions in Transmigration

Transformation, Movement and Identity

A. Brooks, R. Simpson

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780230280564
• eBook ISBN: 9781137284334
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Labour Economics
• Index: Social Sciences

The book explores the intersection of emotions and migration in a number of case studies from across the USA, Europe and Southeast Asia, including the transmigration of female domestic workers, transmigrant marriages, transmigrant workers in the entertainment industry and asylum seekers and refugees who are the victims of domestic violence.

1

The Significance of Emotions in Contemporary Social Theorizing

The ‘emotionalization’ of the social sciences, particularly within contemporary social theorizing, can be seen as part of a broader shift towards reconceptualizing ‘the social’ within an understanding of social scientific analysis and more broadly in terms of individual and organizational contexts. Greco and Stenner (2008, p. 5) conceptualize ‘the affective turn’ in the social sciences in societal terms:

We have suggested that the turn towards affect and emotion in social science may be regarded … as the expression of a broader societal turn in the same direction … what is at stake in this ‘turn’ is not only the incorporation of a novel subject matter into an existing disciplinary framework … we might say that the social sciences themselves are being moved or affected.

This chapter draws on a range of conceptual frameworks around emotion, affect, identity and reflexivity to conceptualize a clearer understanding of social processes involved in transmigrant identities and the construction of emotions. The conceptual significance of the term emotion and the distinction between the concepts ‘emotion’ and ‘affect’ is shown in the way the concept provides synergy between scientific and social scientific discourses as follows (ibid., p. 12):

The term ‘emotion’ entered into circulation as part of a medicoscientific discourse associated with the early development of scientific psychology. In calling affective life ‘emotion’, these novel scientific discourses also transformed the ways in which people thought about their affective life specifically, the emotions came to be thought of as quasi-mechanical biological processes.

The distinction between emotion and ‘affect’ is important, and as Greco and Stenner (2008, p. 16) note, affect is a central concept in understanding contemporary economic processes, including ‘emotional labour’ in the service industry (see Chapters 2–4). Additionally Arlie Hochschild’s work on emotional labour and emotions more generally emphasizes the importance of the process of interaction that acts between individuals and social structures.

The development of research around the sociology of emotions can be seen to be represented in the work of a number of social theorists and in its application to a range of social contexts, including labour markets (Brooks and Devasahayam, 2011; Hochschild, 1983), organizational structures (Fineman, 2003, 2005; Fisher and Ashkanasy, 2000; Sturdy and Fineman, 2001; Williams, 2003), globalization (Elliott and Lemert, 2006), masculinization of emotions (Lewis and Simpson, 2007), ‘emotionalization industries’ (Gatrell and Swan, 2008), the cultural politics of emotion (Ahmed, 2004) and migration (Ahmed et al., 2003; Fortier, 2000).

The impact of ‘the affective turn’ in the social sciences has also had broader theoretical implications in the transformation of ways of thinking about the self, identity and reflexivity. In fact it is claimed that the model of ‘an affective society’ (Watson, 1999) is now the predominant one. At a global level, the development has been addressed in terms of overarching theoretical concepts including the processes of ‘individualization’ and risk (Beck, 1992, 1996; Beck et al., 1994) and ‘reflexive modernization’ (Beck et al., 1994; Castells, 2004; Giddens, 1992). These debates are explored below.

The history of emotions in sociological theorizing draws on American and European traditions and can be seen in a number of sociological theories, including interactional theory, social constructionist theory, social psychological and figurational sociology (Sennett, Averill, Harre and Elias). These traditions can also be seen in contemporary conceptual frameworks around ‘emotion work’ and ‘feeling rules’, as developed in the work of Hochschild (1983, 1997, 2003a, 2008 [1979]).

The binary of emotion and cognition has a long history in the social sciences and stretches back to conceptions of ‘Enlightenment modernity’ and of modern scientific knowledge. In fact when emotion was directly addressed by the early social scientists ‘it was typically associated with the primitive, the embodied female’ (Greco and Stenner 2008, p. 5). Some of the theorists of emotion and ‘affect’ reflect two major strands around the self and social structures: ‘Elias wrote of the gradual encroachments of a “civilizing process” entailing ever increasing forms of affective restraint and disciplined self-control …. Parsons … wrote of a trend towards “affective neutrality” as society differentiates itself into functional sub-systems’ (ibid.).

The work of contemporary social scientists has placed the study of emotions centrally within their analysis. Barbalet (2002) outlines the significance of ‘emotions’ to sociological analysis: ‘once the importance of emotions to social processes becomes clear, the intellectual constitution of sociology, and therefore the history of sociology and those who have contributed to it, have to be rethought’ (Barbalet, 2002, p. 3). Hochschild’s work shows the attempt to mediate the relationship between individual personality structures and social structures through interaction. Her work extends an earlier focus around social norms to an organizational analysis of emotion work and emotional labour. Through interactional analysis Hochschild connects individual emotional structures with power and social structures. Her work has framed a much broader range of feminist and organizational analysis (Lewis and Simpson, 2007), which has broadened the range of theoretical analysis around economic processes and political economy. This has had implications for labour markets and labour migration, and some of the key issues are developed in the following chapters.

Emotions, migration and identity

Within the discourses of migration a raft of theoretical and conceptual frameworks embedded in emotional structures has developed. This includes concepts such as ‘belonging’ (Fortier, 2000; Probyn, 1996), ‘identity as threshold’ (Fortier, 2000; Probyn, 1996), ‘home’ (Ahmed, 2000; Ahmed et al., 2003), ‘estrangement’ (Ahmed, 2000) and ‘borderlands’ (Anzaldua, 1987). The following summary charts the significance of these concepts in terms of migration narratives, migrant identities and emotions.

Theories of migration have tended to be a narrative of migration with emotion written out. As Ahmed (2000, p. 80) comments, to effectively theorize migrancy there is a need:

… to interrogate the mediated and lived experiences of estrange-ment, their relationship to community formation, and the recon-struction of home, we need to challenge how migration and home have been theorized in the critical literature.

In addition there has been an absence of a gendered conception of migration and a failure to conceptualize different patterns of migration based on gender and different sets of emotions in the establishment of identity. As Fortier (2000, p. 48) comments: ‘In foundation narratives, the distinction between sojourners and settlers suggests a masculinist conception of mobility and movement that initially excludes the possibility of women migrants.’ Where women as migrants occupy a role in traditional narratives of migration they are seen as reinforcing the role of settlement as ‘settler wives and mothers’, thus as not necessarily as economic migrants in their own right. As Fortier (ibid., p. 50) notes:

The normalized, women migrants are integrated as agents of cultural reproduction and stability in the formation of the ‘community’. In this respect, the settler community is not only familiarized, but it is feminized insofar as the promise of continuity is configured in terms of the female presence.

‘Emotional journeys’ away from home

Contemporary theorizing around globalization and the associated concepts of ‘reflexive modernization’, ‘individualization’ characterized in the work of a wide range of theories and theorists (see below), has conveyed a model of social change and mobility and migration characterized by ‘rootlessness’ and a lack of emotional commitment to place and identity. This model is one drawn from an essentially masculinist model of migration and fails to understand the significance of emotions for different groups of migrants.

Feminist theorists (Ahmed, 2000; Ahmed et al., 2003; Fortier, 2000; Probyn, 1996) have reconceptualized a crude social geographic model of migration narratives based around place/nation/territory and have emphasized the sensory or emotional responses to migration. As Ahmed (2000, p. 90) comments in discussing the important concept of ‘estrangement’:

The journeys of migration involve a splitting of home as place of origin and home as the sensory world of everyday experience. What migration narratives involve, is spatial reconfiguration of an embodied self: a transformation in the very skin through which the body is embodied.

The theoretical scope of migration is broadened through the introduction of a range of concepts, such as ‘embodiment’, which facilitate a clearer understanding of the ‘experience of migration’ by the migrant. In this way as Ahmed (2000, p. 92) notes: ‘Migration can be understood as a process of estrangement, a process of becoming estranged from that which was inhabited as home’ (italics added).

The theoretical intervention by feminist theorists has moved the debate away from a crude ‘naturalization’ of the home thesis. As Ahmed (2000, p. 91) comments:

If we think of home as an outer skin, then we can also consider how migration involves, not only spatial dislocation, but also temporal dislocation: ‘the past’ becomes associated with a home that is impossible to inhabit and be inhabited by, in the present. The question then of being at home or leaving home is always a question of memory, of the discontinuity between past and present.

The traditional ‘social geography’ model of ‘home’ was one which was posited as a stabilizing source of ‘belonging’ in the face of globalization (Harvey, 1989). Harvey conceptualized the home as a bastion against the onslaught of ‘time–space compression’. While a decision to leave home does not imply a rejection of place as ‘home’, it does qualify the perspective that ‘naturalizes’ home as the place of belonging.

As Ahmed et al. (2003, p. 1) observe: ‘Being grounded is not necessarily about being fixed; being mobile is not necessarily about being detached … [the key issue] is to call into question the naturalization of home as origins, ….’ ‘Home’, from this perspective, can be seen to have multiple dimensions and is not about nationality or territory as such, but focuses on the self.

However this does not make the ‘memory of home’ irrelevant, although we would argue against Said’s (1978, p. 18) concept of globalization producing ‘a generalized condition of homelessness’. This notion of home as external and a benchmark for assessing the present, for many migrants, romanticizes the experiences they have left behind. Said (2001, p. 186) comments:

Habits of life, expression, or activity in the new environment inevitably occur against the memory of these things in another environment. Thus both the new and old environments are vivid, actually occurring together contrapunctually …. There is also a particular sense of achievement in acting as if one were at home wherever one happens to be.

Closely linked with a theorization of ‘home’ is the concept of ‘belonging’, memory and identity. As Fortier (2000) comments ‘belonging’ can refer to both ‘possessions’ and ‘inclusions’. She draws on the concept of belonging as it operates in Probyn’s (1996) work. It is the link between belonging and identity, which is crucial here, for as Fortier notes, ‘ … belonging as it operates in Probyn’s work is useful because it displaces identity from its foundational status’ (Fortier, 2000, p. 2). Citing Probyn (1996), she states:

[it] slide[s] from ‘identity’ to ‘belonging’, in part because … the latter term captures more accurately the desire for some sort of attachment, be it to other people, places, or modes of being, and the ways in which individuals and groups are caught within wanting to belong, wanting to become, a process that is fuelled by yearning rather than the positing of identity as a stable state (Probyn, 1996, p. 19).

Identity here is taken to be a relatively fluid process of subjectivity formation that occurs through interaction and performance. Following Fortier (2000), we draw on Probyn’s (1996) concept of identity as threshold. We focus on the dynamic notion of identity-as-becoming that frames a passage over time from one space to another, highlighting the tensions that result from movement, transience, attachment and departure. This conceptualization has high leverage potential in the context of the present study for three reasons. Firstly, it resonates strongly with migrants in different contexts as individuals ‘in motion’ with often transient attitudes and frameworks. This raises questions as to how migrants manage tensions between discourses of transnationality and territorially rooted identities, how identities are positioned in relation to past identities and in terms of possible intentions to return and how migrants value the future and future opportunities. Secondly, processes of being and becoming within threshold identities highlight the dynamics and tensions of belonging – the attachment to as well as distinction from different groups and the meanings given to new and existing social constellations. Questions arise concerning the reference points (e.g. geography, culture, gender, ethnicity) drawn on to construct a sense of self in the context of low-status work, the role of social networks in providing access to employment and other opportunities and the nature of social spaces created to reinforce a sense of belonging. Finally, meanings relating to transience and belonging help surface the emotional dimensions of migrancy (Probyn, 1996). These raise questions about the emotions engendered through relocation and dislocation, through the desire to belong and through potential transformations of self; the insecurities resulting from weakening of social structures and routines; and the emotions central to memory work and to meanings attached to ‘home’.

Globalization has produced shifts in the movements of peoples and labour markets and has resulted in the creation of ‘new subjectivities’ (Nonini and Ong, 1997) and identities. Chambers (1994) investigates the relationship between migration and identity and shows how ‘migration becomes a way of interrogating not only different social relations produced by the histories of the displacement of peoples, but the very nature of identity itself’ (Ahmed, 2000, p. 80). Chambers’ work shows how migration helps the theorizing of identity and its relationship to movement, change, loss and belonging.

Probyn’s (1996) concept of ‘identity as threshold’ provides an understanding of identity as one that changes in relation to new challenges and cultural contexts. Probyn’s concept draws on the work of Deleuze in understanding identity as influenced by movement, whereas Fortier (2000) draws on both movement but also attachment. As Fortier (2000, p. 2) comments, ‘The phrase migrant belongings … is meant to capture the productive tension that results from the articulation of movement and attachment, suture and departure, outside and inside, in identity formation.’

Probyn and Fortier’s theorization of identity advance the debate around identity and move it beyond a static conceptualization linked to place, territory and nation. As will be shown, it is impossible to theorize identity without having a broad theoretical understanding of identity, migration and emotions within the context of theoretical frameworks characterizing the analysis of late modernity. As Ahmed et al. (2003, p. 4) note, ‘It is precisely the collisions of the corporeal, the familial and the (post) national that create the densely conjoined (and often traumatic) struggle over identity, belonging and longing within uprootings and belongings.’

Before we explore the broader theoretical frameworks for an understanding of emotions in contemporary social theorizing, a final element in debates around feminism and the construction of identity is found in the analysis of ‘borderlands’ and in the work of Gloria Anzaldua (1987), among others. While Anzaldua’s work is located in relation to place, more specifically her work focuses on Chicano/a culture and how it has emerged in its location between ‘the borderlands’ of the United States and Mexico, it is directed at ‘opening up discussions of belonging and identity to new mappings of space’ (Ahmed et al., 2003, p. 4).

Anzaldua’s work is interesting in offering an ‘early’ feminist analysis of hybridization. Thus conceptions of identity and belonging emerge more from a hybrid notion of space than from a specific location. Anzaldua’s work and that of other postcolonial feminist theorists have led the way in ‘theorizing borderzones’ and mestizo identities in relation to the work of migration and inhabitance (Anzaldua, 1987; Ifekwunigwe, 1999; Kaplan et al., 1999).

Reflexivity, emotions and identity

The intersection of reflexivity with emotions and identity also has implications for understanding the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Understanding Emotions in Transmigration in Southeast Asia, Europe and the United States
• 1. The Significance of Emotions in Contemporary Social Theorizing
• 2. Gender, Emotions and Migration in a European Context
• 3. Dirty Work, Identity and Emotions: The Polish Experience
• 4. The Feminization of Migration and Emotions in Transmigration in Southeast Asia
• 5. Agency in the Construction of Emotions in Transmigration in Different Cultural and Work Contexts
• 6. ‘Unseen America’: Citizenship and the Politics of Migration in California
• 7. ‘California Dreamin’’: Transformation and Identity in the Experiences of Migrants into the San Francisco Bay Area
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index