Asserting children's rights through the digital practices of transnational families

• Published date: 01 April 2023
• Author: Viorela Ducu,Mihaela Hărăguș,Daniela Angi,Áron Telegdi‐Csetri
• Date: 01 April 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12828

RESEARCH

Asserting children’s rights through the digital

practices of transnational families

Viorela Ducu

1

|Mihaela H

ar

agus¸

2

|Daniela Angi

3

|

´

Aron Telegdi-Csetri

4

1

Centre for the Study of Transnational

Families, Faculty of Political, Administrative

and Communication Sciences and Faculty of

Sociology and Social Work, Babes¸-Bolyai

University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

2

Centre for Population Studies, Babes¸-Bolyai

University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

3

Faculty of Political, Administrative and

Communication Sciences, Babes¸-Bolyai

University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

4

Centre for the Study of Transnational

Families, Faculty of Political, Administrative

and Communication Sciences, Babes¸-Bolyai

University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Correspondence

Viorela Ducu, Faculty of Sociology and Social

Work, Babes¸-Bolyai University, Anghel

Saligny Street, 400604 Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

Email: viorela.telegdi@ubbcluj.ro

Funding information

This article has been produced with the

financial assistance of the European Union,

contracted by ICMPD through the Migration

Partnership Facility: ICMPD/2021/MPF-

357-004. The contents of this article are the

sole responsibility of the authors at the Babes¸-

Bolyai University and can under no

circumstances be regarded as reflecting the

position of the European Union or ICMPD.

Abstract

Objective: This study investigates how transnational fami-

lies function as advocates, channels, and iterators of chil-

dren’s rights in the context of digital communication.

Background: Transnational parents are involved in prac-

tices of doing family through digital copresence, in doing

rights toward society and coagency among family mem-

bers, creating a rights context.

Method: Data were collected in Moldova and Ukraine

through 102 semistructured interviews and 10 focus group

discussions with adults and children in transnational fami-

lies and caregivers, and 24 interviews with experts from

local and national authorities as well as NGOs.

Results: Transnational parents represent their children by

engaging in digital communication practices with institu-

tions and maintain family togetherness through involve-

ment and support of children within transnational family

relationships. Communication with institutions is bur-

dened by distrust of and constraints regarding information

and communication technologies (ICT) access, the limited

availability of adults as interlocutors for daily communica-

tion, and deliberate nontransparency of communication at

both ends.

Conclusion: Digital communication offers families the

capability to represent children’s rights externally, and to

create internal family togetherness as a potentially new

register of presence, articulated by the limits and specificity

of the mode of communication employed.

Author note: All authors have contributed equally to this article.Viorela Ducu ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6643-

6048Mihaela H

ar

agus¸ ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3761-1377Daniela Angi ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9049-

2608

´

Aron Telegdi-Csetri ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9157-1025

Received: 31 May 2022Revised: 28 September 2022Accepted: 15 November 2022

DOI: 10.1111/fare.12828

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use,

distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

© 2023 The Authors. Family Relations published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of National Council on Family Relations.

458 Family Relations. 2023;72:458–477.

wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/fare

Implications: Inclusive digital communication capacities of

transnational family members necessary for the practice of

family togetherness, exercise of parental responsibilities,

and support for children’s participation should be

enhanced on both ends as well as within and without the

family.

KEYWORDS

children’s rights, digital copresence, participation, registers of presence,

transnational families, transparency of communication

Introduction

Transnational or multisited families refer to “families that live some or most of the time sepa-

rated from each other, yet hold together and create a feeling of collective welfare and unity,

namely ‘familyhood,’even across national borders”(Bryceson & Vuorela, 2002, p. 3). Transna-

tional family research has been motivated both by the concern toward the well-being of persons

engaged in transnational migration while maintaining family ties at a distance, as well as by the

new dynamics of their status.

However, as Greschke and Ott (2020) showed, the transnational family as a topic of

research has outgrown the above concerns and shows great promise as an exemplary entity for

understanding global society. Namely, they argued that transnational families succeed in bring-

ing together two essentially distinct aspects of human coexistence previously understood as com-

munity and society, that is, belonging and the participatory aspects of social life. Strategically,

this means that transnational family studies now stand as a central perspective in research on

migration and global society, not only as a subfield of the sociology of migration and of trans-

national sociology, but as an exemplary field of study in the sociological as well as normative

(rights-oriented) sense.

The present study is written as part of the CASTLE (Children Left Behind by Labour

Migration: Supporting Moldovan and Ukrainian Transnational Families in the EU) multina-

tional action research project, the main objective of which is to assess the needs and rights of

left-behind children in the two beneficiary countries (Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova)

and to formulate recommendations and enact action for their support. The CASTLE project

began in June 2021 and runs until December 2023 and is coordinated by the Babes¸-BolyaiUni-

versity (Romania). The Ukrainian Institute for Social Research after Oleksandr Yaremenko,

and the Academy of Economic Studies of Moldova are the academic partners in the project,

whereas the Terre des Hommes delegation in Romania, Terre des Hommes Ukraine, and Terre

des Hommes Moldova are civil society partners.

The analysis developed in this paper aligns with the general framework used in the CASTLE

project, where we examine the way in which the following rights stipulated by the United

Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC; United Nations, 1989) are observed

in the context of children left behind through parents’labor migration:

•the child’s best interest (Article 3);

•the right to family integrity and maintaining relationships with family members (Article 9);

•a child’s right to maintain regular personal contact with both parents if they live in different

states (Article 10);

•the responsibility of both parents to raise the children (even from a distance), in correlation

with the obligation of parents to ensure the financial means for a decent standard of living

for the child (article 27); and

ASSERTING CHILDREN’S RIGHTS459