Hindu Transnational Families: Transformation and Continuity in Diaspora Families

Abstract

Transnational contexts enable the emergence of new forms of family organization expressed through different family configurations, thus reshaping gender roles within the family. Therefore, former norms related to daily family and social relations traditionally conditioned by gender and age, become an object of transformation. This paper analyzes the Hindu-Gujarati transnationality through two perspectives: one that understands family transformations through social-cultural adaptations to different host societies, and another that takes into account social, spatial and housing mobility. Given the fact that Hindu-Gujarati diasporic families live in three or more countries at the same time, they constitute a particularly rich context to combine theoretic perspectives on transnationality, mobility and diaspora, perspectives that are usually addressed in parallel and not in a combined manner. The paper stresses importance to physically accompany individuals in their process of territorial and cultural mobility, i.e., between Portugal, India and other centers of the diaspora. Within this multiple context, the study seeks to answer several questions: Given the diversity of studies within transnationalism, what dimensions and new reflections can the ethnographic observation of these families bring to the social sciences? In the migrant condition, how are family relations with distant relatives, configured and maintained? Are there specificities in the way Hindu families in Portugal adapt to communicational and information technologies, or do they follow the trends of other transnational families?

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