Transnational acts of family, emotions and social change

How do long-distance couples and families manage to do family and intimacy by means of micro-situated, emotion-based dynamics? What can we learn from their everyday family practices (Morgan) and practices of intimacy (Jamieson)? How do such practices and their emotional components can help us shedding light into larger macro sociological processes and social change? Since its early theorisations, there has been a number of studies on living apart together (LAT) couples, focused on their incidence, their characteristics, their motives, their habits, their emotional and financial costs, their developments as a couple, etc. Quite often, these studies concern LAT couples living apart in the same country or city. Still lacking, though, are phenomenological accounts of long-term, long-distance relationships, that is, accounts on the lived experience of these couples and families, on the multiple meanings and implications of living apart together in terms of daily, performative family acts and intimacy practices when the geographical distance does not allow frequent or regular encounters. Drawing on a number of case studies of long-term, long-distance couples and families, this paper addresses the above-mentioned questions and provides a phenomenological picture of unconventional family practices as well as a potential theoretical framework through which the multiple meanings and implications of LAT experiences may (or may not) find a common denominator. Understanding the lived experience of long-term, long-distance couples and families can advance our peripheries of knowledge production on the changing nature of family relationships and provide some useful insights in the enduring gaps, absences and invisibilities in family policies. Shedding light on these gaps can help us to address them in terms of broader issues which possess important theoretical and political implications.