Family, education and citizenship in a globalised world: children of women's migration to Belgium
This research by Asuncion Fresnoza-Flot, funded by the FNRS, examined how children from Belgo-Philippine and Belgo-Thai families grow up in their ethnically mixed families as well as in the ethnically diverse Belgian society. Multi-site ethnographic fieldwork was conducted in Belgium, Thailand and the Philippines. A total of 143 people were interviewed, including 52 children and young people. The empirical data resulting from this work covers the following themes: the dynamics of intergenerational transmission, parenting patterns, transnationality, translocality, social and school life, and the identity construction of young people of mixed ethnicity. The latter represents the most significant result, as it highlights the two types of ethnic self-definition of the young people interviewed: changing and fixed. These self-definitions seem to be shaped by the following factors: the events or milestones in the young people's life paths; their acquisition of 'identity tools' through intergenerational transmission within their families, at school and through their interactions with their peers; and their degree of transnationality or the intensity of transnational activities that connect them with their migrant mother's country of origin.