Gender, Kinscripts and the Work of Transnational Kinship among Afro-Caribbean Immigrant Families: An Exploratory Analysis

dc.contributor.advisorThornton Dill, Bonnieen_US
dc.contributor.authorForsythe-Brown, Ivyen_US
dc.contributor.departmentSociologyen_US
dc.contributor.publisherDigital Repository at the University of Marylanden_US
dc.contributor.publisherUniversity of Maryland (College Park, Md.)en_US
dc.date.accessioned2008-06-20T05:30:19Z
dc.date.available2008-06-20T05:30:19Z
dc.date.issued2007-08-23en_US
dc.description.abstractUsing an integrated, quantitative and qualitative, research design this study explores the type, frequency, duration and circumstances of transnational kinship ties among Afro-Caribbean immigrants in the U.S. Focus is on how immigrants maintain kinship connections across international boundaries, the delegation of kin work tasks among family members, and the impact of gender and/or kin designated roles on these activities. Qualitative data is from in-depth semi-structured interviews with multiple members of four English-speaking Afro-Caribbean families, key informants and two group interviews among immigrants with transnational kinship ties (n=41). Quantitative data from a sub-set of the National Survey of American Life (NSAL) re-interview, an integrated, hierarchical national probability sample, is utilized to examine the statistical significance of factors that impact transnational kinship contact (n=101). The notion of kinscripts posited by Stack and Burton (1993) is with combined theoretical perspectives on doing and performing gender, the household division of labor, and literature on Caribbean families and migration to create a lens through which the activities and behaviors of study participants are analyzed. Findings indicate that gender, social class, family size and gender composition, parents residing in the Caribbean, and length of stay in the host nation impact the frequency, extent, and direction of kin contact among NSAL respondents and study participants with transnational kinship ties. Men were found to engage in kin work in the absence of available women in the family to perform kin work tasks. Additionally, the study finds that who executes the majority of kin work in immigrant families tends to be voluntary and closely linked to individual skill and personality.en_US
dc.format.extent2507345 bytes
dc.format.extent62467072 bytes
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/msword
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/8011
dc.language.isoen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledSociology, Individual and Family Studiesen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledSociology, Ethnic and Racial Studiesen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledSociology, Generalen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledImmigrationen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledKinshipen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledGenderen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledFamilyen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledCaribbeanen_US
dc.titleGender, Kinscripts and the Work of Transnational Kinship among Afro-Caribbean Immigrant Families: An Exploratory Analysisen_US
dc.typeDissertationen_US

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