Commentary on Chapter 4 (Response 2): Considering Belonging Through ‘Display’

Abstract

In this response, I apply Janet Finch’s concept of displaying families (2007) to the lives of migrant families living in the UK, with a particular emphasis on family young. Writing in 2007, Finch develops David Morgan’s (1996) influential idea that the contemporary family expresses relationships, not via biology or co-residence, but through the “doing of family practices”, which he defines as the “little fragments of daily life which are part of the normal taken for granted existence of practitioners” (1996:190). By engaging in these practices, families are able to represent the family-like quality of their relationships (1996: 186). For Finch, however, families also need to be seen to be ‘doing’ these practices if the relationships concerned are to be understood as familial. This is achieved via family display, which she describes as, “the process by which individuals, and groups of individuals, convey to each other and to relevant audiences, that certain of their actions do constitute ‘doing family things’ and thereby confirm that these relationships are ‘family relationships’”. In so doing, Finch argues that contemporary families are fulfilling a need to display “this is my family and it works” (Finch 2007: 67). By drawing on the narratives of migrant families living in the north of England, this chapter shows that, in the context of migration, family display can help migrant family young feel that they ‘belong’ to a transnational family.