Reimagining the European Family ─ Cultures of Immigration

The family remains a fundamental social, emotional, and economic unit, but it is undergoing change, especially in the European Union. Re-imagining the Family explores contemporary films and literature about the effects of legal and illegal immigration on the structure and the stories of the contemporary 'European' family, with a focus on Germany. Multiple models, from nuclear to extended, local to transnational, encounter each other in statistics and in fictions. Narratives about work, love, generational difference, and conflicts among them alternately resist and embrace the influences of migration and immigration. Defining cosmopolitan identities in new and more inclusive ways, these stories of transnational families go beyond the demographic studies to expand the range of possibilities for understanding work, parenting, and citizenship in contemporary Europe.

Patricia Anne Simpson is Professor of German Studies and Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Montana State University, USA.