Family-globalization nexus perspective

Globalization often refers to the greater interconnectedness and interdependence of people and places around the world whereby there is an intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring further away and vice versa (also known as space-time compression). Forces of globalization have thus shaped the global movements of goods, ideas, people across the world.

Kibria (2011) argues that families are not only shaped by globalization, but are also important in mediating and enabling the processes of globalization in 3 main ways. Firstly, she explains how families are shock absorbers of globalization. In the face of economic pressures, families come together as a collective entity to cope with the blows and waves of globalization by employing survival strategies. This was pointed out to be particularly salient for the global care chain, whereby families in richer nations outsource and hire domestic female labour to provide carework in order to cope with the greater work demands. Conversely, these domestic female labour often come from poorer societies to find paid employment so as to provide economic resources and income for their families. As such, the fact that families are able to successfully cope with the socio-economic impacts of globalization, globalization is therefore argued to be mediated, enabled and possibly intensified by families.

Families are collectivities that are engaged in the attempts to cope with the blows and disruptions generated by globalization for its members (Kibria, 2011).

Families also serve as an engine of globalization whereby the symbolic significance and social sites of "family" generate consumption that spurs the global market economy. Not only are unpaid carework in the domestic realm increasingly commodified, there is a whole range of goods and services catered to selling the ideals of the middle-class nuclear family. Furthermore, Kibria (2011) also raised that extravagant weddings are displays of globalized consumerism, whereby conspicuous demonstrations of wealth, social class are often associated.

The nuclear family creates a "McDonaldized" family experience of predictable, calculable needs that are fulfilled through the consumption of market goods and services (Kibria, 2011).

Lastly, while globalization has been previously accused of ruining local cultures and bringing about cultural homogeneity, globalizing processes are increasingly seen to be promoting localized ideas and cultural diversity. As such, Kibria (2011) states that families are therefore the cultural interpreters of globalization. This means that families become the very sites for the expression of diversity and cultural identity, which serve to resist global homogenized cultures. For example, the case of the Indian packaged food for the transnational market basically allow Indians abroad to not only do "authentic local" identity, but also for "authentic" family meals to become a symbolic affirmation of their "local" ethnic identity.

Kibria (2011) also mentions cultural hybridity, which is the uniques meshing together of local and global cultures into hybrid forms.

Kibria, Nazli. 2011. The globalization-family nexus: Families as mediating structures of globalization. At the Heart of Work and Family: Engaging the Ideas of Arlie Hochschild, edited by Anita Ilta Garey and Karen V. Hansen, pp. 243-249.