Family Migration: Talking about Losses!

In this week's post I continue to treat the issues concerning family migration. If you haven't seen any of the posts yet, I invite you to read old posts, ‘Third Culture Kids' and ‘Raising children in another culture. 

If like me you went to live in another country, or even have friends and relatives who went living abroad for whatever reasons, know that you're not the only one. Since the 1980s more and more men, women and whole families have left their country of origin.  The US, Canada and Japan are the most sought after countries.

When leaving the home country the family goes through an unexpected crisis, so each member needs to reorganize and deal with the changes and the new roles.  It is not difficult to imagine the losses involved in moving to another country, since they manifest themselves in a variety of ways.

The loss experienced in the migration is wider than that of physical death, as it accumulates various losses, such as relatives and friends who remain in the country of origin; mother language; customs and rituals, among others. At the same time, these losses are not clear and complete, since people are still alive even though they are absent. Unlike a situation of physical death, the fantasy of return and reunion is possible and there is still possibility of contact but not of coexistence.  The process of moving to another country means contradictory emotions such as sadness and joy, loss and restitution, absence and presence. These are incomplete and ambiguous losses. 

To deal with those losses, each member and the family as a whole undergoes internal reorganization, which is facilitated when gains outweigh losses and people see that they are "profiting" from the migration process. The elaboration of migratory mourning is characterized by a balance between the assimilation of the new and the "freezing in time" of what has been left behind, a complex process of elaboration, integration, and absolutely not without pain and suffering.

See you next time,
Laura

SOURCE:BORBA, D. Individuação e Expatriação: Resiliência da Esposa Acompanhante. MESTRADO EM PSICOLOGIA CLÍNICA. SÃO PAULO. 2008. Dissertação