
Telephone: +46 (0)8 16 20 00
E-mail: tania.gonzalez@socant.su.se
Tania González-Fernández is a researcher at the Department of Social Anthropology. She joined the department as a PhD student with the Marie Curie Initial Training Network “Diasporic Constructions of Home and Belonging” (CoHaB) in 2012 and defended her thesis entitled Feeling Across Distance: Transnational Migration, Emotions, and Family Life Between Bolivia and Spain in April 2018. Tania received her BA (2008) in social anthropology from the University of Barcelona. She also holds a BA (2005) in journalism from the Complutense University of Madrid. Tania’s doctoral research addressed the relational dynamics of family life as it is lived across vast distances and over time. It closely examined transnational caring practices, mediated connections, and (non)material exchanges among a number of families stretched between Bolivia and Spain, as well as the interplay of their daily practices with the management of emotions and the circulation of affects. Tania has previously worked in several EU research projects dealing with border regimes, migration policies, and human rights. Her main research interests include international migration, transnational families, care, emotion, and affect.
Research
Feeling Across Distance: Transnational Migration, Emotions, and Family Life Between Bolivia and Spain
What are the relational dynamics of family life as it is lived across vast distances and over time? What underpins these relations, practices, and experiences of being apart and yet together? Based on a long-term multi-sited fieldwork carried out in Spain and Bolivia from 2013 to 2015, this study sets out to address these questions by investigating lived experiences of “doing” and “feeling” family across borders. It conveys the story of ten families divided between Madrid and the Bolivian urban areas of Cochabamba, Sucre, and Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Taking as a point of departure the encounters with middle-aged women who migrated to Spain in the early 2000s, the thesis moves back and forth between “here” and “there” to provide a polyphonic account of family relationships. The thesis argues that family members recreate a sense of “closeness” and maintain their emotional connection despite not being physically together nor seeing each other over long periods of absence. It reveals that transnational family life in this context is constantly shaped by migration regimes, restrictive policies, and global inequalities, on the one hand, and by power relations, gender and generational roles, and life-course stages, on the other. Ultimately, in grappling with the affective dimension of long-distance family relations, the thesis sheds light on the emotional and the corporeal as constitutive aspects of the ethnographic endeavor.
Selected publications
2018
- González-Fernández, Tania. Feeling Across Distance: Transnational Migration, Emotions, and Family Life Between Bolivia and Spain, Doctoral thesis, monograph.
2016
- González-Fernández, Tania. Entre nodos y nudos: ambivalencias emocionales en la migración transnacional: Una aproximación etnográfica a las emociones a partir de familias transnacionales entre Bolivia y España, Odisea Revista de Estudios Migratorios, ISSN 2408-445X, no 3, pp. 99-123.
2014
- González-Fernández, Tania. Book review: Baldassar, Loretta and Merla, Laura (eds.) (2014). Transnational Families, Migration and the Circulation of Care. Understanding Mobility and Absence in Family Life. London and New York: Routledge, Papeles del CEIC: International Journal on Collective Identity Research, vol. 2014/2.
- Gil Araujo, Sandra; González-Fernández, Tania. “International Migration, Public Policies and Domestic Work: Latin American Migrant Women in the Spanish Domestic Work Sector”, Women’s Studies International Forum, Volume 46, pp. 13-23.
2013
- González-Fernández, Tania. “Global households: irregular migrants employed in domestic work in Spain”, Triandafyllidou, Anna (ed.) Irregular Migrant Domestic Workers in Europe: Who cares?, Aldershot: Ashgate, 187-208.
- González, Tania; Gil Araujo, Sandra; Montañés Sánchez, Virginia. "Política migratoria y derechos humanos en el Mediterráneo español. El impacto del control migratorio en los tránsitos de la migración africana hacia Europa", Revista de Derecho Migratorio y Extranjería, no 33, pp. 245-267.
2012
- Gil Araujo, Sandra; González, Tania. “Migraciones, género y trabajo en España. El tránsito obligado de las trabajadoras inmigrantes por el empleo de hogar”, MORA (Buenos Aires), vol.18, no.2, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires.
Guest research visits
- CIDOB, Barcelona Centre for International Affairs, Barcelona (Spain)
2015-01-02 – 2015-03-01 - COMPAS, Centre on Migration, Policy & Society, School of Anthropology, University of Oxford, Oxford (United Kingdom)
2014-10-06 – 2014-12-15 - C.E.A, Centro de Estudios Avanzados, National University of Cordoba (Argentina)
2010-09-01 – 2011-03-01
Information about past activities can be found in the Department’s previous Annual Reports.