Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim
It is common knowledge that globalization has brought about major changes in economics, politics, and the labor market. But what about love, intimacy, and families in the global age, what transformations are we witnessing here? What was our book the Normal Chaos of Love (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 1995) all about? What is the global chaos of love all about?
With the rise of cohabitation, single parenthood, divorce, and serial monogamy; with the growing number of patchwork families, same-sex couples, ex-husbands, and ex-wives; with living together, living apart, living apart together, and transnational families; with surrogate mothers and collaborative assisted reproduction with donor egg and sperm; etc., in short, with the rapidly increasing variety of lifestyles, seemingly simple questions may change their color and old answers will no longer do. For example, what is a couple if we can no longer define it by a marriage license, or by having sex, or by living together? French sociologist Jean-Claude Kaufmann (1992) came up with a truly modern answer: a couple exists when two people buy one washing machine; for at that moment, they move beyond romance. The business of everyday joint life begins and with it a series of entanglements, negotiations, and confrontations. What counts as “dirty” clothes? Who does the washing for whom? Is ironing a waste of time? And so on.
Yet obviously, in a constellation of distant love, the criteria “two people, one washing machine” does not work. Kaufmann’s approach, though indeed innovative, does not engage with the transformations of love and family that come with globalization and produce the global chaos of love.
In the following, we want to explore a topic that is of growing importance but as yet only rarely dealt with by family sociology: Distant Love (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2014). To introduce this subject, we will present some characteristic constellations and suggest some first ideas toward building a theoretical framework. We start from the idea that in the field of love and family, a major transformation is taking place. Increasingly, lovers do not share the same territory or roots. Love has become cosmopolitan. While the national chaos of love was based in a polarized vision of the world – either us or them, either here or there – today, this polarized notion seems to be on the wane and is gradually vanishing from the horizons of love. Be it skin color, nationality, religious affiliation, or geographical distance – these characteristics that were used to draw definite lines of demarcation have begun to lose some of their power. And for an increasing number of people, they have even gained a specific appeal. Men and women feel drawn by the vision of new horizons, by the romantic appeal of the global other. The great divides of former times, seemingly set in stone, now seem to be differences that can be dealt with, and indeed are being dealt with, in the everyday lives of many families in many places.
To analyze these ongoing transformations, we suggest a differentiation between two models – On the one hand, the social model of national love and families and, on the other, the social model of cosmopolitan love and world families. This is a contrast on the conceptual level; in real life, many families are somewhere in-between, some closer to the national model and some closer to the cosmopolitan model. It is the latter model, the new landscapes of love, family, and household, that we will explore here. We start from the following idea: at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the national or territorial face-to-face model of “the” family – defined by the trinity of territory, passport, and language – is breaking down. In its place, we witness the rise of many varieties of cosmopolitan love and globally mediated love (Internet, netscape etc.), from marriage migration to migrant domestic workers and from transnational romance to transnational households and to transnational parenting.
Basically, this new model of “world families” (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2014) encompasses a broad range of family constellations which transcend national, cultural, ethnic, and religious boundaries. Two major types stand out. In the first type, family members live together in the same place yet come from different national backgrounds (for instance, a binational couple, he French and she English, both living with their children in Paris). In the second type, all family members belong to the same national or other group but have come to live in different countries or even continents (for instance, a Mexican couple who work and live in the United States while their children stay behind in rural Mexico).
To characterize the many diverse forms of world families, we suggest the concept “cosmopolitization” (Beck, 2006, 2011; Beck and Sznaider, 2006). By this, we mean more than globalization or transnationalism. Cosmopolitization in this sense refers to a much deeper, more personal, and intimate relationship. It means a basic interconnectedness between “us” and “them,” an “enmeshment” with the global other. It means that we have come closer to those labeled “others,” and “they” have come closer to us. Cosmopolitization takes place in many areas of our day-to-day lives, from job to education, to leisure, to love, and it takes place whether we like it or not. It brings with it a “fusion of horizons,” a “dance of understanding” (Charles Taylor), sometimes resulting in more misunderstanding and a clash of horizons. Yet whether strengthening mutual understanding or mutual misunderstanding, the global age is the age of interconnectedness (Held et al., 1999; Delanty, 2009), with interaction taking many forms: from face-to-face, direct, and personal relations to indirect and mediated ways such as TV, movies, and Internet. The outcome reaches deep into our personal lives, our mental and emotional landscapes. Be it the majority population or a minority group, be it natives or migrants, peoples’ identities are being touched. Inner transformations are set into motion, in sometimes subtle and sometimes more open and direct ways. Religious beliefs, political ideologies, personal hopes, and ambitions begin to change.
Furthermore, with the rapid spreading of global capitalism, “long-distance love” and “world families” are no longer marginal phenomena. They have long since taken root at the heart of the “majority society.” Cosmopolitan love and world families embody the antagonisms of the world, and these antagonisms are worked out in them. Not all families embody all antagonisms, but most families embody some of them. For example, with binational couples, political tensions between their respective countries may translate into personal conflicts, while in immigrant families, the tensions between the center and the periphery, between the West and “the rest,” may come to the fore and cause irritation, resentment, or open hostility. World families may become the battleground where contrasting national narratives and national myths, with all their respective blind spots and spins, come to confront each other. Be it colonial rule and exploitation, violence against minorities, or wars of conquest against neighboring nations: in cosmopolitan love and families, the personal is political, and the political is personal. History is present, is alive, and sometimes is explosive.
Seen like this, when speaking of cosmopolitan couples and world families, we do not refer to a small elite of people who are educated, sophisticated, culturally ambitious, and economically well positioned. Quite to the contrary, more often, these families are the victims of global violence and global economic misery, some wealthy and most of them not, some with academic credentials and some barely literate, and many on the run from persecution and poverty and hoping to build a better future elsewhere.
To explore the inner dynamics of such families, in the next section, we will give a short introduction to what we call “cosmopolitan theory.”
So far, family sociology has paid little attention to globalization and cosmopolitization. By ignoring some of the most powerful trends of recent years, it remains trapped in the unholy trinity of territory, state, and nation, in “methodological nationalism”: a frame of reference that equates society as such with nationally organized societies (Wimmer and Glick Schiller, 2002; Beck, 2006; Beck and Sznaider, 2006).
Yet today, this frame of reference is rapidly becoming anachronistic. It cannot deal with the rise of ever more forms of personal life and relationships that extend across (national) borders. First, it is blind to the relationships and lifestyles of a growing number of people within the population at large. Second, its concepts, while reflecting the vantage point of the majority society in the center, implicitly claim universal validity. The results are characteristic blind spots, biased interpretations, and flawed conclusions.
For these very reasons, sociological research on love and families needs a “cosmopolitan turn.” But what does “cosmopolitan” mean in terms of social theory?
Cosmopolitanism is a classic set of ethical and political ideas, dating back to Greek and Roman antiquity. At its center is the duality of human existence, the duality of “cosmo-polis”: on the one hand, every human being is a member of the “cosmos,” the unity of nature and humanity; at the same time, she/he is a member of the “polis” – that is, different states, ethnicities, gender, religions.
This idea was revived by the philosophies of the European enlightenment, most notably by Immanuel Kant who foretold a future era of polite civilization, commerce, and global peace. By the twentieth century, however, cosmopolitanism virtually disappeared as a major intellectual, let alone political, position. In its place, power-centered “realism” gained priority in politics and social science, resonating the raging nationalisms of the era, the trauma of two world wars and a Cold War of superpowers competing for global dominance.
With the emergence of “globalization” as a master concept in the social sciences, cosmopolitanism regained currency within the academy. But in the process, cosmopolitanism also refashioned itself, moving beyond political theory, its conventional home, and spreading widely across anthropology, cultural studies, literary criticism, legal studies, and social history. New, more or less reflexive cosmopolitanisms have since proliferated. First, these are preoccupied with squaring the circle of abstract universalism by paying respect to human diversity and, second, with expanding the boundaries of the circle to include (if not to favor) those for whom cosmopolitanism is not a lifestyle choice, but a tragic state endured by the refugee or the otherwise dispossessed.
To make these concepts useful for the study of global intimacy and world families, we have to bring social science in. For a start, the crucial point is to see the difference between, on the one hand, “cosmopolitanism” in the normative sense, top-down, from above, from God’s eye, and a concept of philosophy and, on the other hand, “cosmopolitization” from below, impure, ordinary, part of everyday life, the enmeshment with “the other” in our midst, a concept of social science, and a program for empirical research (Beck, 2006, 2011). Put differently: cosmopolitanism is about ethics, and cosmopolitization is about facts, about social life in the global age. Be it for the study of love and family relations or for the study of the labor market, religion, class, nation-state, global risk, climate change, etc., the cosmopolitan approach points to the erosion of distinct boundaries dividing markets, states, civilizations, and cultures and focuses on the interconnectedness of people, groups, and nations around the globe.
Cosmopolitan love in this sense does not mean that the individuals in love are becoming cosmopolitans. Cosmopolitan love is not a personal attribute or attitude but love that comes with a specific epoch in social history. In this context, the difference between the perspective of the actor and the perspective of the social science observer is of major importance. “Cosmopolitan” is a category of social theory, essential for analyzing the moral and political dynamics of today – be it in world families or in respect to global risks. With cosmopolitization, with the other in our midst, and with people from diverse backgrounds coming geographically close, established beliefs, norms, and ideas become contested areas. The “end of geographical distance” may mark not the beginning of eternal peace, but rather the proliferation of cultural clashes and cultural wars. Ever more controversies arise, and sometimes explode, in many areas, not the least in respect to love and family life: What is right or wrong, decent or obscene? How do we define moral duty? Should tradition be honored and obeyed, or does it conflict with basic human rights? Is homosexuality a perverse disposition and a criminal act, to be despised, punished, and banned, or a lifestyle to be accepted and respected? What about arranged marriages: parents’ right and responsibility or an act of cruel oppression coming from the dark days of patriarchy? And what about circumcision: an act of physical violence, inflicting pain and emotional trauma, or a symbol of belonging, a medically safe measure with special health benefits?
With these basic elements of cosmopolitan theory, we have built a first framework for analyzing world families. Out of the many diverse forms of such families, in what follows, we shall present two. First, we shall take a closer look at the transnational shadow economy of care and, second, at transnational motherhood and the emergence of global care chains. In recent years, these constellations have increasingly come into the focus of social science, even if not into the focus of family sociology. Yet in other fields, and especially so in anthropology and migration research, we find numerous studies exploring the inner dynamics in such families. From the material presented there, we build the analysis of the following paragraphs.
When speaking of the family, we mostly think of emotions, of love and belonging and desire, and of anger and hatred. Sometimes, we romanticize the family as a “haven in a heartless world” (Lasch, 1977). Sometimes, we see it as a place filled with secrets and lies. Yet quite some time ago, feminists brought into focus that the family is not only a site of emotions but also a site of work. This work includes a broad range of activities, often summarized by the label the “Three Cs”: caring, cooking, and cleaning. And, of course, far into the twentieth century, these tasks were considered to be women’s work, assigned to them by the will of God or by nature.
Then, in the 1960s, in many Western countries, a new role model for women began to make its way, slowly and accompanied by many heated debates. No longer should women be confined to the home. Instead, they should take part in higher education, hold jobs, and earn their own salaries. Feminists, fiercely criticizing the polarized sexual division of labor, proclaimed a new gender order. Both men and women, so they claimed, should be active in the labor market and in the family household. In particular, men should do their share of family work, for instance, cleaning floors, sorting rubbish, changing nappies.
We know what has become of such claims. In recent years, the sexual division of labor has been the subject of numerous studies, in different countries and for couples of varying backgrounds. From among the results, two trends stand out. First, yes, men have been changing. Men of the younger generation, when compared to their fathers or grandfathers, take much more part in the upbringing of their offspring, from taking them to kindergarten to sports or playground activities. Second, so far, the changes are modest in scope (except, maybe, in the Scandinavian countries). Women still bear most responsibilities in regard to childrearing tasks. And in the field of household activities, men’s participation is even lower. Except for some rare heroic souls, routine activities such as changing sheets or doing the laundry are not on the male menu (Risman, 2010).
In past decades, women have been changing faster than men. American sociologist Arlie Hochschild argues that while women have ventured beyond the confines of “woman’s place,” men’s moves into family work lag behind, in short, a gender gap or, as Hochschild and Machung (1989) puts it, a “stalled revolution” in gender matters.
With little support from their male partners, women who try to combine both, motherhood and holding a job, have to bear high personal costs – for instance, sleep privation, constant stress, and no time for free time. For a survival strategy, many of these women resort to delegating some of the family work to female helpers of all kinds, from grandmothers to neighbors to cousins, and, in recent years, more and more often to another group, migrant women.
From this constellation, so we suggest, results the cosmopolitization of many middle-class households, the outsourcing (or insourcing) of family work to women from countries of the so-called Second or Third World, or, to put it differently, the rise of a transnational shadow economy (Hochschild, 2000; Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2001; Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 2003; Rerrich, 2006).
When speaking of migrant domestic workers, we speak of women from all over the globe: women from Mexico who work in California as nannies, women from the Philippines who care for the elderly in Italy, and women from Poland who clean houses and do the laundry for German families.
Faced with high rates of unemployment in their home countries, and no prospects to earn a decent living there, these women have decided to look for work in the wealthier regions of the world, hereby following the millions of “guest workers” of earlier decades. Yet meanwhile, most Western countries have severely restricted migration; in particular, options for legal labor migration have been cut down drastically.
But women in the poorer countries, desperately looking for ways to earn some money, are not put off easily. Rather, many multiply their efforts, trying just the harder to find some backdoor or sideway to the West. Here, they make use of the communication networks that have come with globalization. Via such channels, news spread that in spite of official restrictions, in the domestic sector, there are plenty of jobs to be found. Furthermore, because this sector is shut off from outside view, there is little risk of control. Here, workers need no papers, no certificates, and only little knowledge of the local language.
In this way, the needs of two different groups of women meet. Lacking help from their male partners, women of the First World resort to outsourcing: turning over some of the care for their children, elderly parents, and homes to women from the Third World. And for the same reason, women of the Third World can find a way to earn money. While men’s activity in household is modest at best, the workload has to be coped with, no matter what, hence the market solution: job offers to fill the gap.
Seen like this, a perfect fit. Supply and demand correspond closely. But a closer look reveals a massive flaw to this solution. Its main characteristic is a massive imbalance of risks and profits for the parties involved. Obviously, the migrant workers have to bear most of the risks. They are trapped in a semilegal shadow economy. Because they often have no visa, no work permit, and no residence rights, their position is fragile and vulnerable. In most countries, these women have no access to public health services, unemployment benefits, and pension rights. They are vulnerable to exploitation; they can be fired without notice. Last but not least, their political rights are severely restricted.
Of course, this is why migrants are hired: because they are efficient and because they are cheap. At first sight, it is the middle-class women of the First World who profit; but when looking closer, we find that their male partners profit just as much and probably even more. More than the women, the men are set free to follow their ambitions and pursue careers without being disturbed by tedious tasks. We suggest the following constellation:
In many middle-class families today, both men and women are well aware that the gender issue is a sensitive area and that the “stalled revolution,” if not handled carefully, might escalate into explosive conflicts. And many of these couples have come to a similar strategy of conflict management: they have reached a kind of silent treaty, an implicit agreement. If women see to it that the family household is functioning at a reasonable level, then men consent to their venturing out of the home and into the labor market, even to pursue some career of their own. And vice versa: if their men “allow” them a career of their own, then the women consent to provide, as best they can, for the functioning of household and family affairs and to do so by outsourcing the family work, not by constantly claiming male participation.
To illustrate this point, imagine just for a moment the following situation. What if all of a sudden, all migrant domestic workers would disappear; what if they did what politicians in Western countries officially expect them to do, namely, return to their respective home countries – to Poland or Romania, to Mexico or Honduras? By all probabilities, it would then no more suffice that German men, or US men, talked high of gender equality. In this emergency, women would no longer keep to their implicit agreement, and instead, they would demand loudly that men do their share of family work. If this analysis holds true, here is a major area of hidden benefits – not for the migrants, but for their employers. By relieving Western families of some of their workload, migrant domestic workers stabilize – and contribute to – the precarious peace in the arena of gender.
At this point, we might come to ask, what about their families?
Transnational Motherhood and Global Care Chains
With methodological nationalism, our analysis could stop here. Yet, methodological cosmopolitanism demands that we go further and ask: What about families at the periphery, in the Philippines, in the Ukraine, and in Poland? What are the transformations going on there? What happens to the children, partners, and parents of migrant domestic workers?
This is a question that we – natives of the West – mostly ignore. Yet it is no minor matter concerning but a few. Quite to the contrary, many of the women working abroad have families of their own, back in their home countries. These women have left partners, children, and whoever else there is to go abroad and earn a living. In fact, it is often the children, or rather their responsibility toward them, that motivates women migrants to go abroad; the mothers want a better future for their sons and daughters, free from hunger and constant poverty. For this hope, they are willing to accept long separations and the lonely life in a faraway country.
Yet this behavior means no more, no less than a revolution of basic rules. In the old times, it was proof of your love that you would stick together, no matter what. Yet now, in a globalized world, for many, the opposite holds true. The new rule says: if you truly love your family, you must leave them. You must go to some distant part of the world, wherever there is money to be made, because this is the only way to lift your family out of the misery and desperation at home. Or to quote from a novel by Michelle Spring: “For migrant domestic workers all over the globe, love means, first of all: having to go away” (Spring, 1998, p. 63).
But how does this work? How are the children of migrant mothers cared for? According to recent studies (Hondagneu-Sotelo and Avila, 1997; Gamburd, 2000; Parreñas, 2005; Madianou and Miller, 2012; Rerrich, 2012), the answer is that another division of labor is being established, starting in the respective homelands of female migrants and again involving women only. For instance, often migrant women rely on the help of other women in their hometown (for instance, grandmother, sister in-law, neighbor). By sending them money and other gifts from abroad, migrant mothers hope to grow a sense of responsibility among the recipients of such favors and make them willing to look after their children’s well-being and care.
In this way, new patterns of motherhood are being created, named “transnational motherhood” in recent studies. They result in the so-called global care chains, based on elaborate networks and spanning over countries and continents. To give a typical example: in some family of the Second or Third World, the eldest daughter is responsible for looking after her younger siblings; this sets her mother free to take care of some third woman’s children, and thus earn a little money; while the third woman has migrated to some Western country and is nanny to the baby boy of a family resident there. Transnational care chains are to be found, for instance, when we look at the migration flows between Eastern Europe and Western Europe. Women from Poland go to Germany, cleaning the houses of middle-class families there; at the same time, women from the Ukraine go to Poland, managing the household and family tasks of the Polish migrant women at work in Germany.
While these care chains spread into many directions, crossing borders, mountains, and oceans, connecting the most diverse places, they do so in no accidental way. On the contrary, they follow a distinct pattern, rooted in social inequality. As American sociologist Arlie Hochschild (2000) puts it: “Motherhood is passed down the hierarchy of nation, ethnicity, race.” This statement brings into focus that the age of globalization creates a new hierarchy, a global hierarchy of delegation. The work implied by the Three Cs – caring, cleaning, and cooking – is cast off along the lines of nationality, color, and ethnicity.
Above all, children, old people, and disabled or ill people have to bear the consequences. With each step downward, the chances for receiving adequate help and good care are being diminished. If Polish women leave their homes to work for German families and women from Ukraine leave their homes to work in Polish households, who then will do the caring–cleaning–cooking in Ukraine?
Empirical studies have found that, indeed, those at the bottom of the hierarchy often have to bear the costs of delegating. Take, for instance, the children of migrant mothers. Often, their grandmothers, aunts, and elder sisters are burdened by numerous responsibilities – or too old, too tired, too sick – to master yet another task. Even if they try hard, the children left in their charge are more or less on their own, lacking proper care and proper meals. At the same time, there is little help to expect from the fathers. Some men disappeared years ago, taking leave from family bonds and family duties. And of those who stayed, many find it hard now to come to terms with the role reversal. The women working abroad and being the breadwinners: this turn of events is threatening their male identity. Because many men are preoccupied with their own sense of crisis, they are hardly able to offer emotional support and protection. The effect is that many children lack a stable base, feel lonely, and desperately long for their mother.
Exploitation, misery, and loneliness, these ingredients come up in studies on transnational motherhood and transnational families time and again. Yet when looking closer, a few studies also point out moments of a different shade. While by no means ignoring the loss and pain that comes with geographical separation, these studies question the “dismal view of transnational households” (Parreñas, 2005a) and caution against the “dramatizing features” (Rerrich, 2012) and the “horror story genre” (Gamburd, 2000) made of abused women, incapable fathers, and neglected children. The stories they present speak of “ambivalence” (Madianou and Miller, 2012), not total loss, but, along with the loss, also some gains.
So what might these gains be? How do we explain that, as said by a Filipina migrant, having come to London was “the greatest blessing” of her life (Madianou and Miller, 2012)? For a preliminary answer, in the material given in empirical studies, we find two major groups of positive effects:
First is a way out from an unhappy relationship (Gamburd, 2000; Hochschild, 2003; Madianou and Miller, 2012). Quite often, women migrants, when describing their life back home, speak of relationships gone sour (drunken husband, domestic violence, etc.). Yet in the Philippines, one of the major countries of female migration, there is no legal divorce. In other countries, divorce, though legal, comes with a heavy social stigma for women, and having a child outside marriage brings a similar loss of reputation. So in their native countries, these women have been trapped. In a context dominated by a traditional family model and a gender-based division of labor, their prospects for finding a husband, or finding a better husband, are severely reduced. At the same time, they are also deprived of the economic benefits that come with marriage and a male provider. For these women to start a new life, a new relationship, and maybe even a new family, there is only one option: the way out. Looking for a better future means leaving behind their native country and trying their luck elsewhere.
Second, migrant women, whether running away from a dysfunctional relationship or not, may enjoy further benefits. Often for the first time, they gain some independence. In the new country, they may have to follow the whims and wishes of their employers yet are no more subject to the direct control of husband, father, or wider kin. For some women at least, their identity begins to transform, in subtle yet deep ways (Madianou and Miller, 2012).
They begin to enjoy their new independence and personal freedom (Sassen, 2003). Over the years, they find ways to adapt to their new surroundings, making new friends, learning to appreciate the geographical distance to everyday life in the close-knit family, and sometimes maybe even appreciating the anonymity of urban life. For working long hours and working hard, the women migrants receive little money. Yet it is money nonetheless and, what is more, their own money and, even better, money at their own disposal. They decide how much to send home and how much to keep and how much to spend now and how much to save for the future. In the new country, they are labeled “illegal” and stuck at the low end of the social hierarchy. Yet in their home country, migrant women gain social status and authority. Because most prove loyal to their families, sending money home regularly and often also sending generous gifts, the reputation of transnational migrants rises, changing from “morally dubious” to “successful and hardworking.” In their family, neighborhood, and native village now, they are met with respect (Madianou and Miller, 2012).
Even though we have touched the subject of benefits only briefly, it has become obvious that transnational migration is not a story made of monochrome and total suffering. On the contrary, along with the personal suffering come also some personal gains or at least the potential for them. Arriving at the center, women confront global capitalism and its many diverse ways of exploitation, oppression, etc. Yet they may also find more autonomy in the new place, and at the same time, more status and respect in their native country. Cleaning floors in London may not be a dream job and yet may be better than being beaten up by a drunken husband or being raped by his brother-in-law. Living in a tiny apartment in a shabby neighborhood may bring loneliness and longing and yet may give women some kind of personal freedom and an opportunity to go beyond the narrow confines of traditional gender roles and the gender-based division of labor.
In short, the cosmopolitan approach calls for a methodology of cosmopolitan comparisons, involving what might be called a cosmopolitan theory of social relations. One of its crucial prerequisites is learning to see with the eyes of the respective “other,” in our context: looking at migration through migrants’ eyes (Beck-Gernsheim, 2009). Instead of taking the Western way of life, Western values and aspirations as the universal standard of measuring, we need to start from the migrants’ situation, comparing their prospects in the country of origin with those in the country of arrival. The difference between these two is what counts for the migrant. This difference is his or her frame of reference, his or her answer to the question of loss or gain.
The forces that globalization sets into motion are not confined to economy or politics, but reach deep into the family. On both sides of the global divide, among rich and among poor nations, families are being transformed. While in some ways, they are drawn together, becoming mutually dependent, at the same time, they grow further apart, moving into opposite directions. New hierarchies are building up, both within families (middle-class families of the West hiring servants from the global “rest”) and also among families (a care drain from poor to rich nations).
Coming back to the beginning, we can now see why we need a cosmopolitan turn in family sociology. When keeping within the national, Western perspective, we see only one part of the ongoing transformations: it is only by switching from a national to a global perspective that these two diverse yet closely interconnected trends of family change come into view.
From this, a methodological imperative follows. In the twenty-first century, in an age of ever-increasing transnational connections and interdependencies, sociology becomes anachronistic if it sticks to a framework of nation-states as separate entities. Instead, sociology has to overcome such restrictions and move beyond methodological nationalism. To put it in a nutshell, a cosmopolitan turn is needed. For conclusions, we come back to the question we started out with and add another one. Taken together, they read: What happens when globalization hits home? And when will family sociology tell us about it?