The strength of family ties: How US migration shapes children's ideas of family

Research shows that members of transnational families sustain meaningful relationships despite the physical boundaries that separate them. At the same time, distance creates many stresses and strains that disrupt family life. In this article, the authors take a child-centered approach to explore how the migration of different family members affects children's ideas about their families. To do so they use a unique data set of 421 drawings collected from Mexican school children, ages 5-15. The data suggest that the migration of a family member activates his or her symbolic membership in the family in the eyes of the children.