FACULTY OF CULTURE AND SOCIETY | Seminar
Migration seminar: 60 years of transnational engagements through letters

Thursday 7 May, 13:15 - 15:00
Niagara, 9th floor, Nordenskiöldsgatan 1, or Zoom 7
May

Welcome to the Migration Seminar!

60 years of transnational engagements through letters: Examining a sibling relationship in a Swiss transnational family

Profile

Brigitte Suter, Associate professor IMER, Department of Global Political Studies, Malmö University

Abstract

This seminar presents ongoing research on epistolary practices as mediations of transnational care. The study examines a sixty year correspondence between two brothers in a Swiss family, tracing how their letter writing sustained emotional closeness and enabled forms of caregiving across distance. Born in Switzerland in the 1910s, the brothers followed divergent life trajectories: one remained in their home country, while the other emigrated to Chile in his twenties.

Drawing on a rich family archive of more than four hundred letters, the analysis explores key dimensions of transnational engagement, including cross border care, the maintenance of family relationships, and shifting patterns of mobility and immobility over time. It also considers how economic, political, social, and familial developments shaped the dynamics of their relationship.

The longitudinal scope of the material makes it possible to capture the temporal and relational complexity of siblinghood within a transnational family network, revealing how connections are continuously negotiated and reconfigured across decades and continents.

Attendance

This is a hybrid seminar, you are welcome to connect via Zoom or join us at MIM seminar room, floor 9, Niagara, Nordenskiöldsgatan 1. To attend on campus, please gather by the reception area at 13.05.