Work of Waiting blog post

In June Hee Kwon’s article The Work of Waiting, she discusses the concept of the transnational family which is a “…increasingly common contemporary social form…” (pp. 480). I thought that this form of living was interesting because of the fact that people going to different countries to obtain wealth and get jobs to send money back home is not a recent phenomenon, but it seems to definitely be linked to the rise of capitalism. The part that I thought was the most important was the “waiting” factor that many people have to endure while waiting for their loved ones to return and the isolation and fear that comes with that waiting. On the one hand, “…waiting and remittances represent a coeval embodiment, both promise and love, in support of a family’s future through a deferral of togetherness” (pp. 493) but there is also a fear that a person’s partner will ask for a divorce or have an affair. It is important to focus on both parties in these kinds of relationships because people need to know the effects that transnational labor migration has of the people who have to stay behind, which I often find is lost in these kinds of narratives.