(Re)moving ties: relatedness in contemporary mobile work regimes

The objective of the project is to carry out an in-depth documentation, analysis and theoretical advancement of interaction between practices of kinship and policies that encourage semi-permanent periodic work mobility and which potentially endanger building and maintaining the “strong ties” of kinship or relatedness. So far, kinship has been considered of little significance in contemporary European societies. As a result, while the mobile work regimes have been examined from various perspectives (e.g., gender, precarity), the fundamental question of social ties remains underexplored and little reflected upon theoretically. The research team will investigate the intersection of work and forms of relatedness through multi-sited ethnographic research that will study social ties of highly skilled transnationally mobile employees in two areas : 1) research workers and 2) the so called “package deal” travellers, employed mainly by state institutions. The methodological approach will consist of two main segments: ethnographic interviews and a limited number of case studies that will explore a set of kin and relatedness networks in more detail. Analysis of relevant national and institutional policies and digital ethnography will complement this approach. Taking Latvia as the departure point, the project will develop empirically grounded theoretical understandings of the role of kinship in contemporary work regimes as well as their philosophical, political and social implications.