The emotion management of transnational living

Correspondence Godfried Engbersen, Department of Public Administration and Sociology (DPAS), Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherland. Email: engbersen@essb.eur.nl Abstract This article explores how individuals with transnational lives handle emotion management in the form of cognitive and behavioural strategies. Transnational living is defined as spending substantial amounts of time and resources in two or more countries over a longer period. We use data derived through the ‘Transnational Lives in the Welfare State’ (TRANSWEL) research project, for which we conducted 91 semistructured interviews with 85 individuals and six couples leading transnational lives. These respondents include immigrants living in Norway or the Netherlands as well as native-born residents of both countries who live parts of the year abroad. While the emergent literature highlights how migration and transnationalism generally evoke feelings of nonbelonging, loss, homelessness, sorrow and guilt, we found that for many respondents, transnational living has predominantly positive attributes and that they could manage the emotional challenges of a transnational life. These results can be explained by our respondents' backgrounds, being relatively highly educated and embedded in an advanced welfare state.


| INTRODUCTION
Abdelhamid arrived to Europe from Morocco at age 18. He came as a so-called guest worker, first to France and then the Netherlands. He Alice is from England but lives in Norway. Her partner is Dutch and works in Ireland. She divides her time between the United Kingdom, Norway and the Netherlands. Alice moved to Norway because she wanted to experience what she calls 'the Norwegian lifestyle' and take advantage of the outdoor opportunities, especially to do winter sports. She is currently looking for a full-time job in Norway. She visits England at least twice monthly. Family ties are very important to her.
She appreciates the English healthcare system and other systematic solutions in the United Kingdom, which is why she is keeping herself registered there as long as possible. She is happy with the cheap flights between Oslo and London, though finds it emotionally hard to go back and forth between countries and does not feel like she has what she calls a 'proper home'. Though thankful that she can be so mobile, she is unsure what her future will look like.
These brief bios of Abdelhamid and Alice provide just two examples of the multitude of forms that transnational living can take.
Abdelhamid is happy with his transnational life, whereas Alice finds it more difficult to strike the right balance in her transnational life. For both, however, giving shape to transnational living and coping with its emotional challenges are not self-evident. This article is about how 'transnationals'-people who live partly in one country and partly in another-try to resolve their psychological well-being with transnational living. Our central question thus asks: What strategies do people develop to uphold a transnational life? Endeavouring to find answers, we first define what a transnational life is and then outline the concepts of emotion management and emotion work strategies that guide our empirical analysis. After that, we explain our data and methodology. We then outline our empirical findings. We pay attention to cognitive strategies, wherein transnationals change their views on situations, and behavioural strategies, wherein transnationals change the way they act in specific situations. We conclude with thoughts on transnationalism and advanced welfare states.

| Transnational living
The transnational perspective in migration research emphasises that international migration is rarely only a linear movement from one country to another but rather something that results in sustained practices linking migrants with other people and organisations in their origin countries or elsewhere in a diaspora (Basch, Glick-Schiller, & Szanton-Blanc, 1994;Carling, 2008;Glick-Schiller, Basch, & Blanc-Szanton, 1992;Vertovec, 2009). These practices are manifold and encompass cross-border economic, political and sociocultural activities. We use the term 'transnational living', which is conceptually both broader and narrower than the more conventional concept of 'migrant transnationalism'. It is broader in the sense that people who are engaged in transnational practices are not only migrants but also non-migrants (Carling, 2008). Examples include cross-border commuters who live in one country but have a job in another; international business people who have a company in one country but reside and/or have their families in another; or so-called lifestyle migrants, among them many pensioners, who spend their leisure time in a second home abroad for parts of the year (Williams, King, & Warness, 1997;Williams, King, Warnes, & Patterson, 2000).
Our conceptualisation of transnational living is also narrower than the general broad category of transnational practices. Various authors have observed how transnational activities can differ in extent and intensity, and distinguished between degrees of transnationalism: 'broad' versus 'narrow', 'expanded' versus 'core' and 'weak' versus 'strong' (Itzigsohn, Cabral, Medina, & Vazquez, 1999;Levitt, 2001;Ostergaard-Nielsen, 2012;Snel, Engbersen, & Leerkes, 2006;Vertovec, 2009). The labels 'expanded' and 'weak' evoke the occasional nature of practices many migrants are engaged in, such as origin country visits, following news in the origin country, and/or sending remittances to family 'back home'. Here, we focus on transnationalism that is considered narrow, core or strong. Something that all respondents in our research share is an investment of substantial amounts of time and money in multiple countries. Transnational practices constitute significant parts of their lives. Many live in multiple countries for several months of the year at a time or derived income from a country other than that of their residence. 1

| Emotion management
Although the emotional side of migration is still 'relatively understudied' (Boccagni & Baldassar, 2015, p. 73), a growing body of literature addresses how emotions are related to migration in general and transnational attachments in particular (Baldassar, 2015;Escandell & Tapias, 2010;Plöger & Kubiak, 2019;Ryan, 2008;Svašek, 2008Svašek, , 2010Walsh, 2009Walsh, , 2012. These studies show that migration is often accompanied by, and results in, mixed feelings of nonbelonging and not feeling at home. Migratory movements regularly result not only in emotional ambivalence, 'emotional (dis)embodiment and (dis) embeddedness' but also over time 'in emotional re-embodying and re-embedding' (Boccagni & Baldassar, 2015, p. 75). Migration may stir feelings of loss and guilt related to significant others left behind in the origin country and disappointment in the sometimes hostile reception in the host country. But over time, migrants often cope with the situation, finding a place in their new society and handling strained relations with and/or expectations from relatives back home (Boccagni & Baldassar, 2015). All these studies consider how migrants try to overcome the emotional complications or struggles that are characteristic of being embedded in a transnational social field.
In focusing on how transnationals-including non-migrants-deal with the emotional demands of transnational living, we build on the pioneering work of Hochschild (1979Hochschild ( , 1983Hochschild ( , 2003. Her work on the sociology of emotions provides relevant insights and concepts for the study of transnational lives (see also Escandell & Tapias, 2010;Ryan, 2008;Svašek, 2008Svašek, , 2010. The ambiguities, discrepancies and/or uncertainties across situations in which people find themselves and their actual emotional experiences lead to their engaging in emotion management. Emotion management is aimed at reducing or eliminating tensions in social lives. People strive to resolve their psychological well-being and social lives. For this, they develop emotion work strategies, which aim at reducing tensions and contradictions related to specific social settings. Hochschild mainly analyses occupational contexts and work environments, but her conceptual apparatus is applicable to other social spheres such as partnerships, friendships and family (see Layder, 2005) and is also highly relevant for studying transnational lives. Transnationals must deal with emotional demands, expectations, feelings and interests of significant others, partners, relatives and old and new friends. They additionally must fulfil their own expectations and emotional needs. Often, no clearly defined feeling rules or emotion scripts exist for transnational living. One explanation is that the situations in which transnationals find themselves are too singular.
However, in her study of Irish nurses in England, Ryan (2008) cites the existence of an Irish emotional culture with a strong emphasis on keeping up appearances, maintaining intensive contacts with family and conforming to the ideal of the successful migrant. Such a culture entailed great emotional costs for the nurses. Another example is a study on low-paid migrant men in London and transnational gender dynamics (Datta et al., 2009). These men present themselves as 'winners' who, despite huge hardship and suffering, will be able to return to their origin country as successful migrants. However, the 'masculine' emotion script they follow requires extensive emotion work strategies.
Our interviews revealed that psychosocial well-being is not always easy to resolve with a transnational way of life. Transnationals thus develop emotion work strategies, which can be cognitive, aimed at changing ideas, images and ideas in order to modify and alter feelings (Hochschild, 1979). The strategies can also be aimed at changing behaviour. Changes in behaviour may reduce unwanted feelings and evoke desirable feelings (see Turner & Stets, 2006), 2 as the aforementioned study of migrant men in low-paid jobs so illustrates (Datta et al., 2009, pp. 868-869). Imagining a heroic return to their origin country as a successful migrant is a cognitive strategy. Developing new relationships and new skills in London while maintaining ties with family members in their origin country is a behavioural strategy, and the approval received from relatives strengthens their social status.
Both types of strategies make the hardships in London more bearable.
Along with this conceptual focus on emotion work, we also gain insights through power, status and stratification theories on emotions (Thoits, 1989;Turner, 2007). This broad literature shows that people in a strong social position (in terms of status, power and resources) are likelier to experience emotions such as satisfaction, happiness and well-being than those in more vulnerable social positions (see Barbalet, 1998;Kemper & Collins, 1990;Turner & Stets, 2006). The latter are likelier to experience emotions such as anxiety, insecurity, and resentment. These insights are also relevant to our study because differences in social position exist for transnationals. For some, leading a transnational life is a matter of choice; for others, it is a necessity (cf. Walsh, 2009).

| Research population and sampling
The data this article uses come from the Transnational Lives in the Welfare State (TRANSWEL) research project, 3 which conducted semistructured interviews with individuals and couples who lead transnational lives. Transnational living was defined as spending substantial amounts of time and resources in two (or more) countries over a period.
Many respondents actually lived in two countries during parts of the year; others lived and worked in one country while their families were still 'at home'; and others lived in one country but worked and received income in another country (for instance, cross-border commuters).
We conducted 91 interviews, 85 of which were with individual respondents and six of which were with couples. In total, we interviewed 97 respondents, all of whom lived, at least part-time, in Norway or the Netherlands. Unlike other transnationalism research, which generally focuses on migrant transnationalism, our data included both migrants and native Norwegians or Dutch as well as 'mixed couples' (partners with different nationalities from each other).
Most interviews were conducted not only in Norway or the Netherlands but also in Poland, Spain, Pakistan, Germany, Cape Verde and in some other countries (via Skype).
We found our respondents by placing ads in newspapers, tapping our personal or professional social networks (established in part from previous research), getting referrals from colleagues and snowball sampling. Instead of statistical representativeness, we aimed at maximal variation in our sample, both in terms of countries of reference (the other country where our respondents live or work or is significant for them, besides Norway or The Netherlands) and types of transnational living. All in all, we interviewed many types of transnationals, including retirees who live abroad during parts of the year; former guest workers or mixed couples who spend time in their origin countries; circular labour migrants, and entrepreneurs working for foreign companies or officials from international aid organisations whose families were in their origin countries.

| Analysis
This study's interviews were conducted by TRANSWEL project researchers or their trained research assistants. Although carried out in different languages, they were all transcribed in English and coded using a joint codebook in NVivo. The interviews followed a set of agreed-upon themes, including experiences, joys and frustrations of transnational living-the topic of this article-and respondents' future intentions of remaining transnational or settling in one country or the other as well as experiences and encounters with welfare state institutions in one or more countries.
To describe and analyse the emotions of transnational living, we focused on the interview material that was coded in NVivo under the nodes 'transnational living', 'challenges and restrictions', 'emotions', 'home and identity' and 'conflicts'. In a subsequent round of coding, patterns in the data were further classified in relation to types of behavioural and cognitive strategies. Interview excerpts included in the next section exemplify these types of strategies. We used pseudonyms for all respondents and refer to their gender, transnational category, educational level, time spend both in Norway or the Netherlands and in country of reference. A number of other research ethics and precautions taken while conducting this research included obtaining informed consent, safeguarding confidentiality and adhering to best practices for data protection.
The next section presents our most important findings. First, we outline a profile of our respondents. Then, we analyse their emotion work strategies. We chose to make extensive use of the respondents' precisely transcribed and translated answers and avoided describing their emotions, challenges or strategies in our own words. The interview excerpts have both an illustrative and a validating function.
However, the strategies we describe certainly do not include the entire spectrum of strategies that respondents use, but they are, in our observation, the most common.

| Profile of the transnationals
Norway was the main country of residence for almost two third of our respondents, whereas for the others, it was the Netherlands. We interviewed somewhat more males than females. About one fourth of the respondents were younger than 30, including among them several PhD students who lived part-time in countries other than where their university was based. More than one third of the respondents were between 31 and 45. The next age category, 46 to 60, was relatively smaller, and almost one quarter of the respondents were over 60 (see When asked about transnational practices and engagement, one in eight respondents referred to a neighbouring country of either Norway or the Netherlands. Many were cross-border commuters living in either Germany or Belgium and working in the Netherlands, or vice versa. The largest subcategory, comprising almost half of all respondents, lived in other European countries. For instance, we interviewed several Central and Eastern European (CEE) labour migrants who regularly visited family living in their origin country. Several students belonged to this category of 'intra-European' transnationals, as did several retirees who spent parts of the year in sunnier parts of Europe. One in six respondents mentioned a nation in North or South America as the country of reference. This was a rather heterogeneous category, including some American citizens married to Norwegian or Dutch spouses who divided their time between both sides of the Atlantic. We also interviewed several adventure seekers who started their own company or did voluntary work in Central or South America. Some regularly returned to Europe to work, earning the money necessary to stay for the rest of the year in countries, such as Peru or Mexico. Finally, for almost one in four respondents, the country reference was in Africa, Asia or Australia. These included former labour migrants or their spouses from countries, such as Turkey, Morocco and Cape Verde, who spent retirement time there. We also interviewed several migrants from Pakistan who lived in Norway and had intensive contact with their families 'back home'.
Although we tried to assemble a heterogeneous group of respondents, the large majority was rather highly educated. Almost 60% completed an academic degree, and another almost 20% completed a higher occupational-educational college-level degree. A possible reason for the overrepresentation of the highly educated is that intensive transnational practices require resources. The remaining 20% of respondents completed an intermediate-level or a lower level educational degree. This last category consisted mainly of former guest workers or their spouses from Turkey, Morocco and Cape Verde.
We also asked the respondents how long they lived abroad. At 44%, a large minority lived outside Norway or the Netherlands for at least 6 months of the year. Another 20% lived abroad for 3 to 6 months of the year. These were individuals with real transnational lives. They lived in different countries for prolonged periods of time or commuted between Norway or the Netherlands and other countries on a regular, sometimes daily basis.
Finally, we tried to reconstruct the main motivations for our respondents' strong transnational engagement and often long periods of transnational living. This was not determined through a specific question we posed, but by looking at interviews holistically, we

| Emotional challenges and emotion management
The emotional challenges that respondents faced were multifaceted.
They dealt with establishing a home or multiple homes, finding a sense of belonging, maintaining social ties and building new social networks. Some transnationals felt split or had the feeling of living between two worlds, whereas others had to deal with the social pressures of family and acquaintances. Again, others had to cope with feelings of loss, homesickness, loneliness, alienation and jealousy. In • suppressing negative emotions and accepting negative aspects of a transnational life.
• not splitting oneself mentally, focusing on the country of residence and not constantly comparing countries.
• fantasising about an idealised home and keeping return options open.

Behavioural strategies
• managing social capital, maintenance or transformation of established social ties and building new social relations.
• managing mobility and finding a proper balance between travelling back and forth.
• developing a context-dependent approach for dealing with problems and playing different roles in different contexts.
• withdrawing from situations that generate negative emotions and being indifferent to or avoiding certain practices that evoke negative emotions. This particular strategy speaks to the selectivity of the research population. Many respondents were rather highly educated, so for them, having a transnational life was rarely forced, but rather a conscious, free choice. In addition, many respondents had an exit option. Although mostly articulated by highly educated respondents, this strategy was also applied by those with lower skills (cf. Datta et al., 2009, p. 868). A related strategy was to suppress negative emotions or accept that there are always negative aspects of transnational living. A respondent in a study by Walsh (2009, p. 435)  A fourth strategy was fantasising about an idealised home. For many respondents with a strong transnational life, defining a home base was difficult. They often referred to the existence of multiple homes and sometimes to an enduring search for a 'true' home. One way to cope with this was through fantasies. Various elements play a role in the ways transnationals construct their idealised home: geographies, physical places, people, things and identity (see also Duyvendak, 2011;Nowicka, 2007;Ralph & Staeheli, 2011)

. A variant of fantasising about an idealised home is to keep return options open.
There is the idea that one can leave behind a transnational life because elsewhere-one's country of birth, for example-is somewhere to always escape to. This return option functions as a kind of psychological safety net despite the chance that the fantasy will not be fulfilled.

| Behavioural strategies
In addition to cognitive strategies, our respondents developed various behavioural strategies. The specific characteristics of transnational living put limits on these strategies, particularly in terms of geographical distance and associated costs. Nevertheless, we distinguished four basic behavioural strategies that were developed by many respondents. A first was managing social capital. Leading a transnational life often required a proper balance between maintaining established social ties (with family, friends and acquaintances) and developing new ones. Or it required balancing social obligations and emotional needs that arise from having strong ties in more than one country.
Managing social capital was a crucial strategy for transnationals who left their homeland and lived in another country for the majority of the year. During the initial phase of settling, especially, maintaining contacts with friends was crucial for maintaining one's well-being.
Sometimes social relationships were also strategically kept up because they could be of help in the near future. In some cases, respondents did the opposite, dissolving their social ties because they stood in the way of building a future in another country. It is also interesting how some transnationals are able to activate their social networks when necessary. Their international career has not only given them the opportunity to develop strong and weak ties but also latent ties-those that exist but have not yet been activated (Haythornthwaite, 2002, p. 385;Dekker & Engbersen, 2014). This strategy is illustrated in a quote from Mathilde, who lives in Norway with her partner and is self-employed. She was born in Ireland, worked for the UN and lived for many years in Africa. She is a person with a robustly developed international network, which gives her peace of mind because it makes her feel constantly connected to many other people.
There is obviously these stresses that come with moving, I never get nervous. Some of my friends back home would say: 'I couldn't do it, I would be terrified to go to a new place on my own'. And, I don't know, I guess I've done it so many times that I just don't get like that at all … there's always friends of friends in places, so when I go to places now, I'm always connected to someone who I might not know but who knows someone, and then I meet people that way.
(Mathilde, female of Irish origin; family transnational,

highly educated; [8 months] and Ireland [4 months])
A second important strategy was managing mobility. This concerns the extent to which transnationals travel back and forth between countries. Social media plays an important role in maintaining contacts (Plöger & Kubiak, 2019;Walsh, 2009), but we also observed the enduring significance of face-to-face contact and interaction (Misztal, 2000). Our respondents echoed the needs to have physical contact with meaningful people in specific social contexts or to be physically present somewhere they feel at home (see also Baldassar, 2015). Distances and costs majorly impacted this strategy, as Gaia's quote illustrates. After a day's work in Brussels, her decision to take the Thalys, a high-speed international train, to her home in a city near The Hague, would not be affordable for everyone. These excerpts come from relatively young respondents, but their sentiments resonated with retiree family transnationals who travelled back and forth because they had ties in two countries. Some older respondents may have struggled to uphold this pattern, even though their travel was often limited to one annual round trip. Still, as Ekem's and Burat's quotes illustrate, it was also important for elderly respondents to keep to their transnational rhythm.
It's of course difficult for me. You then live in the first country, then again in the other country. On the one hand, this is good for me, but on the other hand, bad. Now that I'm older, it is getting harder to fly back and forth by airplane. I even think that in a few years, I will not be able come to the Netherlands anymore. I'm getting older, I think I will not be able to travel back and forth anymore when I'm around 80 years old. ( A third strategy was to develop differentiated approaches for dealing with problems and situations specific to the different countries. All respondents were partly living in advanced welfare states-Norway or the Netherlands-and partly in countries with less-developed or absent welfare states. Respondents reacted by using services such as healthcare in Norway or the Netherlands but not in the other countries. For most respondents, incomes acquired in Norway or the Netherlands (through pensions or temporary jobs) enabled them to live abroad during parts of the year. In general, transnational living required the ability to deal with differences in legal cultures, bureaucracies, and welfare arrangements (we address this issue separately in Paper presented at the TRANSWEL-workshop, 2018). We also saw how respondents tried to take advantage of each country's benefits, The thing when you travel is that you can kind of tell one story to some people and one story to other people … and they won't kind of like figure out … It's not that you're lying, but you kind of change personalities when you travel, which I like … It's just that I could play

| CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION
The emerging research on the emotional dimensions of migration and transnationalism generally shows that these phenomena are accompanied by and evoke feelings of nonbelonging, homelessness and frustration. It documents the emotional pain that migrants experience because their families, and sometimes partners and children, live at a distance. It also analyses the mixed feelings that arise from perceived obligations to relatives in their origin country as well as the host country's often disappointing reception. On the flipside, the research also shines a light on the resilience of migrants and their skills for coping with these emotional challenges (Escandell & Tapias, 2010;Ryan, 2008;Svašek, 2008Svašek, , 2010. This article explored the emotion work strategies (Hochschild, 1979) & Baldassar, 2015). Our respondents also showed an ability to develop differentiated approaches for dealing with problems and situations in difference contexts. They tried to benefit from the good of each country and to withdraw from situations that could evoke negative emotions, such as dealing with corrupt institutions in their origin country.
Our respondents overwhelmingly portrayed transnational living as a positive life experience, with their cognitive and behavioural strategies contributing to this positive evaluation. This raised the question of why their reports were so different from those of migrants documented in other studies on migration and emotions.
A first explanation is that most of these studies focus on vulnerable migrant categories such as forced migrants, irregular migrants and low-skilled labour migrants. As Svašek (2010, p. 869) observes in her study on Sudeten Germans expelled from Czechoslovakia directly after the Second World War, this experience resulted even decades later in 'emotional discourses that construct the "lost homeland" as an object of love, longing and suffering'. Migration may also be a painful experience for irregular migrants. Expected to move to 'rich Europe', they find themselves, after migration, at the bottom of the host country's social ladder and labour market.
Low-skilled labour migrants-for instance, Polish workers in the United Kingdom after 2004-often struggle between loneliness and limited opportunities in their host countries and the obligations they perceive towards those left behind in their origin countries.
These struggles are even more pressing for female migrants, particularly when they have left partners or children behind (Ryan, 2008).
Considering their personal backgrounds, we acknowledge that our respondents were also privileged (see Appendix A). Three quarters had an academic or higher educational background. Highly educated migrants (as well as Norwegian or Dutch natives who lived abroad part-time) had more resources to make themselves feel at home when living abroad than many low-educated migrants. Abdelhamid and most of our respondents, transnational living was rather risk-free. While living abroad, they always had the safe option to return to Norway or the Netherlands with their advanced social welfare systems. In conclusion, we could say that the selectivity of our research population, their relatively high educational background and their sound legal and social positions in advanced welfare states bring to bear a more positive perspective on the emotional dimension of transnational living.