For transnational families, visits represent an opportunity to temporarily punctuate the geographical distance that separates them from significant others in everyday life. Drawing on data from mapping-interviews conducted with older skilled migrants in Abu Dhabi, the UAE, this paper is concerned with how transnational visiting is harnessed to sustain a sense of family togetherness at a later stage of the life course. The discussion contributes to migration scholarship on return visits and visits by relatives to the migration destination but also draws attention to a third dimension of visiting; family meet-ups in a third space—a location that is neither the country of origin nor the migration destination. Hence, I propose an explicitly spatial, relational conceptualization of transnational family visits, arranged around a multi-local framework: the return visit (‘there’); the receiving of visits in the migration destination (‘here’); and visits in an in-between geographical space (‘somewhere’). In so doing, this paper places the spotlight on the geographies of visiting, drawing attention to the dynamic way in which the practice of transnational family visiting in enacted in later life.

中文翻译：

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探访这里、那里和某个地方：多地点和跨国家庭探访的地理

对于跨国家庭来说，探访代表了一个机会，可以暂时打破将他们与日常生活中重要的其他人分开的地理距离。本文利用对阿联酋阿布扎比年长技术移民进行的映射访谈数据，关注如何利用跨国访问在生命历程的后期维持家庭团聚感。讨论有助于关于移民目的地回访和亲属访问的移民奖学金，但也提请注意访问的第三个维度；在第三空间举行家庭聚会——一个既不是原籍国也不是移民目的地的地方。因此，我提出了一个明确的跨国家庭访问的空间关系概念化，围绕一个多本地框架进行安排：回访（'那里'）；在移民目的地（“这里”）接受访问；并在介于两者之间的地理空间（“某处”）中进行访问。在此过程中，本文将焦点放在探访的地理上，提请注意跨国探亲实践在晚年生活中形成的动态方式。