New “Geographies” of Family Life: Migration and the Legal Boundaries of the Family

Abstract

This article critically examines how law and its implementation practices contribute to shaping the family models emerging from migration processes, situating the issue within a broader reflection on new forms of family life. Starting from the demographic significance of migration in contemporary societies, the article shows how migrant families are often exposed to processes of legal fragmentation, precarisation and invisibilisation, thereby representing a crucial test for the coherence of some core concepts of contemporary constitutionalism. The analysis focuses on a number of particularly significant issues: birth registration and family status, the possible criminalisation of care-related conduct, the removal of foreign parents, and the shortcomings of family reunification procedures. Through an engagement with the case law of national and European courts, the article highlights the uneven role played by the right to family life and the best interests of the child. What emerges is a tension between the abstract recognition of the family as a space of care, relational continuity and identity formation, and its concrete subordination to administrative, security-based and border-control logics.