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Introduction

We, Maria and Julia , belong to two different generations: both finishing their degrees in Germany (which in the interim re-changed from being two nations into, again, one nation), Maria acquired a Diploma, while Julia’s degrees were already called Bachelor and Master, following a change in European education policies named after a city in Italy. Both of us, we finished a systemic training in Germany; Maria participated in the very first curriculum in “multicultural systems” at a private training institute in the 90s, while Julia studied Systemic Social Work, M.A. in the new millennium. Maria was born behind the iron curtain, for Julia the unified Europe has been “normality”. Maria witnessed the very early forms of mobile phones coming onto the market (big and heavy like bricks), while Julia cannot recall a world without Internet (but she points out that she knows what a “modem” is).

These are only few facets showing our similarities but also our differences and some socio-historical changes in the country we are living in, in Europe and the world.

During the joint work on this chapter Europe has been facing a flux of human mobility to the continent from war areas outside of the European borders. This phenomenon has created a situation which is perceived as a crisis in many European countries and has been challenging their citizens. We took this development on to consider some aspects of it which affect our profession on a theoretical, methodological and ethical level.

Mobility, Migration and Globalization: The Emergence of World Families

Not only since the refugee emergency reached Europe, mobility and migration have been the phenomena which have structured increasingly more lives in the past decades. Interestingly enough—and even the phenomenon in itself is similar—mobility is often described as a movement of the highly skilled, migration is connotated with that of the lower skilled and the poor (Castles 2010). This reflects how the division between “the poor(er)” and “the rich(er)” is a guiding distinction in observing and classifying human beings moving around the world—education is hereby categorized as symbolic capital (Bourdieu 1986). This distinction, which does create a difference, can be witnessed in the current discourse about refugees as well—immediately after the discussion transcends the issue of humanitarian aid. The richer are afraid that poverty is contagious.

In the last decades we have been experiencing major changes in political, economical, social and technological areas. In our globalized world we can identify an erosion of the definitive frontiers that once separated markets, states, civilizations, cultures, lifeworlds and even human beings (e.g. surrogacy, Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2014). We arrived at a state of interdependence among individuals, groups and countries that is not just economic and political but also—and more and more—ethical. Technological change plays an important role in these developments, as it seems to increase mobility as well as helps to overcome social difficulties caused by the latter. “Whereas non-migrant families throughout the world commonly have discussions across the kitchen table, now many families whose members are relocated through migration conduct the same everyday discussions in real time across oceans” (Vertovec 2004, p. 222); social relations can be “kept alive” through information and communication technologies (ICTs) in a way our grandparents could only dream of.

The transcending of national, ethnic, religious and political boundaries and power relations due to these processes have to be highlighted and discussed with more attention. With regard to the history of ideas, social sciences are still connected to a tradition of thinking which goes back to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with its grand narratives . One aspect of this dominant story is that people “belong” to a nation. Social sciences, including their empirical studies, (implicitly) refer to this paradigmatic framework. As the term “migration ” stands in the same tradition (Castles 2010)—and this becomes evident when the discussion is directed toward national social care systems providing support to migrants and refugees —some analysts have suggested abandoning it.

Nationalism has been identified as an early 19th century invention (…), resulting from the rapid replacement of existing absolute monarchies in Europe by units called nation-states and the subsequent establishment of such polities in other parts of the world. While the unifying content of nationalism varied from country to country, it was based on an ideology of the commonness of origins, purposes, and goals that allowed those in power to legitimate rule over large and diverse populations. Nationalism gave heterogeneous groups a sense of a shared common interest, and carried a vision of a nation-state as a “people,” each nation making up a separate, equal, and natural unit. (Glick Schiller, Basch, and Blanc-Szanton 1992, p.14f).

Even before the right-wing political movements turned towards a revival of this concept in Europe and beyond, some intellectuals had begun to reflect on this issue more critically, highlighting its construction. “Nationalism” is done through shared symbolism referring to (often imaginary) common interests—allowing authorities to control their national populations most effectively (ibid p. 15). With regard to sciences a methodological nationalism of the social sciences can be found in all subsystems of social inquiry, also in family research (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2009, 2010, 2014). Here we discover an unquestioned implicit connection between the individual, the family and the (one) state which can be diagnosed as a blind spot of the methodological nationalism in family studies. In the discourse of nation-state the core of family seems a “secular version of the Holy Trinity: one household, one nationality and one identity” (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2014, p. 65). The link of this pattern to patriarchal structures (Coward 1983, cited in Bryceson and Vuorela 2002) is evident as “family loyalty and loyalty to the state mainly went hand in hand, mediated by patriotism and national identity” (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2014 p. 140). This way of thinking follows the rule that people belong to one place /nation on the earth (and can be exploited there, e.g. as soldiers).

The theory of cosmopolitanism (Beck 2006) makes a different offer. This model is based on the assumption that “the days of autonomy , of national self-sufficiency, of splendid isolation are gone for ever” (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2014, p. 68). We are in the process of creating “global generations”, where various—formerly separated—elements are interlinked, even if people do not move at all: ICTs bring these components to our “homes”. This globalized patchwork consists of mosaic pieces which are usually not fitted together to make a unified picture of one lifestyle, one religion, one national identity. However, in these globalized times we (are obliged to) physically or symbolically coexist with humans of different nationalities, religions etc.—even if we regard them as enemies. Actually we can observe how “people” hardly manage to cope with the challenges of adapting to these factual realities in many European countries and beyond. Anyway, the “global other” has become a part of our existence “acting from below and from within, in everyday life, often involuntary and unnoticed” (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2014, p. 75)—and, since the so-called “refugee crises”, very much noticed, too. Through these ongoing human and data movement processes the “excluded other” becomes visible in our lives. Whether we like it or not, we are confronted with the world in the interior of our countries: global inequities—differences in capital, in power, in freedom—acquire names and faces.

Transnationalism and Transmigration

The concept of transmigration is one model which challenges the dominant narrative of describing migration as a one-way direction of mobility , being spatio-temporally limited to changing place from one country of origin to a country of destination (Apitzsch 2014). Mobility in this framework is not necessarily a one-way stream but is seen more as oscillating movement(s) between places. This new social field creates and maintains new forms of belongings and identities which develop against rigid forms of national affiliation. It implies at least imaginary ties to two countries or even two continents, and subjective projections of their future onto these places (Geisen 2014).

We have defined transnationalism as the processes by which immigrants build social fields that link together their country of origin and their country of settlement. Immigrants who build such social fields are designated “transmigrants.” Transmigrants develop and maintain multiple relations—familial, economic, social, organizational, religious, and political that span borders. Transmigrants take actions, make decisions, and feel concerns, and develop identities within social networks that connect them to two or more societies simultaneously. (Glick Schiller et al. 1992, p.1f)

We can speak of multilocations , which are multiple, overlapping spaces of belonging, multipolar systems of references, loyalties and identifications (Nedelcu 2012, p. 1343). This is a paradigmatic shift that requires, both in theory and practice, going beyond a binary framework, which used to be: leaving a country = emigration; going to another country = immigration. We can find many examples in Europe and worldwide: an estimation with regard to Italy (Lamura 2009, cited in Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2014) says that we have to consider around 774,000 home helpers, 90 % of whom are foreign nationals (many coming from the poorer European countries like Romania or Moldova), most of them employed privately as carers for the elderly. Most are female, having children in their respective country of origin and going back and forth to see their families, where other family members, like the father or other relatives, are taking care of the children (Parreñas 2001, 2005). Facing these “global care chains”, globalized work in families (family services like child-rearing or elderly care) constitute the “gold of the poor”, a “resource” that can be exploited by the richer; love and care become “commodities” which can be exported and imported. Furthermore, by taking care of background work in the family, transmigrant women stabilize the precarious state of peace in relations between the sexes in the richer countries (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2014).

This example shows clearly how mobility leads to social changes, both in the countries which are left as well as in the receiving countries. With regard to family relations, it has been empirically proved that, with mobility, changes in family positions and gender roles are taking place (e.g. Geisen 2014; Lutz 2008; Spitzer et al. 2003); for instance, men are taking care of children while women are working in another country. These processes challenge traditional self-concepts and gender roles in the outgoing countries as well as in the receiving ones by providing services which free women of the receiving countries from traditional family duties done now, e.g. by a foreign helper.

An important role in maintaining this transnational social fields is played—as already mentioned—by technological development. Social technologies are becoming core protagonists and “new family members” (Bacigalupe and Lambe 2011) in the lives of families in general and in those of transnational families in particular (e.g. Madianou 2012; Şenyürekli and Detzner 2009; Stern and Messer 2009). The mechanisms are interlinked and circular: on the one hand, globalisation changes institutions like families; on the other hand, the digital revolution changes socialization.

Family Relations and ICTs

Everyday communication practices are fundamental ways of “doing family ” (Morgan 1996): family relations are actively constructed by small everyday performances, wherein the use of information and communication technologies become integrated. The use of mobile or smartphones, e-mails or text messages, apps etc. have become part of contemporary family life in more and more places of the world. Carvalho et al. (2015) focus in their literature review (of 45 papers written in English, Portuguese or Spanish between 1998 and 2013) on the relationship of ICTs and family functioning. The results—even if sometimes inconsistent and contradictory—show that ICTs have introduced qualitative changes in family functioning, creating new interaction scenarios and rearranging current family relational patterns. Even if in general we can say, “the more time individuals spend in activities involving ICTs, the lower the amount of time devoted to other activities (e.g. outdoor activities)” (Carvalho et al. 2015 p. 104), the same ICTs seem to have different impact and effects on the family functioning of different family forms. Some studies show that ICTs seem to strengthen family bonds, are effective in improving family communication and increasing intimacy among members (see, with regard to couples: Duran et al. 2011; Jin and Pena 2010; Miller-Ott et al. 2012; Parker et al. 2013). Family communication can be improved through shared online activities between children and parents and daily management activities using ICTs. Other empirical studies point to mixed effects or even those going into the opposite direction, especially when the technology equipment and high frequency of use seem to reduce family time and intimacy and increase isolation of members living in the same household. Further, the so-called “digital natives” (Prensky 2001) may acquire a certain power through their edge in ICT skills, which has to be balanced out in the familial hierarchy by establishing rules of usage, thereby increasing the likelihood of conflicts between generations. ICTs have the capacity to change family patterns of interaction due to the redefining of family roles with regard to the respective levels of expertise in handling them (Carvalho et al. 2015, p. 105). Family boundaries might also be challenged: “ICTs have the potential to modify the permeability of family boundaries due to the change of the flow of information . If on the one hand, the family gets unrestricted access to a diversity of information unprecedented in our history, on the other hand they become more exposed, blending external world with family environments. (…) Thus, boundaries between the family environment and the external world are relevant and necessary, but are being blurred by the domestic use of ICTs.” (ibid., p. 105). New media have to be viewed as an environment of affordances (Madianou 2014), especially smartphones, which are the result of convergence of mobile telephony and personal computing. The affordance of these “polymedia” (Madianou 2014)—feeling invited to post, e.g. family pictures in social networks—has to be balanced out by the structural aspect of privacy and intimacy families have been defined by up to now. It is obvious that through the emergence of these affordances media education becomes crucial—inside and outside the family.

A new level of being “permanently online, permanently connected” (Vorderer 2015) is reached with polymediatic smartphones. The management of relationships through this technology goes hand in hand with the perception of being able to (re-) create a contact anytime, even if other activities are in the forefront. These exchanges may lack coherence and completeness but can also generate a feeling of connectedness and permanent unity (Vorderer 2015). Polymedia create a dialectics produced through the overlap of social settings—being on the one hand virtually connected via the ICT and on the other hand physically available for face-to-face communication. This spatio-temporal texture creates co-presence, but also divided presence (Greschke 2013). The challenge is to be able to act appropriately “here and there” simultaneously, with your face-to-face interactional partner(s) as well as with the virtual one(s).

In terms of mediated circumstances, presence and absence are not conceptualized as distinct categories but more as a continuum. Co-presence does not necessarily mean a physical but more a communicative availability in a social space (Greschke 2013). The virtual co-presence can be described as a social space in which people have an ongoing awareness of others. ICTs “provide new opportunities for constructing a ‘co-presence’ in spite of distance” (Bacigalupe and Cámara 2012).

It is transnational everyday communication practices that are especially made possible through the digital revolution. We can observe the emergence of a new “transnational social habitus” and “deterritorialised identities ” (Nedelcu 2012).

On the one hand, ICTs allow migrants to form multiple belongings, to capture cosmopolitan values, to develop deterritorialised identities and biographies and to act at a distance in real time; on the other hand, while accelerating integration and incorporation paths in host societies, ICTs also enable migrants to defend particularistic values and to claim a particular belonging while living as global citizens. (Nedelcu 2012, p. 1340–1341)

To conclude at this point of research expertise, we may say that ICTs seem to have different impact on families’ adoption of these technologies and on family functioning with respect to the developmental stage the family is in, the specific stage of their life cycle , and their degree of mobility .

In families living geographically separated, in empty nest stage of the family life cycle (…) or in a transnational situation (…), seem that ICTs are an important key in maintain pre-existing relationships and strength family bonds. In sum, families seem to experience different levels of cohesion associated with the same ICTs and activity, according to the stage of the family life cycle they are at. (Carvalho et al. 2015, p. 104)

As an illustration of these changes we will now turn to a single case.

Roulan Derke: A Family on the Move

The contact with this family—or, more precisely, with one member of the family—did not take place in a clinical setting. At the time of writing this chapter refugees were living in many German cities in gymnasiums of schools and universities for a couple of weeks, from where they were dispersed to other places. Volunteers helped where needed, being confronted with sorrow, courage and hopefulness at the same time. “It’s not so much for us, but for our children” was a sentence we often heard, reflecting what we knew from research literature: refugee parents tend to rely on their children as vitally necessary resources for their own—physical and psychological—survival (Weine et al. 2004).

In this context we made the acquaintance of Roulan DerkeFootnote 1 (we spoke English), 30 years old. He grew up in Damascus/Syria, where he studied Fine Arts (M.A.). In order to avoid being recruited and actively in the war, he left Syria in December 2011 for Turkey, working several months there for his way to Europe. His first attempt on the land route failed, he was picked up by the military and sent back to Turkey. After having earned enough money to pay traffickers, he left Turkey on a boat for Greece. On his way he passed FYROM, Serbia, Hungary and Austria and arrived in Germany in January 2015; now he is living in a bigger city in the east of Germany (Halle). Roulan’s family is Kurdish; they are assigned to the Sunnitic Islamic group (Fig. 13.1).

Fig. 13.1
figure 1

Genogram of Roulan’s family

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Roulan’s father Azad, 58 years old, is working as a medical doctor in a hospital in Damascus. Azad’s family of origin is living in a smaller city in the north of Syria (Derek). Most of the family members from this part live a “traditional life” according to Roulan. Azad’s father Jamil Derke (1934–2010) was a Kurdish Muslim. He worked as a businessman. Azad’s mother Dana Yaqubian (1937–2006) was a Christian woman from Armenia. She converted to Islam to marry Jamil (resulting in the rupture of contact with her parents and the rest of the family). Azad has nine siblings. Three are his senior. The two eldest sisters left home to live with their husbands’ families. The eldest son, Younes (1957–2016), lived in the childhood house with his parents, his two wives and his sister Evlin. With Ronahi he has 12 children. With Zayno (they got married in 2004) he has seven children. He became the head of the family after the death of Jamil. Azad’s youngest sister Evlin (44 years old) has a mental disorder and a physical handicap. She never went to school and needs special care. She lives at Younes’s house and the two widows are taking care of her. Azad’s brother Kandal is, according to Roulan, the most educated in the family. His wife Zana completed her studies at the university. All siblings are living in Derek except one brother and his family; they are living in the north of Iraq.

Roulan’s mother Fatina is 51 years old, a housewife, left school after 9 years of education. Fatina’s family of origin is also living in the countryside of Derek, in the north of Syria. Yousef Amin, her father (72 years old), is “a farmer who can read and write” (which was an exception several years ago, according to Roulan). His first wife Samiya (1946–2005, died of diabetes), was a housewife and also a Kurdish Muslim. Yousef and Samiya have seven children. Fatina is the second oldest. After his first wife died, he married Rojin (48); they have one child (8). One sister of Fatina, Gulbehar, migrated with her husband Fauzi and their children to Sweden in 2013. This happened as the oldest daughter married a Kurdish-Syrian man in 2011 who had been living in Sweden for many years. With his help the parents and younger siblings could be brought to Sweden. One brother of Fatina, named Ibrahim, has been living with his wife and three children in Dortmund (Germany) since September 2015. During the escape the wife was pregnant with the youngest child. Another brother of Fatina, Nabil (39 years old), has been living together with his wife Janda (27) and their son Nour (7) in Halle since November 2015, arriving in Germany along the same route as Roulan. Before that, they had lived in Damascus, too, while the other family members lived and still live in Derek.

The Digital Native Generation

Roulan, 30 years old (see above). Tuana, 29 years old; in September 2015 she got her degree in engineering. She got married in Istanbul in October 2015. Sipan, her husband, is 38 years old. He is of Kurdish ethnicity, was born in the north of Syria in a smaller city (Sere Kaniye) and has been living in Norway since 2012. Now the couple are living together in Oslo, Norway. Jwan, 26 years old, left Syria in May 2012. In Istanbul he met his wife Abegail (33 years old). She was born in Naples, Italy and has a Roman Catholic familial background. They got married in 2013 and are living and working in Naples now. Dalil, 25 years old, studied medicine in Damascus for 2 years; he left Syria in December 2013. He has been living in Regensburg/Germany since August 2015. Perwin (23) is living with her parents and Rania and Raman in Damascus. She is studying to become a teacher. Rania (19) started her studies in the nursery. She is also living in her parents’ flat. Raman is 16 years old and goes to school. According to Roulan “he is the next one who has to leave Syria because he is old enough for fighting”.

Roulan expressed that despite repeated requests his parents don’t want to leave Syria. We asked him about his contact to his parents and the extended family. As he hasn’t seen his parents and siblings for 3 years now, they have been communicating by smartphone applications (WhatsApp, Viber etc.) and calling each other at least 2–3 times per week. When they phone each other, he asks his sister Perwin for recipes and they talk about daily life—the different customs and traditions in the Eastern and Western societies .... He shared the following story:

A Wedding Story

Tuana, Roulan’s sister, had a lot of admirers who wished to marry her. But her father, Azad, didn’t give permission to the marriage of his daughter until she finished studying; he was concerned that marriage may interfere with her studies and she may never obtain her degree.

During her master’s studies in Damascus Tuana met a fellow student named Samar. Her brother Sipan had been living (for 3 years) in Oslo wishing to marry a woman from Syria. Samar thought of Tuana as being a good match for him: she told her family how kind, friendly and beautiful Tuana is. Samar introduced Tuana and Sipan to each other via Skype. For a half year they continued their communication through Internet and finally decided to get married. Following the tradition, Sipan contacted Tuana’s father by phone and formally asked permission to marry his daughter.

Now it was Azad’s responsibility to gather information about Sipan, his background and family. Since Sipan was living in Norway, Azad could only meet with Sipan’s relatives, living in Sere Kaniye (in the north of Syria). But driving to the other part of the country was not safe during the war and so Azad called his brothers and cousins from Derek and asked them to drive to Sere Kaniye. They accepted his request and travelled there to get more information .

After the visit to the village, they had a good impression about Sipan’s family and Sipan. Sipan was described as friendly, hard-working and coming from a wealthy family. Now Azad asked his sons’ opinion about the marriage. For Roulan, Tuana’s judgement was very important as they have a very close relationship. Since Tuana sincerely claimed that Sipan was a “good guy”, Roulan gave his consent. As for the other brothers, they followed the opinion of Roulan because he was the oldest. Finally, Azad had to make a decision. Considering all the information , he agreed to the wedding on one condition: Tuana had to finish her studies.

Half a year later Tuana had her Master’s degree. Then, for the first time, Sipan and Tuana met each other face to face in Istanbul, in the flat of Sipan’s relatives. Traditionally it is important that during the first meeting family members from both families are present. But most relatives couldn’t travel due to the war or ongoing asylum procedures; only Jywan had the possibility to visit from Italy. After the official first meeting, Sipan and Tuana saw each other the next day in Jywan’s hotel room and in his presence.

The wedding was one week later in Istanbul. The ceremony was modest and “didn’t feel real” for Tuana, as her family was not present. The way they shared the special moments was by sending photos via social networks and apps to Tuana’s and Sipan’s family members who couldn’t join the wedding ceremony.

Having finished the story, Roulan smiled in a melancholic way: when they phone, his parents often ask him to get married and have children ….

We do not know how Roulan’s story continued.

Doing World Family

This case well the interlinking of traditional and transcontextual family patterns: using communication technology is here an instrument in the process of generating and maintaining close contact and creating (pre-)marriage rituals . These rituals are a hybrid of face to face (travelling to the community) and mediated communication (phoning, skyping, posting pictures). The ICT serves its role in the life cycle stage (Falicov 2011), not only in that of Tuana’s but of the broader family system which is involved throughout. The communication tools are incorporated in shared—or at least respected—cultural values and family practices, which are both conveyed and understood by all participants. Through these practices—in this way of “doing family ”—family cohesion and family roles are kept up, transcending several national and continental borders.

Family performances are fundamentally social in nature, where the meaning of one’s actions has to be witnessed by relevant others if those actions are to be effective as constituting family practices (Finch 2007). Through the absence of familial witnesses during the ceremony , the pre-marriage rituals seemed to be more “real” to Tuana than the marriage itself—a phenomenon which was given tribute ex post by posting pictures in social media.

Following Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2014), we can regard Roulan’s family as a “world family ”. These kind of families are love relationships and kinship between people living in (multilocal) or coming from (multinational or multicontinental) different countries or continents. “World families are formed when the connection between family solidarity and loyalty to the state becomes attenuated” (ibid. p. 141), in the best-case scenario they are substituted by trust, tolerance and flexibility in family relations (Weine et al. 2004). Roulan’s family show a high extent of resilience strategies in continuing family life across countries and continents, even if, because of the war, they might feel “scattered in the diaspora” (Weine et al. 2004, p. 155). The challenge will be to form a patchwork of different life and family styles and to bear the contradictions between traditionalist and (post-)modern life models concerning family, including religion, gender roles etc. (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2014; Papadopoulos and Hildebrand 1997).

Concept of Acculturation: An Ideology?

Newer literature on working with migrants and refugees points to the insufficiency clinicians face by sticking to a linear model of migration and assimilation (Borcsa 2010; Falicov 2008; Voulgaridou et al. 2006; Weine et al. 2004). Observing and studying families today which live “across great geographic, state, and cultural differences brings forth a very different set of difficulties and calls for a very different set of strategies than those captured by the term “acculturation”” (Weine et al. 2004 p. 158), which has guided cross-cultural mental health work with transnational families for the past several decades. This is supported by health care research , pointing in the direction that trans-cultural familial practices and a hybrid self-conception are associated with higher familial and individual resilience (Falicov 2011, 2012).

Many of us work with transnational families and/or their children, and this number will increase. “The protagonists in the migration saga include those who leave, those who stay, and those who come and go for generations to come” (Falicov 2005, p. 400). In the work with globalized families, the focus cannot only be the “immigrant(s)” in the receiving country but the family as a whole interacting across national and continental borders with the help of ICTs. We agree with Bacigalupe and Cámara (2012) that clinicians working with world families, therefore, are situated in new communicational circumstances that have implications for how individuals, couples and families behave, think and feel. We as clinicians have to assume that family members abroad might play a significant role in decision-making processes, even in everyday life (Baldassar, Baldock, and Wilding 2007; Horst 2006; Hunter 2015; Schier 2009; Wilding 2006). We have to take into consideration intergenerational bonds, legacies and delegations which do not stop at the national or continental borders and are integrated into daily practices through communication. “A clinician working with the transnational family without the constraints of geography or time accepts the fluid nature of the virtual and real” (Bacigalupe and Cámara 2012, p. 1434). This is especially true for the “global generation” who never knew a world without ICTs—be it on the side of the client or on that of the therapist.

As shown, we as systemic therapists and trainers have to face new realities—most trainers may be “digital immigrants” (Prensky 2001), while the new generation of family/systemic therapists are more and more “digital natives”. Even if the last years have been clearly marked by cultural sensitivity in systemic therapy and training, up to now there has been—compared to the mundane influence we can observe every day—not that much knowledge of how information and communication technologies might be a resource for families and their therapists.

The Genogram 4.0 Interview

Since the early days of using the family genogram there have been numerous developments and enrichments to this method. Especially cultural aspects have been reflected and implemented in the last decades—in therapy as well as in training (e.g. Hardy and Laszloffy 1995; Schellenberger et al. 2007; Watts-Jones 1997; Yznaga 2008). Inspired by the study of Roulan’s family and based on the assumption that through global and technological changes we have to conceptualize families progressively as world families (even if they do not move), we want to question the meaning of the relational space(s) of belonging. Furthermore, by integrating ICTs as a “new family member” we wish to consider its impact on the one-national or transnational family life. For this purpose we have constructed an interview (see Table 13.1) which can be used (1) in therapeutic work with families, (2) in family therapy training for increasing self-reflexivity (a) in the influences of values and beliefs related to dominant stories of one-nation families, (b) in the impact of ICTs on relationships; and (3) in research , e.g. in family studies linked to these topics. It consists of four parts:

Table 13.1 The Genogram 4.0 Interview
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Part I: Structural Genogram

This part of the genogram graphically presents demographic information about the family. Questions asked and drawn in a genogram interview include information on education status, profession, relationship (marriage, divorce), medical histories; further who lives in the household and where other family members live (McGoldrick and Gerson 1985; McGoldrick et al. 1999).

Part II: Uniqueness Variables

Through the methodological nationalism , migrants or asylum seekers are often confined by their environment (and especially by the media) to one aspect of their identity, be it their status or ethnicity. Refugees might be pathologized after having experienced war, which is an “epistemological confusion between morality and pathology ” (Papadopoulos 2001, p. 416) and therefore looked at through a certain lens. Asking questions about their “normal” and divers family relations can easily get out of sight.

Part III: Relational Spaces of Belonging

In this section the attention is drawn to geographical and symbolic spaces of belonging, like the country, the region, the language and “home” (Dutta 2010). How are these features constructed?

Part IV: Use of Information and Communication Technologies

In this part we focus on the use of information and communication technologies. Specificities among family members or subsystems in using ICTs as well as certain rituals are discussed.

Upgrade

This segment deals with the impact ICTs have on the life of the therapist, especially with regard to the relationship with the clients (Table 13.1).

Use in Therapy

The genogram interview can be applied in multiple ways, adjusted to the setting, the problem constellation or the mandate. The interview combines linear , circular and hypothesizing questions which make it an intervention and consequently have to be adapted to the concrete circumstances. They should be understood as inspiration and guidelines for the therapist, not to “know” before asking the concrete member(s) of the family about their subjective worldview . This goes hand in hand with a second order approach, where the therapist takes a self-in-system stance and shifts more into a collaborative role with the clients (Turner 1991), searching together for resources in the system.

The four parts can be applied with regard to how they fit into the given situation, e.g. using the circumstance that one child is texting during the session.

Use in Training and Supervision

Much has been written about the need of cultural competence or a self-reflexive stance of the therapist in working with families from other cultures (see for a critical review Rober and De Haene 2014). But what if we challenge “home” with all the positive connotations as a dominant narrative of our cultural heritage, including methodological nationalism ? Could we imagine a life as nomads? Without possessions except what we can carry?

The part on ICTs should foster self-reflexivity as regards routine patterns in our everyday life. We respond in one way or in another to the “environment of affordances” which we face, e.g. through smartphones. The poles are “excluding the machine from our life” to “not being able to live one day without being permanently online”. This attitude will obviously create a bias on how we look at the family members we work with and their use of/ their relationship to ICTs. It might happen that we are not open to investigating communication technology as a potential resource for a family system and to using it as an instrument in therapy or that we overestimate its potential.

Use in Research

The dominance of quantitative research playing its role in this development, over years an obvious gap has developed between psychotherapy research and practice (Lambert 2013). This is unfortunate and can be resolved especially by integrating research methods into training family and systemic therapists which better suit their everyday practice (Borcsa and Rober 2016).

“Few studies or practices have linked findings from existent ethnographic research and family therapy, when in fact there is a natural marriage between the two” (Tubbs and Burton 2005, p. 139; see also Simon 2012). Ethnographic research and the stance of respectful curiosity in systemic therapy have much in common. Both go along with the exposure of our selves to unknown realms while creating cooperation. When Falicov suggests that trainees should interview also non-clinical families, she refers to the different roles in the respective processes: “the trainee can explore culture more fully and with less pressure” (1995, p. 8), i.e. without the need to be helpful at the same time. The switch between the two positions can be enlightening and should be much more practised in training (not only in academic context but also in private institutes) from our point of view.

Conclusion

ICTs and mobility are the two expressions of our globalized world. It seems as if there is “no way back” with regard to these developments. “Globalisation has brought about a fundamental shift in the way families live their lives” (Mills 2014, p. 259). We have to consider a higher complexity in working with them, they being one-national or transnational. Real and virtual communication is used in an integrative manner in the lives of most families, those becoming globalized through technology. We as therapists and systemic practitioners have to face this interlinking, too. We have to acknowledge that ICTs can play a key role in keeping up family resilience in families living in different places and that they can be used as a resource in therapy (e.g. by inviting family members to attend a session virtually). There are technical, methodical and ethical questions and challenges to be resolved (data protection, higher risk of self-exposure in mediated communications, see Eichenberg and Stetina 2015), a process which is already very much on its way in individual therapy. Interestingly, individual therapy research shows that there is no general negative influence on the therapist–client relationship in doing therapy online (Cook and Doyle 2004; Sucala et al. 2012). Systemic research in this field is a desideratum.