Transnational Childhood Experiences and Adulthood Trajectories: A Linked Lives Perspective

Article explores how young adults in Lithuania who experienced transnational family life during childhood narrate adulthood through the lens of the ‘linked lives’ perspective. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with individuals aged 18 to 35, the study employs a methodological approach that combines timelining and visual mapping to capture the subjective significance of life events. The findings reveal how experiences of parental migration are remembered, interpreted, and woven into personal narratives of adulthood. Participants reflect on their past through three main narrative forms – linear, fragmented, and projective – each illustrating ways of integrating childhood experiences into their current life trajectories. Narratives highlight how intergenerational ties and socio-historical contexts shape individual understandings of adulthood. This study contributes to sociological understandings of adulthood in the context of transnational family histories. Young people do not passively inherit family legacies, but actively engage with them in constructing alternative or continuity-based life paths.