How do Family Territories inform us about Family Relationships?

The challenge for contemporary research on the family which, in demography and sociology, is often dominated by quantitative survey results is to device research tools allowing to describe family life beyond the household so that the spatial dynamics of kinship relations can be captured (Widmer and Jallinoja, 2008 ; Bonvalet and Lelièvre, 2012). In that respect the latest round of the French Family survey, a nationally representative survey (367,000 individuals aged 18 and over) associated to the 2011 census provides information on the places of residence of all family members outside the household (parents and children of the respondents). Taking advantage of this large-scale survey, our objective is to give an innovative overview of both the spatial configuration of families and the functioning of family spaces. We will address the diversity of family structures and detail the variation of family composition and spatial concentration/dispersion according to the relevant characteristics of both the families (size and age of the respondent) and the locations (proximity, urban/rural). We will then, following on previous work done (Lelièvre and Imbert, 2003 ; Lelièvre and Robette, 2010) describe the family networks and establish a typology of these ‘family spaces’.