ABSTRACT
The cognitive linguist George Lakoff argues that Nation-as-Family is a 'conceptual metaphor' from which others emerge, such as that of the government as a parent and the citizens as children. This chapter traces the Nation-as-Family in those phrasings of a motherland, of founding fathers of a nation or in the diplomacy of a family of nations and brother countries. It inquires into cultural constructions of ideal families and how they may be related to dynamics of belonging to the nation. The chapter reviews some recurrent tropes in the representation of migrant parents focusing then on the figure of the mothers as marginalized from society and on the grandparents who establish close affective relationships with their children and present the value of preserving ancestral knowledge. It focuses on how the metaphors of kin and orphanhood overlap with metaphors of nation and care shedding light on how exclusion is culturally reproduced.
