Many people in the Global South have left behind rural homes in search of employment in urban and transnational labor markets often defined by precarious work. Employment is insecure, uncertain, and temporary, and for transnational migrants, there is the constant risk of deportation. Although geographers have studied such migrant precarity, there is an increasing interest in its translocal dimensions, particularly related to how precarious work travels home and affects left-behind family members. This scholarship, however, tends to assume that precarity arises primarily in the spaces of production. Drawing on twenty months of ethnographic fieldwork in rural Cambodia, we argue that precarity simultaneously emerges from the challenges of social reproduction faced by kin in rural communities. As such, we further develop the concept of translocal precarity to capture the fragility of social reproduction strategies that migrant households employ across space. Translocal precarity is the looming threat that family members’ efforts to support one another might fall apart due to the instability of urban labor markets in tandem with a lack of sustaining infrastructures in rural areas. Our argument advances geographic scholarship on precarity by explaining how it is experienced across the translocal relations that connect the productive and reproductive labor of household members living in different locations.

全球南方的许多人离开农村家园，在城市和跨国劳动力市场寻找工作，这些市场往往以不稳定的工作为特征。就业是不安全的、不确定的和暂时的，对于跨国移民来说，一直存在被驱逐出境的风险。尽管地理学家已经研究过这种移民的不稳定性，但人们对其跨地域维度的兴趣越来越大，特别是与不稳定的工作如何回家和影响留守家庭成员有关。然而，这种学术研究倾向于假设不稳定主要出现在生产空间中。借助在柬埔寨农村进行的 20 个月的民族志田野调查，我们认为，农村社区中亲属面临的社会再生产挑战同时也出现了不稳定。像这样，我们进一步发展了跨地域不稳定性的概念，以捕捉移民家庭跨空间采用的社会再生产策略的脆弱性。跨地方不稳定是迫在眉睫的威胁，由于城市劳动力市场的不稳定以及农村地区缺乏可持续的基础设施，家庭成员相互支持的努力可能会分崩离析。我们的论点通过解释在连接居住在不同地点的家庭成员的生产和再生产劳动的跨地域关系中如何体验不稳定性，推进了关于不稳定性的地理学术研究。跨地方不稳定是迫在眉睫的威胁，由于城市劳动力市场的不稳定以及农村地区缺乏可持续的基础设施，家庭成员相互支持的努力可能会分崩离析。我们的论点通过解释在连接居住在不同地点的家庭成员的生产和再生产劳动的跨地域关系中如何体验不稳定性，推进了关于不稳定性的地理学术研究。跨地方不稳定是迫在眉睫的威胁，由于城市劳动力市场的不稳定以及农村地区缺乏可持续的基础设施，家庭成员相互支持的努力可能会分崩离析。我们的论点通过解释在连接居住在不同地点的家庭成员的生产和再生产劳动的跨地域关系中如何体验不稳定性，推进了关于不稳定性的地理学术研究。