Abstract

The family reunification of immigrants is an increasing object of study in the academic field. The right to family life is recognized by the main instruments of international and domestic law, both for the benefits that it entails for individuals and for societies as a whole, since the family is recognized as an institution with an important integrating function. In the face of this discourse we find the growing transnationalization of immigrant families, who are forced to live in the distance the functions that others exercise in increasingly broad and stable areas, given the growing restriction of the right to family life for immigrants through reunification at host society. The article analyzes in a reflexive way the contradictory situation between human rights, on the one hand, and the forced transnational family situation of many immigrants, on the other. To consider the transnational family as a new type of family has, at least, some shadows that must be clarify. _Received_: 25 July 2016 _Accepted_: 30 November 2016 _Published online_: 11 December 2017.