A selected review of national and international literature about family and generations shows how changes in power relations among nations favor different historical emphases on hierachy, solidarity, inequality and rights. When family is referred to as a basis for national or group identities, it does so from the perspective of "hierarchical inclusion" and of "integration, patterning and incorporation". Evolutionism, personality and culture, structural-functionalism, urbanization and modernization, emphasize hierarchies, unity and stability, restricting generations to a similar agenda. When family is referred to as a means of resistence against inequality, it does so in reference to "modes of production, reduction of poverty and reproductive planning" and leaves more space to discuss generations as unequal an separate age groups with their own interests. This approach intensifies with the emphasis on plurality and fragmentation of families in a global world, permitting the treatment of generations as groups with equal permitindo que gerações recebam tratamento como grupos com igual rights to diversity with their own cultures, partially dissociated from families. How migration and mobility are related to the ambiguities and polissemy of inter-generational relations and family.
families; generations; polissemy; mobility; nations; power