Astronaut family is a term that is used to describe a family unit where the members reside in different countries across the world. The term is in contrast to the "nuclear family

Nuclear family

Nuclear family is a term used to define a family group consisting of a father and mother and their children. This is in contrast to the smaller single-parent family, and to the larger extended family. Nuclear families typically center on a married couple, but not always; the nuclear family may have...

".

The term was coined by Aihwa Ong in his publication Flexible Citizenship: The cultural logics of transnationality in 1999. The term is especially used to describe Chinese families, who have spread across the globe.

The astronaut family represents the growing transnationalism

Transnationalism

Transnationalism is a social movement and scholarly research agenda grown out of the heightened interconnectivity between people and the receding economic and social significance of boundaries among nation states....

 of peoples' identities that accompanies the growing globalization

Globalization

Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...

.