Transnational families, migration and the circulation of care : understanding mobility and absence in family life

Without denying the difficulties that confront migrants and their distant kin, this volume highlights the agency of family members in transnational processes of care, in an effort to acknowledge the transnational family as an increasingly common family form and to question the predominantly negative conceptualisations of this type of family. It re-conceptualises transnational care as a set of activities that circulates between home and host countries - across generations - and fluctuates over the life course, going beyond a focus on mother-child relationships to include multidirectional exchanges across generations and between genders. It highlights, in particular, how the sense of belonging in transnational families is sustained by the reciprocal, though uneven, exchange of caregiving, which binds members together in intergenerational networks of reciprocity and obligation, love and trust that are simultaneously fraught with tension, contest and relations of unequal power. The chapters that make up this volume cover a rich array of ethnographic case studies including analyses of transnational families who circulate care between developing nations in Africa, Latin America and Asia to wealthier nations in North America, Europe and Australia. There are also examples of intra- and extra- European, Australian and North American migration, which involve the mobility of both the unskilled and working class as well as the skilled middle and aspirational classes.

Part A: Conceptualising Care Circulation Introduction: Transnational Family Caregiving Through the Lens of Circulation Loretta Baldassar and Laura Merla 1. Locating Transnational Care Circulation in Migration and Family Studies Loretta Baldassar and Laura Merla Part B: Care Circulation: Theoretical and Empirical Considerations 2. Mapping the New Plurality of Transnational Families: A Life Course Perspective Karin Wall and Claudio Bolzman 3. Care (and) Circulation Revisited: A Conceptual Map of Diversity in Transnational Parenting Paola Bonizzoni and Paolo Boccagni 4. Care Circulation, Absence and Affect in Transnational Families Marina Ariza 5. A Macro Perspective on Transnational Families and Care Circulation: Situating Capacity, Obligation and Family Commitments Laura Merla Part C: Gendered Care Circuits: Exploring Absence Beyond Mother-Child Dyads 6. Migration and Care: Intimately Related Aspects of Caribbean Family and Kinship Karen Fog Olwig 7. Ghanaian Children in Transnational Families: Understanding the Experiences of Left-Behind Children Through Local Parenting Norms Miranda Poeze and Valentina Mazzucato 8. Men's Caregiving Practices in Filipino Transnational Families: A Case Study of Left-Behind Fathers and Sons Asuncion Fresnoza-Flot 9. Polish Male Migrants in London: The Circulation of Fatherly Care Majella Kilkey Part D: The Mobilities of Care as a Resource Within and Beyond Transnational Families 10. Care Circulation in Transnational Families: Social and Cultural Capitals in Italian and Caribbean Migrant Communities in Britain Tracey Reynolds and Elisabetta Zontini 11. "Boomerang Remittances" and Circular Care: A Study of Indian Transnational Families in Australia Supriya Singh and Anuja Cabraal 12. Middle Class Transnational Caregiving: The Circulation of Care Between Family and Extended Kin Networks in the Global North Loretta Baldassar and Raelene Wilding