‘I have a child and a garden’: young people's experiences of care giving in transnational families

Abstract

This article concerns young people's experiences with care giving when their parents migrate. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 21 young people from Transylvania (Romania), the article examines their accounts of living in transnational families: how the experience of care giving intersects their transitions to adulthood and the personalised meanings young people attach to their actions. This article argues that care giving relationships are more complex than the previous literature on ‘care drain’ and ‘transnational care giving’ has shown. The research demonstrates that young people do act as caregivers, despite traditionally being incorporated in the category of ‘children left behind’ and contribute, together with their migrant parents, to the global dynamics of care giving. This article argues that gendered approaches to care provision help to create an adultocratic vision of the position of young people in transnational families. Finally, this article calls for discourses on care giving to incorporate the generational dimension in ways that recognise young people's care giving roles.

Keywords:

• work
• young people
• transnational families
• care
• migration

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank to two anonymous reviewers and to participants from the workshop ‘Transnational family making – children, young people and migration’ held during the 12th Medditeranean Research Meeting, EUI, Florence, 6–9 April 2011. Special thanks are also due to Amy Ciortea and Julia Schumann for proofreading the manuscript.

Notes

1. Given Romania's EU membership, the very concept of migration is questionable and technically, to be replaced with intra-European mobility. However, this research will use the concept of migration in its non-technical meaning.

2. More than 77% of migrants have a secondary education degree and 9% hold a university degree (Shima 2010).

3. Resided 4 years and less in receiving country (EUROSTAT).

4. Two young girls were interviewed twice.

5. This does not exclude consultations with parent, but refers more to a ‘personal’ way of ‘doing things’ and of reacting to unexpected situations.

6. As mentioned previously, young people may also enter this category, as the dependency on parents’ provision is rather lengthy in Romania.