Immigrant girls as caregivers to younger siblings: a transnational feminist analysis

Abstract

This article employs a transnational feminist lens to examine the experiences of racialised immigrant girls who provide care for their younger siblings. The article draws on findings from a participatory action research study in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada to examine the role that immigrant girls’ caregiving practices play in transnational families’ social, economic, and cultural survival. It argues that greater attention should be given to the diverse and complex contexts, consequences, costs, and contributions of immigrant girls’ caregiving labour.

Keywords:

• immigrant girls
• transnational families
• caregiving
• gender
• identity
• migration
• youth

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the important contributions of Winnie Chow, Rani Sandhu, Sylvia Cottell, Zara Suleman, and Xiaobei Chen to the research project. Special thanks to the girls who so willingly shared their perspectives with us. Our community partner, Antidote: Multiracial & Indigenous Girls & Women’s Network, has been instrumental in the success of the research project.

Notes

1. In Canada, a growing proportion of children are immigrants or children of immigrants, most from non‐European backgrounds. Immigrants comprise 18.3% of Canada’s population and the increase in the immigrant population has been more than three times the increase in the Canadian‐born population. The census also shows that approximately 16% of ‘visible minorities’ in Canada are children between the ages of 0 and 14 (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development 2003; Statistics Canada 2005).

2. Much current research on gender, transnationalism, and caring labour has tended to be concerned with the mobility of female care workers across national borders and the transferring out of caring labour in care‐receiving and care‐providing families (e.g. Orellana et al. 2001; Parreñas 2001, 2005).

3. Participants identified the topics for the workshops, which included resumé writing, job search, public speaking, first aid and CPR, unlabelling fashion, and video making.