Navigating transnational childcare relationships: migrant parents and their children's caregivers in the origin country
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Date
2017
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Publisher
Global Networks Partnership and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Abstract
In this article, we investigate the daily work entailed in maintaining
informal transnational childcare relationships between migrant parents and the
children’s kin or non-kin caregivers in the country of origin. By applying the concept
of ‘kin work’, we seek to understand how work is performed within transnational
care relationships. Using a simultaneous matched sample methodology that gives
equal weight to data on both sides of the transnational relationship, a team of
researchers collected ethnographic data from Ghanaian migrant parents in the
Netherlands and from their children’s caregivers in Ghana. This approach allowed
us to investigate the day-to-day care work from two perspectives – namely the visible
and the invisible actions of the people involved in creating the kinship relationships
of care work. Discrepancies in perceptions were uncovered because we compared
data obtained on both sides of the relationship. These findings contribute to our
understanding of the ways in which long-distance practices facilitate the
maintenance of kin relationships and how the inability to perform these can lead to
tensions
Description
Keywords
CAREGIVERS, CHILDCARE, GHANA, KIN WORK, TRANSNATIONAL FAMILIES, THE NETHERLANDS