An international workshop, Oslo, Norway, 20-21 November 2008
Transnational parenthood and children-left-behind
Many international migrants are parents who have left without their children. In some countries of emigration, there is an established tradition of fostering and a view that temporary separation of children from their biological parents is not a bad thing. In other countries, there is widespread concern that current emigration of parents is a serious threat to the well-being of a generation of children.
Research on transnational parenthood and children-left-behind has developed rapidly in recent years. The International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO) and the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo have hoste a workshop that brought together international expertise in the field in order to identify commonalities and differences in research findings, explore implications for policy, and identify areas of priority for future research. Questions raised included the following: How do international migrants practice parenting from a distance? How are care arrangements for children organized? How do children of migrants experience the separation from their mother or father? How are relations between biological parents and those who care for the children negotiated?
The workshop was convened by Jørgen Carling, Senior Researcher at PRIO, and Cecilie Øien, Researcher at Fafo Applied International Studies, in connection with the project Informal Child Migration in Europe, funded by the Research Council of Norway. Contact person at PRIO was Karin Fathimath Afeef.
Participants, from top left: Cecilie Øien, Karin Afeef, María Hernández Carretero, Elizabeth L'Orange Fürst, Ewa Palenga-Möllenbeck, Esben Leifsen, Paolo Boccagni, Alexander Tumczuk, Elspeth Craham, Cecília Menjívar, Leah Schmalzbauer, Heike Drotbohm, Ernesto Castañeda-Tinoco, Jeronimo Crotina, Camilla Andres, Mala Jokhan, Andreea Torre, Gladis Aguirre Vidal, Kristine Zentgraf, Jørgen Carling, Tekla Nicholas, Olena Feduyk, Fedora Gasparetti, Sunethra Perera, and Paola Bonizzoni. (Link to high-resolution version)
Papers presented at the workshop are listed below. (The organizers are not in a position to distribute the papers, many of which were draft versions.)
- Elspeth Graham (co-authored with Lucy Jordan and Brenda Yeoh): Questioning the well-being of children left behind in South-East Asia: An introduction to the CHAMPSEA study
- Sunethra Perera: Parents' overseas migration and children-left-behind in Sri Lanka: Care arrangements and impact on child educational outcomes
- Ewa Palenga-Möllenbeck (co-authored with Helma Lutz): The 'side effects' of transnational motherhood: the children in the Ukraine and Poland on their mothers' migration
- Olena Feduyk: Ukrainian Female Labor Migration To Italy: The Role Of The Photographs In Measuring Time And Maintaining Connections
- Fedora Gasparetti (co-authored with Dinah Hannaford): Relying on teranga: Senegalese migrants to Italy and their children left behind
- Camilla Andres: Privileged Young Adults in Accra: Experiences of being left-behind
- Heike Drotbohm: Redefining “Strong Ties”: Transnational motherhood, migration policies and life’s contingencies from a Cape Verdean perspective
- Jørgen Carling: Mother–child trajectories in Cape Verdean transnational families
- Tekla Nicholas: Remittances, Education, and Family Reunification: Transnational Strategies of Haitian Immigrant Families in South Florida
- Cecilia Menjívar: Family separation and immigration law: Central American cases in Phoenix, Arizona
- Leah Schmalzbauer: Family divided: The class formation of Honduran transnational families
- Gladis Aguirre Vidal: Reunification, Fostering and Poverty in Ecuadorian Transnational Community
- Jeronimo Cortina: Beyond the Money: The Impact of International Migration on Children Life Satisfaction
- Esben Leifsen and Alexander Tymczuk: Care at a distance: Ukrainian and Ecuadorian transnational parenthood from Spain
- Paola Bonizzoni: Immigrant families between transnationalism and reunification: Children’s and parents' perspectives on two critical turning points
- Kristine Zentgraf (co-authored with Norma Stoltz Chinchilla): Immigrant Family Separation and Reunification: A Framework for Analysis
- Ernesto Castañeda-Tinoco: Families in limbo: The family dynamics inside remittance economies
- Valentina Mazzucato (co-authored with Djamila Schans): Transnational families, children and the migration-development nexus
- Mala Jokhan: ‘I will never do it, I will break the spell’: Perspectives from children of parental migration in Trinidad
- Paolo Boccagni: Practicing motherhood at a distance: What is retained, what is lost. An ethnography on Ecuadorian transnational families
- Andreea Torre: Care migration and the impact on families. A comparative study of women migration from Romania, Ukraine and Ecuador
- Leisy Abrego: Economic Well-Being in Salvadoran Transnational Families: How Gender Affects Remittance Practices*
- Natalia Berti: Adolescents in transnational social spaces, emotional and psychological dimensions of assimilation*
- Deborah Boehm: (Dis)placed: Transnational Mexican Children in an Age of Deportation*
- Joanna Dreby: Children and Power in Mexican Transnational Families*
- Jessaca Leinaweaver: Outsourcing Care: How Peruvian Migrants Meet Transnational Family Obligations*
*) Associated papers, presented by the organizers. Authors were not present.
