2013/10/15 by Paolo Boccagni
Health Professions · Social Sciences · #Employment and Welfare Studies #Migration and Labor Dynamics #Migration, Identity, and Health
paper · doi:10.1177/0261018313500867
openalex publication_date 2013/10/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25
This article makes a case for investigating the needs of migrant women as transnational mothers, and the sources of social support accessible to them. Much has been written on migrants’ homebound commitments and obligations in terms of transnational caregiving, care chains, and the like. Less analysed are the consequences on their personal needs and demands, which are out of synch with the territorially-based social welfare provision of either sending or receiving countries. Building on my fieldwork with Ecuadorian care workers in Italy, I explore migrant women’s constructions of their care needs and the limited social support they rely upon in host and home societies, as well as in the ‘intermediate space’ of their cross-border care practices. Overall, the prospects for their indirect needs for care to emerge as a public issue are contentious and uncertain. By delving into them, though, critical light is shed on the ambivalences and tensions inherent in migrants’ practice of care, at many levels: concerning its gendered bases, its elusive boundaries and the overload of affections and expectations which it typically bears.