Adéla Souralová

Where have all the fathers gone? Remarks on feminist research on transnational fatherhood

ABSTRACT Research on transnational relations has been increasing over the last two decades. Since 1997, when the notion of ‘transnational motherhood’ was investigated by Avila and Hondagneu-Sotelo, many scholars have considered how parents arrange their parenthood across borders. This article explores how social scientists examine male migrants as fathers. We review empirical work on the migration of men and explore how transnational fatherhood has been examined, understood, and utilized in feminist research. We ask ‘Where have all the fathers gone?’ and evaluate feminist conceptualizations of transnational fatherhood over the last two decades. We organize our discussion around three stages of feminist research on transnational migrant fatherhood. These stages are: (1) discovery of unseen transnational fatherhood, (2) conceptualization of breadwinning transnational fatherhood, and (3) shift to conceptualization of caring transnational fatherhood. These three stages depict the changing content of the notions of transnational fatherhood. The article contributes to current research on transnational families and feminist research on migrant men. We show how gendered norms and stereotypes prevail in migration research and the ways in which they are inscripted in how scholars approach the male migration experience.

Children in paid care-giving work: Invisible receivers or active agents in caring relations?

Despite the growing sociological and anthropological literature on paid care-giving and domestic work, there continues to be a gap in the scholarship on delegated care work, namely, the invisibility of children as care-receivers. The article argues for the incorporation of children’s experiences, expectations and perceptions with paid care work. I review both empirical and theoretical work to shed light on what we know about children as care recipients based on current scholarship, which relies mainly on the perspectives of care-givers and care-managers. The aim is to emphasize the importance and necessity of looking at the children’s perspective. Throughout the article, I formulate several questions which should be asked and answered in future research which integrate the recipients’ perspective. I argue that addressing the perspective of these children is not just to add and stir in another perspective to the already-established framework of paid childcare. Rather, it leads us to re-think the grounds of research on care work, generating a new research agenda.

Turning to or Away from Religion: The Role of Religion in the Lives of Romanian Migrants in the Czech Republic

This sociological interview-based study explores the religious experiences of Orthodox Romanians living in one particular city in the Czech Republic. Drawing on narrative interviews, the article investigates the roles and meanings of religion in post-migration everyday life. We distinguish two rather opposing forms of religious mobilization in the lives of Romanian migrants in Czech society. The first form emphasizes religion as a means of maintaining transnational ties and networks; the second stresses the liberation from religion and the (not only religious) structures of Romanian society through, after, and because of migration. While the first includes various forms of practising Romanian orthodoxy, the latter entails the secularization of migrants and their emphasis on not belonging to a transnational social field. The aim of this article is to illuminate how Romanian migrants in the Czech Republic make sense of religious practices and how they understand these practices in the context of their migration experience. The findings are carefully interpreted within the context of Czech society.

Delegation of childcare in immigrant families and its consequences

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the role of social reproduction tasks (motherhood and childcare) in the reproduction of cultures and the social incorporation of first-generation and second-generation immigrants. It draws upon a very particular case study of Vietnamese immigrant families that hire Czech nannies for their second-generation children. The article presents an analysis of 15 interviews with Vietnamese mothers who delegate(d) childcare and 20 interviews with second-generation Vietnamese children who have had a Czech nanny. It is based on the assumption that the social reproductive sphere includes not only the embodied work of childcare but also the work of reproducing cultures and social incorporation. Many scholars argue that the activities connected with childcare (usually called ‘bridging’ activities, including communication with public authorities and schools and participation in the local neighbourhood) that are traditionally performed by women take on a new dimension after migration. They become the means by which immigrant mothers are integrated and develop the social capital and skills that help them adapt to the new country. What happens in an immigrant family when caregiving (including the bridging activities) is delegated to another person? How does the role of the mother – with its limited content – shape the women’s position in the new country? The aim of this study is to examine how both mothers and children make sense of the delegation of care and its consequences for the social incorporation of first-generation mothers who delegate care and for second-generation children who are cared for by nannies. Addressing this particular case of migrant mothers who perform a limited form of mothering, the paper illuminates the key role of motherhood in women’s post-migratory integration and contributes to the scholarly discussion on the meanings of (migrant) motherhood.

Transnational grandchildhood: negotiating intergenerational grandchild–grandparent ties across borders

ABSTRACT Recent research on migration has paid particular attention to transnational family relations. Numerous studies have dealt with the transnational organisation of caregiving, transnational motherhood, transnational fatherhood, etc. In these studies, the children presented are typically those left behind by their migrant parents. In the research on second-generation transnational childhood, little attention is paid to how transnational family relations are perceived by the children themselves. The aim of this paper is to introduce the notion of transnational grandchildhood, which captures the meanings and practices of intergenerational family ties that children maintain with their grandparents in the country of their origin. The paper draws upon interviews with second-generation Vietnamese children living with their parents in the Czech Republic and away from their grandparents in Vietnam. The paper should initiate a scholarly discussion about transnational intergenerational relationships. This paper contributes to the research on children’s understanding of transnational kinship ties and transnational intergenerational relations with their grandparents.

Péče na prodej. Jak se práce z lásky stává placenou službou

Co maji spolecneho miniskolky, hotely pro psy, hodinovi manžele, agentury poskytujici peci o seniory, děti ci domacnost? Jedna se o subjekty prodavajici služby jestě donedavna vykonavane z lasky – rozuměj bezplatně – samotnými clenkami a cleny domacnosti. Kniha Pece na prodej se věnuje soucasnemu trendu přesouvani ukonů tzv. socialni reprodukce ze soukrome sfery rodin a domacnosti do veřejneho prostředi trhu. Autoři předkladaji zjistěni kvalitativniho výzkumu, který se zaměřil na vytvařeni nabidky těchto služeb a jejich prezentaci klientům a klientkam. Perspektiva poskytovatelů, tedy majitelek a majitelů uvedených agentur, je velmi zajimava. Nabizi vhled do mysleni a praktik lidi, kteři aktivně řidi vlak marketizace nasich životů.

Emerging age asymmetries in the research relationship : challenges of exploring transition to the fourth age

ABSTRACT This article opens the discussion on age asymmetries within the research relationship between researchers who are young and able-bodied and research participants who are much older and have acquired impairments in later life. Based on the knowledge of age relations, we present our conceptualisation of power imbalances based on age. We see these asymmetries as co-existing with other forms of power imbalances between researchers and participants, and argue that these asymmetries are not the results of the limitations of the older adults but rather the consequences of different constellations of possibilities for researchers and participants. Moreover, we assert that taking these asymmetries into account is a necessary step when conducting research with people with acquired impairment in later life. As researchers, reflecting on age asymmetries helped us to avoid othering our research participants and prevented us from marginalising their life experiences. Drawing upon our own research, we reflect upon the network of cognitive, physical and social asymmetries that emerged in our research relationships and identify the main challenges that we faced. In the presence of some of these age asymmetries, we approach the research relationship through the roles which we played vis-à-vis the participants. We consider reflecting and addressing these asymmetries to be a necessary step in creating and maintaining a research relationship based on equality. Only a reflexive and transparent approach to these power imbalances can ensure that data collection and analysis do not contribute to their reproduction. This article presents some general insights on research practices and contributes to the debate on power imbalances in qualitative research. The article also contributes to gerontology and provides new insights about the lives of those individuals with acquired impairment in later life, a topic that has so far received inadequate research attention.