Paolo Boccagni

Practising Motherhood at a Distance: Retention and Loss in Ecuadorian Transnational Families

This article builds on an ethnographic study of a migration flow linking Ecuador and Italy. Through personal relationships built up during fieldwork, I was able to delve into the changing interactions between migrant mothers and the children they leave behind, looking also at constructions of ‘mothering at a distance’ in both their host and their home societies. For migrant women, practising transnational motherhood entails communicating frequently, sending remittances and showing a deep affective involvement. The attitudes and practices of migrant mothers suggest an ambivalent commitment: an attempt to exert control from afar over their childrens daily lives, alongside a perception that any such attempt may prove inadequate; a struggle to work and save hard, alongside fears that the money sent home may be spent improperly; and a framing of migration as a necessary self-sacrifice, together with concerns about losing their grip on their childrens upbringing. The article also looks at the role of some key variables—for example, the role of other family members in care arrangements; the influence of temporal and spatial distances on the evolution of intimate relationships; and the prospects for family reunion—in accounting for the impact of transnational caregiving practices. A final question arises. To what extent and in what realms—that is, in relation to the affective domain, the realm of communication or the area of material reproduction—can a transnational caregiving relationship be mutually interchangeable with a proximity-based one?

Rethinking transnational studies Transnational ties and the transnationalism of everyday life

Once an alternative approach to the mainstream, transnationalism has gained increasing currency and salience in migration studies. What is left of its theoretical import, however, after establishing that proper transnational activities, aside from remittances, are relatively infrequent; and that such practices are not incompatible with – and are even facilitated by – successful integration overseas? This article contends that the theoretical toolkit of transnationalism can still be helpful in studying migrant life trajectories, with particular respect to their everyday life sphere. Theoretical progress should be made, however, in three regards: (1) a stronger connection with globalization studies; (2) further elaboration on the reference points of transnational ties; and (3) a deeper reflection on the relevance of identifications and senses of belonging to migrant connectedness with their homeland. Along these lines, an understanding of transnational ties and relationships is outlined, in terms of potential and selective attributes of day-to-day interactions between migrants and their non-migrant counterparts.

What’s in a (Migrant) House? Changing Domestic Spaces, the Negotiation of Belonging and Home-making in Ecuadorian Migration

ABSTRACT Migrants’ constructions of their domestic spaces, and their struggle to feel at home in both receiving and sending societies, are an emerging focus of research in migration studies. Housing issues are also a privileged observatory on their transnational social engagement, as well as on the changing boundaries of their membership and belonging. This article addresses the everyday bases of their home-making and house-building practices, drawing on a multi-sited ethnography of Ecuadorian migration to Italy. What can be inferred from the ways in which migrants inhabit their houses “here”, while typically investing in better housing arrangements “there”, as to their alignment towards either society? What do their housing-related practises suggest about the potential to feel locally and transnationally at home, given the structural constraints they are subject to? By tracing the meanings, enactments and locations of migrants’ home, I aim to advance the debate on home and migration in two respects: the persistent materiality which underlies the home experience, and the significance of migrants’ houses, particularly in sending societies, as a window on the mixed social consequences of migration.

Transnational Politics as Cultural Circulation: Toward a Conceptual Understanding of Migrant Political Participation on the Move

Abstract This article contributes to the burgeoning literature on transnational politics by bringing tools used by scholars of cultural diffusion and circulation into these debates. We build on research on social remittances and their potential to yield broader and deeper effects or to ‘scale up’ and ‘scale out.’ Based on a variety of empirical examples, we propose that processes such as circulation, portability, and contact, viewed through a transnational optic, help to nuance recent research on political transnationalism and its empirical indicators – including, most notably, external voting.

Urban Multiculturalism beyond the ‘Backlash’: New Discourses and Different Practices in Immigrant Policies across European Cities

All across European receiving societies, the mainstream political discourse is displaying increasing disaffection with multiculturalism. It is primarily at the level of local policies, though, that the social inclusion of immigrants and the governance of ethno-cultural diversity are negotiated. Building on a comparative study of the urban ‘adaptations’ of multiculturalism in eight European cities, this article addresses three questions: (1) the changing relations between national and (relatively autonomous) local immigrant policies; (2) the ways in which such policies are locally reframed and reshaped along the continuum between multiculturalism and assimilation; (3) the involvement of civil society organizations in urban governance processes. Altogether, local policies seem to have been less affected by the backlash against multiculturalism than a common sense understanding would entail. Yet, they are increasingly constrained by anti-immigrant positions and budgetary restrictions, as well by the search for new political idioms vis-à-vis the de-legitimization of the multiculturalist lexicon and agenda.

From rapport to collaboration . . . and beyond? Revisiting field relationships in an ethnography of Ecuadorian migrants

The article revisits my personal relationships with fieldwork members in an ethnography on transnational migration between Ecuador and Italy. As this focused on the social relationships and practices that may connect emigrants with their motherland, the import of my interpersonal relationships was a crucial one. In reflecting on their development and impingements, I draw on three interpretive categories: respect, in terms of reciprocal recognition and legitimation with the members of the social group I had selected for my fieldwork; opportunities, i.e. the influence of structural factors, along with contingencies, on my ethnographic involvement; and interests, that is the motivations and objectives underlying my participant observation, along with the expectations emerging in those I met and stayed with. The implications and dilemmas of my field relationships are also sketched out, with respect both to the knowledge generated through my fieldwork, and to my own positioning within it. I finally reflect on the scope for collaboration, and for fair and ‘balanced’ relationships with the interlocutors of my research.

Caring about migrant care workers: From private obligations to transnational social welfare?

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.

Burden, blessing or both? On the mixed role of transnational ties in migrant informal social support

This article revisits migrants’ informal social support by exploring their exchanges of material and immaterial resources with the family members left behind. The latter are typically constructed as net beneficiaries of migrants’ struggles for a livelihood abroad, and even as a potential constraint on their self-realization. Building on a qualitative study of Ecuadorian domestic workers in Italy, the author explores – instead – whether left-behind kin are also, potentially, a source of social support for them. In fact, transnational family relationships can facilitate the circulation of welfare-relevant resources from both sides. While migrants are expected to transnationally share the benefits of better life conditions abroad, ‘what’ they left behind contributes to their personal wellbeing in three respects: reverse remittances, emotional support and the provision of a locus for cultivating nostalgia, attachment and social status. The mixed influence of home-related family ties and obligations is assessed against the backdrop of migrants’ life course and patterns of integration. Overall, their interdependence with left-behinds is a source of benefits, and costs, which should not go unnoticed.

From the multi-sited to the in-between: ethnography as a way of delving into migrants’ transnational relationships

Multi-sited ethnography has been extensively applied to migrants’ transnational family life and to the underlying care practices. Its methodological underpinnings and dilemmas, though, are relatively under-reflected. How can the relational and affective spaces between migrants and left-behind kin be ethnographically appreciated? Against this question, I revisit my fieldwork on a migration flow between Ecuador and Italy. This is an instance of the development of transnational social relationships, based on the circulation of material, cognitive and emotional resources, whereby people living ‘here’ and ‘there’ negotiate mutual affections, concerns and expectations. The challenge for ethnographers, under similar circumstances, lies less in staying in more sites than in sensing and understanding the relationships between them and the social practices on which this connectedness relies. The attendant methodological implications are discussed, ultimately pointing to the significance of relationality and in-betweenness for ethnographies of migration, transnationalism and mobilities.

Aging in place in a mobile world: New media and older people’s support networks

This Focus Topic brings together an analysis of cross-cutting fields of critical importance for the future: aging, migrant transnationalism, and new media. While each of these fields has prompted vast literatures, their intersections remain surprisingly under-acknowledged. Yet, it is at these intersections that a significant social transformation is currently underway that requires attention from researchers, policy makers, and service providers engaging with older populations. It is now common knowledge that population aging is a significant and growing issue for many developed nations around the world, raising important questions about how to best accommodate the needs and opportunities of large numbers of older people, comprising a larger proportion of the population (Ezeh, Bongaarts, & Mberu, 2012; Lutz, Sanderson, & Scherbov, 2008). One common response to this issue by policy makers has been to explore strategies to promote and support “aging in place,” by improving the ability of older people to remain living independently in their own homes and local communities, regardless of age, income, or ability level (Hillcoat-Nalletamby & Ogg, 2014; Vasunilashorn et al., 2012). Studies of aging in place have demonstrated the benefits that can be gained from facilitating people’s engagement in their local neighborhoods and communities, including the prevention of social isolation that might result from reduced physical mobility. This has the advantage of reducing the costs of aged care and fulfilling the goals and aims of many older people to remain in their own homes, especially those living in western countries. However, the emphasis on what services and facilities are required in local neighborhoods or communities to support healthy aging in place tends to overlook the increasing role of migration, mobility, and new media in the lives of older people. It is now clear that more and more people are living “mobile lives” (Elliott & Urry, 2010) as a result of international and intra-national, permanent and temporary forms of migration and movement. Indeed, many of the developed nations that are experiencing population aging also have large – and aging – migrant populations. Aged migrants include both people who arrived in countries of settlement as young adults in the twentieth century as well as those relocating to establish new lives in their retirement in the twenty-first century. For these populations, “aging in place” is not a simple formula. It is not always clear in which “place” older migrants are willing or able to live as they age. While many elderly migrants