Virginie BABY-COLLIN, Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS, TELEMMe, UMR 7303, France
Polina PALASH, Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS, TELEMMe, UMR 7303, France
Assaf DAHDAH, CNRS, Art-Dev, UMR 5281, France
Migrants maintain ties with their families in the origin societies and their migration project is often a family strategy to improve family’s living conditions and opportunities. Although being separated across different countries, transnational families sustain care arrangements through diverse support practices (Bryceson and Vuorela 2002; Baldassar et al. 2007) which are shaped by family life course and changing needs and relationships of the family members, as well as by evolving contextual circumstances “here” and “there” (Palash and Baby-Collin 2019). The turning point of the pandemic has challenged everyday care arrangements in transnational families, with increased constraints for geographic mobility and greater precariousness and vulnerabilities.
In this paper, we discuss the preliminary research results of a research project on care arrangements in postpandemic times in transnational families based in southern France who have ties with family members in countries of origin and other settlement countries. In this aim, we explore the recomposition of intergenerational relations and forms of care in the families considered in this study. We question the articulation between local and transnational scale of such relations, as well as the effects of rural / urban contexts of settlement in France on family arrangements.
We draw on a qualitative fieldwork with about 25 migrant families of different ethnicities and legal statuses having settled in two different contexts in Provence (metropolitan Marseille and rural Drôme) since one to about ten years. Data (including semi-structured interviews with several family members and generations, ethnographic observations and participatory methods) are collected during the first semester 2022.
This research project is part of the larger international interdisciplinary research project “CAREWELL-TF” including a comparison of care arrangements within transnational families also settled in England, Spain and Sweden.
Mots clés : migration|transnational families| care|socio-spatial practices|intergenerational approach
A104614PP