Gendered Parenting across Borders

Abstract

At the beginning of my fieldwork, I had not anticipated hearing about parenting experiences from my research participants. Constrained by their irregular migration status, the overwhelming majority of them have not been able to cross Germany’s borders again, once they are “in.” Much of the existing literature on transnational mothering has addressed heterogeneous groups of migrant workers, ranging from longterm Latina immigrants in California (Hondagneu-Sotelo and Avila 1997), contract workers in Asia (Asis, Huang, and Yeoh 2004), temporary Filipina migrant domestic workers in Rome (Parrenas 2001), to mobile Eastern European caregivers who go back and forth between their countries of origin and Germany every few months (Morokvaisc 1994, 2003; Lutz and Palenga-Mollenbeck 2012). Despite variable degrees of spatial mobility capital among these heterogeneous groups of transnational migrant mothers, separation is common central issue. Irregular migration status is referred to in these debates. However, long-term repercussions and meanings of it have little been explored as a key condition to understand transnational lives of irregular migrant mothers and fathers. Hence, hearing about long-term migrants’ engagement in parenting from a distance via advanced telecommunication technologies and through other means was all the more surprising to me.