DOI: 10.5255/ukda-sn-857804
title: Care, Inequality and Wellbeing in Transnational Families in Europe, 2022-2024

description: This research project investigated the relationships between care, inequalities and wellbeing among different generations of transnational families in the UK, Spain, France and Sweden. 

‘Transnational families’ are family groups where one or more family members spend all or most of their time geographically separated across borders, but share a collective sense of connection as a ‘family’. This project established a new transnational interdisciplinary network across the four partner countries. The network built the capacity of migrants and practitioners through developing research skills and co-producing knowledge. It also built the capacity of early career and established academics through mutual learning in participatory and ethnographic approaches. 

The consortium facilitated comparative research that is influencing policy and practice changes to improve the equality and wellbeing of migrant carers of different generations. The research has shown that transnational families simultaneously manage multiple caring responsibilities, both proximately for family members, and by caring at a distance for kin living in other countries. Families’ opportunities and access to social protection are shaped by intersecting inequalities based on legal status, nationality, race and ethnicity, disability/chronic illness, socio-economic status, language-related inequalities, gender and generation. 

The physical and mental health, economic, social and emotional impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic were interlinked for migrants and led to the further marginalisation of transnational families, particularly those with insecure legal status and low socio-economic status. The deficits of migration and care regimes, alongside the absence of kin, create the need for children and youth to take on caring roles in transnational families. Children’s care work is often invisible, but may be crucial in enabling parents/relatives to fill gaps in care provision, facilitating access to public services through language and digital brokering. The accelerated shift towards digital technology becoming the primary gateway to access public services particularly affects older generations and those with low levels of literacy or language proficiency in the dominant societal language and increases the reliance on younger generations. 

The research highlighted several barriers to accessing affordable, appropriate and high-quality language education provision. Negative impacts of caregiving were evidenced among middle and younger generations in terms of their education, employment and finances, family relationships, social participation, health and wellbeing. Such impacts could have significant implications for carers’ long term opportunities and wellbeing, especially among transnational families with high care needs who were already facing financial hardships and insecurity. 

Policy recommendations focus on levelling out inequalities, expanding the definition of ‘family’ in reunification policies, recognising children’s care work in transnational families, making public services more accessible, welcoming and inclusive for migrant carers and their families. 

The findings across the four countries have been published in an open access Report (Summary also available in French, Spanish and Swedish), 4 Policy Briefs and 11 academic articles to date, 13 accessible film outputs and disseminated through regional workshops, an international Symposium and professional networks. We guest-edited a special issue of Population, Space and Place journal on ‘Intergenerational care, inequalities and wellbeing among transnational families in Europe’, which includes 5 papers based on the findings.