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

摘要

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 children's 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 children's 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?View full textDownload full textKeywordsInternational Migration, Ecuador, Transnational Motherhood, Transnational Caregiving, EthnographyRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2012.646421