Global inequalities make it difficult for parents in developing nations
to provide for their children. Some determine that migration in search
of higher wages is their only hope. Many studies have looked at how
migration transforms the child-parent relationship. But what happens to
other generational relationships when mothers migrate?
Care Across Generations takes a close look at grandmother care in
Nicaraguan transnational families, examining both the structural and
gendered inequalities that motivate migration and caregiving as well as
the cultural values that sustain intergenerational care. Kristin E.
Yarris broadens the transnational migrant story beyond the parent-child
relationship, situating care across generations and embedded within the
kin networks in sending countries. Rather than casting the consequences
of women's migration in migrant sending countries solely in terms of a
"care deficit," Yarris shows how intergenerational reconfigurations of
care serve as a resource for the wellbeing of children and other family
members who stay behind after transnational migration. Moving our
perspective across borders and over generations, Care Across
Generations shows the social and moral value of intergenerational care
for contemporary transnational families.