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iii Acknowledgments A doctoral dissertation, and more so an ethnographic one, owes its existence to a number of people. I, too, owe a great deal to many people. Foremost, I am sincerely indebted to all interlocutors of this study who generously entrusted me as a researcher with their life stories, shared their experiences, and let me enter and be part of their lives. This gift can hardly be appreciated in words, and I hope that this very manuscript in which I have to my best capacities ethnographically narrated their lives is my modest return for the time and trust these women have invested in me. I am eternally grateful to Ulla M. Vuorela, Professor of Social Anthropology at University of Tampere, who was my supervisor between 2006 and 2011. Not only was she a caring academic mother to all of her students, but also a transnational grandmother (as she sometimes liked to call herself), who raised an entire generation of transnational anthropologists in Finland. Also for me Ulla was an attentive, compassionate and demanding mentor and teacher who provided invaluable guidance throughout my study and pervasivel