'I have a Child and a Garden': Young people’s experiences of care giving in transnational families

Available online: 17 Nov 2011This article concerns young people's experiences with care giving when their parents migrate. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 21 young people from Transylvania (Romania), the article examines their accounts of living in transnational families: how the experience of care giving intersects their transitions to adulthood and the personalised meanings young people attach to their actions. This article argues that care giving relationships are more complex than the previous literature on ‘care drain’ and ‘transnational care giving’ has shown. The research demonstrates that young people do act as caregivers, despite traditionally being incorporated in the category of ‘children left behind’ and contribute, together with their migrant parents, to the global dynamics of care giving. This article argues that gendered approaches to care provision help to create an adultocratic vision of the position of young people in transnational families. Finally, this article calls for discourses on care giving to incorporate the generational dimension in ways that recognise young people's care giving roles.(Product of workshop No. 10 at the 12th MRM 2011.