Transnational Grandparenting: Childcare in Migrant Families in Switzerland

22.05.2019 , in ((Experiences)) , ((Pas de commentaires))
Mihaela Nedelcu et Malika Wyss

Transnational grandparents and their contribution to the intergenerational circulation of care are rarely subject of attention in social sciences and public discourses on migration. Yet, as a central dimension of family solidarity, grandparents’ involvement in childcare also takes place within transnational families, both in countries of origin and settlement. Various childcare arrangements involve migrants’ parents who engage in back-and-forth mobilities to care for their grandchildren living in Switzerland.

While social sciences scholarship highlights different patterns of transnational grandparenting, our study focused on zero-generation (G0) mobile grandparents, i.e. migrants’ parents who come more or less regularly to Switzerland to take care of their grandchildren. By using a comparative perspective, we observed different forms of grandparents’ – most often grandmothers’ – involvement within transnational families originating from EU (Italy, France, Germany and Romania), and non-EU (Brazil, Algeria and Morocco) countries. By considering the timing of grandparents’ visits and the meaning of the support they provide to their descendants, we have put in light six different types of G0-childcare arrangements:

1. Intergenerational sharing and transmission corresponds to grandparents’ visits for seeing the grandchildren, sharing joyful moments and activities with them, while passing on cultural features from the country of origin.
2. Urgency troubleshooting occurs when a child suddenly falls ill, and immediate and generally short-term grandparents’ assistance is required as the parents are at work.
3. Scheduled troubleshooting is a response to anticipated additional need of informal childcare, in particular during (pre)school holidays.
4. Celebrating childbirth is a ritual visit when grandparents come to see and welcome the newborn, congratulate the parents, and celebrate together the event.
5. Mothering the mother implies that the migrant woman’s mother, for several weeks after childbirth, takes care of her daughter, is in charge of domestic tasks and looks after eldest grandchildren, allowing the mother to rest and dedicate her attention to the newborn.
6. Substituting mother at home is an arrangement in which G0-grandmothers take on quasi-permanently most childcare and domestic tasks in the daily running of the household, while their migrant daughters fully invest in their professional career.

The Discriminatory Impact of the Swiss Migration Regime: Sharp Differences between EU and non-EU Grandparents’ Capacity to Move and Care

The Swiss migration regime impacts directly on these types of G0-childcare arrangements, by promoting or hindering grandparents’ international mobility, thus influencing their visits’ frequency and/or duration. European nationals benefit from free movement and can be mobilized whenever childcare needs intersect with their willingness to provide support: in urgency situations or as a planned solution; as many times as they wish during the year; and for potentially unlimited periods of stay. On the contrary, the strict requirements of visa applications considerably narrow the spectrum of possible childcare arrangements for non-European grandparents. For example, urgency troubleshooting childcare solutions are impossible for Algerian and Moroccan families, because of the complexity and slowness of visa procedures. Brazilian grandparents can more easily fulfill short stay G0-childcare arrangements as they can enter Switzerland as a tourist without a visa. However, with a few exceptions, in which the migrant families take the risk of irregular status, they cannot organize long-term arrangements.

Various Structural, Family and Individual Factors Shaping Transnational Grandparenting Patterns

Beyond the obvious impact of migration policies, G0-childcare arrangements are shaped by other factors at the structural level. For instance, the limitations of formal childcare facilities in Switzerland explain why working mothers rely on their parents to care for their children when they fall ill or are on holiday. Similarly, cultural differences explain why the birth of a child implies a short ritual visit in the case of EU grandparents, in contrast with prolonged stays of third-country national grandmothers who reproduce traditional postpartum practices in a migratory context. In fact, each particular G0-childcare arrangement is the result of a complex intertwining of different factors that act at the structural, family and individual levels. For instance, substituting mother at home arrangements, observed in the case of two Romanian families, only come into existence when combined in a virtuous manner: (1) a favorable mobility regime for long-term stays of grandmothers; (2) good quality intergenerational relationships, shared childcare visions and the availability of different members of transnational family configurations to replace G0-grandmothers, when they were unable to take on this role (meso level); and (3) good health of grandmothers and good economic status of their migrant children (micro level).

Mobile Grandparents: An Important Resource for Migrant Families, Ignored by Policymakers

Obviously, despite institutional obstacles, migrant families in Switzerland are able to involve grandparents in their childcare organization. Moreover, G0-grandparenting represents a significant resource for the professional integration of migrant women. Nevertheless, both care and migration regimes stay blind to this reality, being driven by dissimilar logics and ideologies. On the one hand, care is conceived as a feature of proximate local families, and related policies disregard transnational care resources. On the other hand, migration policies address family reunification as a process that mainly concerns the nuclear family, thus ignoring the mobility needs of migrants’ parents and clearly limiting their possibilities to act as transnational grandparents.

Mihaela Nedelcu is a titular professor at the Institute of Sociology, University of Neuchâtel. She studies transnational families, ageing migrants and the impact of ICTs on migration and transnationalism. She is leader of the IP33 (Transnational Ageing) Project in the phase II of the nccr – on the move.

Malika Wyss is a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Neuchâtel. She has worked on several SNSF-funded research projects, on topics such as transnational families and grandparenting, migration and ICTs, urban environment and sustainability.

This post is based on findings from the research project: “Intergenerational solidarities in transnational families. An approach through the care arrangements of the Zero Generation, these foreigner grandparents involved in raising their grandchildren in Switzerland” funded by the Swiss National Foundation Grant 100017_162645 (2015-2018).