Translocal Care Work of Estonian Families

Family responsibilities do not disappear with geographical distance. The possibility to provide care across national borders may therefore affect people’s decisions to move. However, the social policies framing care are still predominantly national. How are the everyday care practices from the point of view of Estonian families, whose members live or work in Finland?

“I didn’t decide about the relocation before asking [my father]. […] Because I was closest to him. [I have] two brothers, one lives in Tallinn and the other in Spain. I was taking care of [my father], I went there most frequently. So, it was important to me…that if he agreed, then I would come.” (Woman, 42 years)

The capitals of Estonia and Finland, Tallinn and Helsinki, are separated by a two-and-a-half-hour ferry journey. To what extent the COVID-19 pandemic eventually changes mobility patterns between these countries remains to be seen. But until recently, movement between Estonia and Finland has been so intense that researchers talked about an Estonian–Finnish transnational space. Neighboring Finland is the most popular destination for Estonian migrants because of its geographic, cultural and linguistic proximity. Most Estonians live or work in Finland for economic reasons, but the financial and family aspects of people’s translocal activities are closely linked.

One of the reasons to emigrate may be to fulfill care responsibilities. Sometimes one family member takes on these responsibilities while the rest of the family stays behind. Caring from a distance can take place across national borders, with working abroad and earning money for the household being regarded as one form of care.

Caretaking responsibilities may tie people to a certain place, or, in contrast, encourage them to move in order to better provide care. However, an important question to raise is not only who can move and who cannot, or who is forced to move and who is allowed to remain, but what are the social and political consequences of these movements.

Grandparents and Informal Care

When doing family translocally, caregiving is one of the central ways to maintain and reaffirm family relations. However, family care often entails more challenges and inequalities when done from a distance. People have to navigate between several sets of regulations, different cultures of care, and the possibly contradictory expectations of different family members.

Many people rely on their translocal networks to organize care in a new place of residence. Grandparents, especially grandmothers, often continue to have an important role in taking care of their grandchildren, both in Finland and Estonia. As Salme (79 years) explained, for three years she took care of her grandson in Estonia, while her daughter was working in Finland during the weekend. For many years after her daughter’s relocation, Salme spent more time in Finland than in Estonia, helping her daughter. Statistics do not tell us much about this kind of informal mobility.

It should also be noted that not everyone is able to move on the same terms. For example, Salme’s daughter is in a very privileged position as compared to some other interviewees, because Salme can come to Finland frequently by air with an attendant. Other grandparents still work in Estonia and do not have the resources for frequent visits. Furthermore, multiple care obligations can complicate travel.

Relocation often means there is a need to reorganize the care of elderly relatives who remain in Estonia, thus making caregiving an important factor in the decision to move or stay. The ‘burden’ of caregiving falls mainly on women, as exemplified by one elderly woman who told me that she expects her daughter to take care of her, if needed, even though the daughter lives in Finland and her son in Estonia.

The informal welfare system is of great importance in Central and Eastern Europe, complementing or even replacing the public one. When the state cannot guarantee social welfare for its citizens, family relationships, informal exchanges and networks may fulfill these functions and protect individuals against social risks. In Estonia, there is strong family solidarity, although people are also obliged by law to provide maintenance for family members. Estonia thus offers an interesting case of informality intertwined with formality in the context of care activities, a combination of unwritten rules and state norms enforced by law.

Care and Bounded Mobilities

The triangle of family, mobility and care is strongly connected to inequality, care and family responsibilities affecting the ways people can be mobile or immobile. Possibilities to combine work and family responsibilities vary depending on gender, class and occupational position, for example, forming different mobility patterns. Many Estonian doctors work one week a month abroad, which is facilitated by easy travel (flights) and means their families in Estonia do not have to change their everyday routines substantially. However, working in Finland means something completely different to a construction worker, who leaves a family behind and commutes weekly or bi-weekly.

For some single mothers, moving to Finland is a survival strategy that helps them to make ends meet. For many interviewees, Finland has offered a sense of security they did not find in Estonia. As one of the interviewed women (45) said, she felt she started a new life in Finland, with a friend offering a helping hand. “This time the friend was the state of Finland. […] The basic things one needs for life (an apartment, food) were settled by the social welfare office. Finally, a feeling of security arrived, from the economic point of view.”

Parents frequently commute or migrate on behalf of their children. To cope with the practicalities of translocal everyday life, especially care, informal networks are of crucial importance. Some aspects of care can be dealt with from a distance, but some require the physical presence of the caregiver, often a woman. Family matters, such as the care needs of older family members, or the wish to educate the children in their country of origin, can become incentives for return migration.

Translocal families are willing to continue intergenerational care in and across the borders, but social policies framing care are still predominantly national. Also, Finnish social security eligibility is mainly based on residency and does not support transnational care arrangements. The formal care system appears to be insufficiently responsive and sensitive to the needs of mobile people, and the COVID-19 pandemic has drastically limited also the possibilities for informal transnational caring activities.

Pihla Maria Siim is a Junior Research Fellow at the Department of Estonian and Comparative Folklore, University of Tartu, Estonia. Her recent publications address children’s translocal materialities, storycrafting method, “doing families” through practices of silence, and comparison as a means of encountering others in the Estonian-Finnish transnational space.

This text is based on the article “Health and Care in the Estonian–Finnish Translocal Context” that has recently been published as part of a special issue of Migration Letters on “Transnational (Im)mobilities and Informality in Europe” edited by Ignacio Fradejas-García, Abel Polese, and Fazila Bhimji.

Acknowledgements: Special thanks to the editors of the special issue on Transnational (Im)Mobilities and Informality in Europe.

Reference:

– Siim, Pihla Maria (2021). Health and Care in the Estonian–Finnish Translocal Context, Migration Letters 18 (2), 149–163.