Oxfam GB

Women's migration and the crisis of care: grandmothers caring for grandchildren in
urban Bolivia
Author(s): Tanja Bastia
Source: Gender and Development, Vol. 17, No. 3, Ageing (November 2009), pp. 389-401
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Oxfam GB
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 Women's migration and the crisis of care:
grandmothers caring for grandchildren in
urban Bolivia
Tanja Bastia

Grandparents play a critical role in the reorganisation of care brought about by the
increasing migration of women. Yet, they are conspicuously absent from the migration
literature. This article looks at the role of grandparents, particularly grandmothers, in
caring for migrants' children. It draws on a case study of a rapidly urbanising
neighbourhood in Bolivia, and identifies grandmothers as both givers and receivers of
care. Through a typology of different types of living arrangements, the article seeks to
identify the processes that lead to greater vulnerability.

Key words: gender; migration; grandmothers; generation; Bolivia; care

Global migration trends and impact on caring

Ageing and migration are intrinsically connected. European countries rely heavily on
migrant workers, especially women migrant workers from developing countries, to
provide the everyday, intensive care needed by some older citizens. The migration of
women gives rise to what Hochschild (2001) terms 'global care chains' - that is, the
giving or receiving care at different geographical locations, forming a 'care chain'.
Social scientists have drawn attention to these global care chains for two main
reasons. The first one is related to issues of justice and inequality. According to
Hochschild (2001), care labour is emotional labour, and care chains are deeply unequal.
When mothers leave their children in the Philippines, the older daughters often
become responsible for the care of their younger siblings. In the process, they miss out
on the care they were receiving themselves. Similarly, when domestic workers are
brought in and paid to look after the migrants' children, their own siblings or children
receive less care. At the other end of the care chain, the employers in Europe or the
USA perform far fewer hours of care labour, and are able to spend this time for their
own personal gain. The fact that most care work is currently distributed vertically
down the social /class /race hierarchy is a source of concern for those interested in
achieving greater equality and justice globally.

Gender & Development Vol. 17, No. 3, November 2009 389

ISSN 1355-2074 print/1364-9221 online/09/030389-13 ? Oxfam GB 2009
DOI: 10.1080/13552070903298378

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Tanja Bastia

The second cause of concern is the welfare of the children 'left behind'. Women
have been migrating in increasing numbers since the 1980s, but with varying degrees
in different countries. Countries such as the Philippines have seen large numbers of
women migrants since the 1980s, while in other countries, such as Ecuador or Bolivia,
women began migrating in large numbers during the 1990s. In most societies, women
have overwhelming responsibilities for reproductive tasks (including looking after
young children, doing housework, looking after the elderly, and maintaining family
ties), and the migration of large numbers of women, with their subsequent prolonged
absences from home, has spurred something akin to a moral panic. Women migrants
have been vilified by NGOs, government officials, journalists and many others who
provide rich commentaries but often little evidence of the negative consequences of
women's migration. These range from the disintegration of the 'traditional' (nuclear,
man-headed, patriarchal) family, dramatic increases in teenage pregnancies, rampant
consumerism among the younger generations, 'abandoned' children joining gangs -
with subsequent increases in violence and drug abuse in the neighbourhood - and
underachieving in school.
However, low-income countries are increasingly relying on remittances to balance
their revenues. Remittances often outweigh direct foreign investment. In Bolivia official
total remittances from migrants abroad represented 5.5 per cent of GDP in 2006 (World
Bank n. d.) and 8.2 per cent of GDP in 2008, the majority of which (6 per cent of GDP)
was sent by migrant women (Mor? 2008). This is likely to be a gross underestimation
given that total remittances (official and informal) from Spain only represent over 10
per cent of GDP, over half of which is sent by migrant women (Mor? 2008). Countries
such as Bolivia are, therefore, becoming highly dependent on this source of foreign
income at the macro level. The same is true for communities and families which rely
on remittances for survival, or for completion of particular projects, such as building a
house or buying a truck to begin a transport business.
While it is undeniable that migration changes communities and is often the cause of
rapid social change, evidence of the changes brought about by migration is much more
complex and contradictory than generally acknowledged. Moreover, the current
debate is missing a truly generational approach. Children are often invoked as being
the primary preoccupation. But the migrants' parents are largely absent from most
studies and debates, save for some research which has taken place into the cultural and
economic contribution of these migrants to family life in their place of destination
(Barros Nock 2007).
This article aims to redress this shortcoming, by discussing the role of grandparents
in communities of origin. I will do this by drawing on longitudinal research on gender
relations in transnational migration, and fieldwork conducted in a rapidly urbanising
neighbourhood on the outskirts of Cochabamba, Bolivia.

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 Women's migration and the crisis of care

Moral panic: abandoned children

People studying migration in countries where there has been a rapid shift from a
largely men-led to a women-led migration, such as Ecuador or the Philippines, report
that this change leads to a situation akin to a moral panic about the supposed negative
consequences of women's migration. Salazar Parrenas (2000) writes on the children in
Filipino transnational families, in a context where two-thirds of Filipino migrants are
women and where between 34 and 54 per cent of the population is sustained by
remittances. She finds that migration does cause emotional hardship, but the situation
is far from being one of abandonment, given that children receive support from the
extended family (Salazar Parrenas 2000). Moreover, mothers often practise what
Hondagneu-Sotelo and Avila (1997) have termed 'transnational motherhood'. This
means that migrant mothers continue practising their mothering roles across the space
and time which divide them from their children. In research in the Philippines, Salazar
Parrenas (2000) found little evidence for supporting the media's portrayal of migration
as abandonment, and children of migrants becoming a social liability.
Very similar processes are currently taking place in Ecuador, studied by Herrera
and Carrillo (2009). In this context it appears that social perceptions of the impact of
increasing migration by women includes moralistic, negative views about the
psychological damage that migration metes out on children. These children with
absent, migrant mothers are portrayed as being out of control, and living in
dysfunctional families, and this is seen as leading to increased incidence of teenage
pregnancies and participation in gangs. In my own experience in Cochabamba,
Bolivia, I found that teachers and community leaders - as well as some returning
migrants - expressed very similar ideas. Many saw migration as leading to family
disintegration, and anti-social behaviour, including teenage pregnancies and the
spread of gangs and drug abuse within the community. No evidence is generally
provided for these statements and often, when probed further, the interviewee
acknowledged that these problems pre-existed large-scale migration.

... and grandparents?

Grandparents are notably absent from the discussion in the literature, save for
some passing mention that in some places they become the main carers. This is to some
extent surprising, especially in Latin American countries or in the Philippines, where
there is a strong notion of the caring, Catholic family. In these countries, it is often
assumed that the family will care for the elderly parents (Varley and Blasco 2000). To
advance a truly generational perspective on the study of migration we should also be
concerned with the older, not just with the younger, generation. What happens to
grandparents when their adult children migrate? What do grandparents think about

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 Tanja Bastia

becoming the main carer for often very young children? And who is there to support
them in this often very demanding role? What do they gain from the whole migration
process?
To begin to answer some of these questions in this article, I will draw on fieldwork
conducted in Cochabamba, Bolivia, in 2002, and more recently in 2008. The interviews
formed part of a much broader project on gender in transnational migration, which
involved fieldwork in multiple sites in Bolivia, Argentina, and Spain, with members
linked (in various ways) to the same community of origin.
Senior citizens (that is, people aged 60 and over), represent 7 per cent of the
Bolivian population (2001 census data; Martinez 2004). They are spread almost equally
between rural and urban areas. About 63 per cent live under the poverty line, which is
close to the national average, and about one-third are monolingual speakers of
Quechua, Aymara or Guarani. Both these statistics are indicators of likely social
exclusion from participation in 'modern' Bolivia, including access to education, water,
health services and income. Many senior citizens continue working well into their
retirement age: two-thirds of men and one-third of all women aged over 60 continue to
be economically active, with higher rates in rural areas. Of the over 300,000 non-active
senior citizens, only 22 per cent receive a pension. The overwhelming majority lives
with extended family (84 per cent); only 15 per cent report living alone (see Martinez
[20041 for an overview).
Senior citizens play an important role in the community I studied. The community
itself is a neighbourhood - or barrio - located on the outskirts of the city of
Cochabamba. It began as a milk-producing farm, bought by a mining cooperative
with the aim of improving the nutritional condition and health of members of a mining
cooperative. The cooperative mined a concession located about six hours' drive from
the city of Cochabamba. The mining town was an important regional centre, providing
educational and health facilities to the surrounding areas, but accidents were frequent
and many men died prematurely as a result of the difficult working conditions.
Many of the older interviewees who had lived for substantial parts of their lives in
the mining town mention silicosis (also known locally as 'mining sickness'), as well as
mining accidents, as being responsible for men's premature deaths. Gimena,1 for
example, who is in her thirties and has four children, was brought up an orphan. Her
father passed away before she was born, while her mother died in childbirth. She was
raised by her brother, who began working in the mine at the age of 13 to support his
younger siblings. He also later died prematurely of silicosis.
Dona Carla, who has four children living in Spain, was widowed in the mining
town when her husband died in a mining accident. Echoing June Nash's vivid
description of how miners ate the mines and in turn the mines ate them (Nash 1993),
Dona Carla used very similar language to describe how miners ate the dust and the
smoke from the dynamite and how that then turned into silicosis, which eventually
killed them.

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 Women's migration and the crisis of care

Before, it was the men who worked in the mining town. But then, the men's lungs became ill.
The mine's illness entered their bodies. That dust, the smoke from the dynamite, isn't it? They
ate that smoke and that illness entered their lungs. It infected everything. And the man died,
becoming ill. The men died. So only the women remained, widowed, with their babies. And so
they stayed. That's why in the mining town only women remained, widowed. (Interview,
Cochabamba, 17 May 2008)

As a result of the crash in the price of minerals during the 1980s, mining became
unsustainable, and was not providing miners with sufficient income for survival. In
this context the cooperative took the decision to split the farm into smaller plots and
allocate on the basis of members' contributions. As miners began taking up their plots
on the outskirts of Cochabamba, they also started building a new community, one
which today includes approximately 600 households and has become increasingly
diverse through internal migration from various locations in the departments of La
Paz, Oruro, Santa Cruz and Potosi.
While internal migration provided the community's inception, international
migration often proved to be its sustenance. Migration to Argentina, but also to other
countries, such as Brazil, Israel, Chile and Guatemala, began in the early 1990s and
then increased towards the end of the decade. In a representative survey conducted in
2002 around a quarter of all households had somebody living abroad.
Most migrate for work, with the aim of accessing higher salaries and therefore
quicker opportunities for saving and social mobility. There are many cases where
migration is spurred by indebtedness as people are unable to repay their debts by
working locally for low wages. The death of the primary breadwinner, common during
the 1990s in families where men worked in mining, often led to some teenage children
migrating for survival. Migration also has a strong socio-cultural dimension and many
young men migrate out of curiosity as well to assert their independence, while some
women migrate to distance themselves from abusive partners/husbands. In terms of
the opportunities available to these migrants abroad, most of those who went to
Argentina during the 1990s found work in the informal garment sector (both men and
women worked in garment workshops); a smaller percentage of women were
domestic workers and men found work in construction (Bastia 2007). In Spain the
large majority of women work in elderly and child care while men largely worked as
builders until the 2007 crisis led to the stalling of the construction industry. Although
some obtain permanent job contracts and working conditions similar to those of native
workers, many of the jobs are highly racialised and remain precarious.
Only a minority undertake their first journey abroad with their children. It is far
more common to leave children in Bolivia, at least until migrants are able to sort out
their work and accommodation. Leaving children behind is a great source of anxiety
for migrants, but many are unable to take their children along because of the financial
constraints of precarious and low paid jobs, as well as high levels of racism and

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 Tanja Basti a

discrimination in some destinations. Migrants going to Buenos Aires often mentioned

that Bolivian children are discriminated against in schools, and in some cases parents
assess whether they will be able to take their child with them on the basis of the colour
of their skin: they feel that the darker they are, the more discriminated they will be.
The relative ease of crossing specific countries' borders is also critical, as it is far easier
to take a child to Argentina and then return if things do not work out than to
undertake the same project across to Spain, where migrants' entry and stay is far more
policed and controlled.
In this context, grandparents play a critical role: migrants, especially when the one
to migrate is the mother, have more confidence in the care that grandmothers can
provide than the care of children's fathers, or other members of the extended family.
Only a very small minority of parents leave their children by themselves (Herrera and
Carrillo 2009), which indicates that people are often unable to put their migration
projects into practice unless they find an acceptable solution to their child care needs.
The next section draws on the following interviews: 18 returnees, 5 people whose close
family members (daughters or wives) migrated,2 4 teachers, and 8 additional
interviewees, including community leaders, mayors and NGOs.

Migrants as a source of support and vulnerability for parents left behind

In Latin American countries, it is generally assumed that children are a source of
support for parents in later life (Varley and Blasco 2003). According to Peter Lloyd
Sherlock and Catherine Locke (2008), there are three main assumptions in the literature
on this issue. First, that higher levels of contact with children lead to increased
well-being for elderly parents; second, that older people are almost always 'net
beneficiaries'; third, that older women are more likely to receive support because of the
large amount of caring they usually undertake in their lives. Within the context of high
levels of emigration, older parents can therefore be seen as a particularly vulnerable
group of people, especially in a context where public resources for welfare
programmes are scarce. Following Varley and Blasco (2003) I use older women's
living arrangements and changes in their responsibilities as a starting point to address
issues of vulnerability.
In the barrio, it was possible to find at least four different types of living
arrangements that resulted from the reorganisation of care brought about by women
migrating. Some grandmothers had taken up major responsibilities for caring for
young children, but were still living with other adults, usually adult men. Others had
major responsibilities for caring for young children, and were living by themselves
because all their children were abroad, although some of their adult children were also
living with their own families close by. Some grandmothers had no care responsi
bilities towards young children, and lived with some of their adult children. Finally,
some had no care responsibilities towards young children, and lived by themselves.

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 Women's migration and the crisis of care

Table 1 sketches the main changes after adult children migrated. The table
suggests that a key variable in terms of the amount and intensity of care work
expected of grandmothers is whether all of their adult children have migrated, or
whether they have continued to live in extended families. Because care work is
so overwhelmingly likely to be performed by women, the sex of the adult children
still living with the grandmother determines the amount of work they can expect
to do.
In families where some younger women were present (whether the grand
mother's daughter or a daughter-in-law), the younger women generally took
responsibility for everyday housework and child care. While living with family
members does not necessarily imply increased well-being (Varley and Blasco 2003), it
does usually seem to mean that the grandmother's share of housework will not be as
large, and that at least there is the potential for grandmothers to be cared for by
others.
In families where younger adult women were not present, the grandmother would
generally take responsibility for most cooking and cleaning. Men, as well as younger
children, would often be expected to wash their own clothes. Importantly, adult men
would take the responsibility for disciplining children and teenagers, which is a key

Table 1: Changes in living arrangements and care-giving after adult children's migration
Change in giving care as compared
Living arrangement with pre-migration Gaining from migration?

Alone with young Grandmothers cook, wash, look after Increased financial security through
grandchildren. children, discipline children, control remittances (but high degree of
children's movements, etc. dependency on remittances - source
Sometimes they employ a domestic of vulnerability).
worker to help with housework, Children abroad also care and
including cooking. express preoccupation for elderly
parent.

With young grandchildrenGrandmothers cook, but often do notAs above, but greater security and
and other adult familywash clothes. less pressure because other adults
members. Disciplining of children carried out take responsibility for disciplining
by younger adults (e.g. uncles to the young children and teenagers.
children).

Without young grandchil Little or no change as compared withRemittances from children abroad
dren but living with somepre-migration. lead to increased financial security.
of own adult children.

Alone without young Little or no change as compared withAs above, but some cases show
grandchildren. pre-migration. extreme vulnerability because elderly
person is living alone.

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 Tanja Bastia

source of preoccupation for grandmothers living alone with younger children and
teenagers.

Grandmothers and grandchildren living alone

Most interviewed grandmothers lived by themselves, and had full responsibility for
young children or teenagers. Some of these grandmothers cooked, washed, and
organised their households, and took the children to nursery or to school, if they
were old enough. They were also responsible for disciplining young children, and
controlling the whereabouts of teenagers. Sometimes, the migrant daughters were
paying for a domestic worker to help with everyday tasks, such as washing the clothes
and preparing the meals (but not usually child care). Some grandmothers had been
looking after their grandchildren since they were only a few months old.
Dona Franca has five children, most of them abroad (in Spain or in Argentina; one
daughter lives in another city in Bolivia). She went to Argentina with her husband
during the 1990s, leaving her children with her mother. But the grandmother became
very ill and eventually died, leaving her teenage grandchildren by themselves. Dona
Franca blamed her mother's death for her son and daughter not doing well at school.
Her teenage daughter became pregnant, and was threatened with expulsion, so Dona
Franca returned to Bolivia. After giving birth, her daughter finished high school and
then left for Spain, leaving her six month old baby with her mother. Dona Franca's
granddaughter was around three years old at the time of the interview, and called her
grandmother 'mummy'. This is quite common with other grandmothers who have
been caring for their grandchildren since they were very small.
Teenagers left in the care of their grandmothers are often a source of concern,
particularly teenage girls. Dona Carla, for example, negotiates caring strategies across
three countries: Bolivia, Argentina and Spain. One of the first migrants from the
mining town to Buenos Aires, Dona Carla now has one daughter in La Paz, one in
Buenos Aires and two in Spain. A few years ago she spent two years in Bolivia looking
after her granddaughter, whose mother migrated from Buenos Aires to Spain. Her
granddaughter recalled that, one day, two of her schoolmates (boys) came to the house
to ask for her and her grandmother threatened to throw boiling water at them if they
did not leave straight away. Since then, everyone at Veronica's school knew that they
could not visit her. Despite these difficulties, they both have fond memories of those
two years. Dona Carla herself went to Spain for a few years to work, and was later able
to draw on the support from her daughters in Spain when her health deteriorated,
living with them while she was going through tests and operations. More recently, she
spent some time in La Paz visiting her daughter, who was also having health problems.
Dona Carla's story of her own migration is very varied, and heavily influenced by
circumstances. This is not unusual, as people displace themselves geographically
according to need and opportunities. It illustrates two important points. First of these

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 Women's migration and the crisis of care

is that care and support flows in both directions. Grandparents can be a source of
support at one specific point in time but they might themselves be needing care at a
later stage. The time-bound nature of these changes does not always coincide with the
life cycle - changes can be quite abrupt. Grandmothers can therefore be sometimes
simultaneously both receivers and givers of care. The second point illustrated by this
case is in line with what Lloyd-Sherlock and Locke (2008) have observed holds for
older people in a neighbourhood in Buenos Aires: namely, that adult children can be a
source of anxiety and preoccupation, especially in contexts where there is a high
degree of social exclusion and material insecurity.

When there is very little choice involved

Some grandmothers who had sole responsibility for their grandchildren are in a very
vulnerable situation. Dona Laura, for example, who was 79 at the time of the interview,
had been looking after one of her daughter's children since he was 4 months old. Her
daughter's other child was being looked after by an uncle. Dona Laura's husband had
died in the mining town. She then worked in the mine for 15 years as a palliri (female
miner). This role is usually taken by widows, and involves working outside the mine,
breaking up the ore. After this, she moved to Cochabamba. During the interview, Dona
Laura took out her identity card and asked me how old she was. When I read the
information on her identity card, telling her that she will turn 80 the following year,
she asked: 'Can I live? Not much longer, right?', expressing doubt whether she will be
able to live long enough to look after her grandchildren. Later on in the interview,
I asked her about the difficulties of looking after young children. She replied: 'But what
can I do? Who is going to look after them?' - showing frustration that she did not
really have a choice in relation to taking on the responsibility of looking after her
grandchildren, as there was nobody else who could look after them.
Her material and financial security is stronger than before her daughter migrated,
but being dependent on her daughter's remittances is also a source of frustration,
because they are not regular, and the amounts vary. She mentions other grandmothers
who complain that their daughters are not sending them money. She says that when
they do not get any money, they cry.
Dona Laura seems to be in an extremely vulnerable situation. Looking after a
young child demands more energy than she has available and the dependency on her
daughter's remittances is also a cause of concern. However, she also mentioned almost
daily communication with her daughter: 'She calls me almost every day. Yes. She
always calls, [she asks] Are you healthy mum? Are you alright? Are the kids ok? She is
affectionate' (Interview, Cochabamba, 3 May 2008). Dona Laura's vulnerability also
seems to be an exception. The majority of grandmothers who were solely responsible
for some of their grandchildren (that is, five interviewed in total), were of the view that
their responsibilities were difficult and they would prefer not to have to take on these

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Tanja Basti a

responsibilities but at the same time they were not a source of vulnerability; in fact,
quite the contrary.
Dona Maria has nine surviving children and at the time of the interview
was looking after two grandchildren (who were about three years old when their
parents left), two of her sister's children (the youngest of whom was seven when the
mother left), and also some young children of her own, the youngest being eleven
years old. At the time of the interview, she was recovering from an operation. Her
husband was also unwell, suffering from tuberculosis and therefore not working.
Nevertheless, using their own savings, they were building a large house with a room
for each of their children. Her children helped her pay for the operation and were
contributing towards the costs of running the household, including buying food. She
invoked the social norm that older siblings need to take responsibility for their
younger siblings' education and everyday expenses if parents are unable to do so.
Talking about one of her sons, she said: 'He brought some money [from Spain] but he
built his house, he also has youngest brothers, husband and wife, we're not
working ... He wants to help us a little bit' (Cochabamba, 30 April 2008). She
employed a woman to help with the housework since her operation.

Redressing vulnerability
Elderly parents are often a source of great concern for migrants. In their interviews,
both men and women migrants indicate that their migration decisions were often
mediated by the state of their elderly parents. For example, a man who had migrated
to Argentina during the 1990s decided to return to Bolivia when he found out that his
mother was ill. He had younger siblings, and felt that he should take responsibility for
them when their mother's health deteriorated. While moving in and out of Argentina
is relatively straightforward, migration to Spain represents many challenges. The cost
is much higher, at times reaching US$3,000 per person for a one-way trip, with the risk
of being returned, in a country where the average monthly wage for factory workers is
just over US$100. The high costs and risks involved have a bearing on the migrants'
decisions whether to take their children and parents with them.
Child protection legislation is also often mentioned. In Spain, parents cannot leave
their children unattended. Given that most migrant jobs require long working hours,
this means that child care becomes very difficult and expensive. Most importantly,
migrants often do not earn enough to support dependants. They see their migration as
very time-bound (although this perception no doubt changes over time), and have the
objective of earning a specific amount of money. To achieve this objective in the
shortest period of time, they often live in shared accommodation, and spend as little as
possible, so as to maximise their savings and be able to return to Bolivia sooner.
Increasingly restrictive migration policies are often at the root of long separations, and

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 Women's migration and the crisis of care

migrants are often unable to visit and provide support for their parents, or reunite
their families in the place of destination.
More can be done at place of destination to support families 'back home', but
the current climate of economic recession and 'fortress Europe' is not propitious.
Countries of origin, on the other hand, often lack extensive social assistance
programmes that could be extended to support vulnerable people such as Dona
Laura. However, there are some small-scale projects currently being piloted that aim to
support grandparents looking after their grandchildren. In Moldova, the poorest
country in Europe, where one-third of the labour force is working abroad, HelpAge
International and UNICEF have been piloting a community-based initiative where
grandparents are given assistance and counselling. The project aims to assess the
grandparents' and grandchildren's needs, and match them with existing social
assistance programmes. Another objective includes improving inter-generational
communication, especially for grandparents looking after teenagers (for further details
see HelpAge International [2008]). Once these projects are assessed for their
effectiveness, they could be rolled out in countries where grandparents take up a
significant childrearing role in their daughters' absence. However, such programmes
are unlikely to provide a lasting solution. These need to come from strengthening
social assistance programmes for the elderly so that they are better able to perform all
responsibilities asked of them in rapidly changing socioeconomic conditions; or take
the time off and be cared for after a long life of working and caring for others.
Grandparents, therefore, play an important role in supporting working age
migrants' strategies by providing child care for the children 'left behind'. They are
often indispensable to these migration projects and the many benefits that individuals,
families, communities and whole countries accrue from migration. In view of the fact
that many low-income countries, such as Bolivia and Moldova, are increasingly
dependent on this foreign source of income, it is also critical to make the effort to better
understand and value the role play by grandparents. Not enough is known about the
proportion of children being looked after by grandparents in countries of origin nor
the type of support, whether formal or informal, grandparents are able to access.
However, it is also important to see grandparents not only as a source of care but
also as a potentially vulnerable population in contexts of high rates of emigration and
rapid social change. Not all grandparents are able or need to take on this role at a later
stage in their lives. Many, rather than being in a position to be givers of care, need
caring themselves. Public programmes for the elderly are weak in most countries, but
so much more in cash-constrained low-income countries which face constant pressure
from international institutions to cut down their social spending programmes. In these
contexts, adult children provide (potentially) critical support available to the elderly
population. Whether they are forced or make a choice, many women migrate to high
income countries to provide care for children and the elderly, while leaving their own
children and parents in their countries of origin. Recognising that children are not the

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 Tanja Basti a

only ones to be 'left behind' is a first step to advancing a truly multigenerational

approach in migration studies.

Tanja Bastia is a British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Global Urban Research Centre,
University of Manchester. Postal address: Humanities Bridgeford Street, Oxford Road, Manchester,
M13 9PL, UK. Email: Tanja.Bastia@Manchester.ac.uk

Notes
1 All names have been changed to preserve the anonymity of the interviewees.
2 Some people fell into both categories. For example, while I was interviewing a woman
who had migrated to Argentina, it emerged that most of her adult and teenage children
were living abroad and she was looking after a granddaughter as well as a teenage
niece. She therefore falls into both categories of 'returnee' and 'stay behind'.

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