Social Orphans and Care at a Distance: Popular Representations of Childhood in Ukrainian Transnational Families

Abstract

International labour migration creates new relational, emotional and social challenges for migrating parents and the children staying behind. In Ukraine, children who grow up in a transnational household are not only a concern for the individual family, however, but also a phenomenon that is thoroughly discussed in the public sphere. In this article the author analyses Ukrainian media, as well as popular and individual ‘texts' on transnational childhood and child care at a distance, and argues that there are two diverging models of care that underlie personal narrative texts and public texts: care as fulfilment of a child's material needs, and care that necessitates physical closeness and constant face-to-face interaction. He also identifies diverging perspectives in the various texts on what are considered adequate alternative carers, and on what the relational and social consequences are of the separation of migrating parents from their children.