Enforced Transnationalism From an Ethics of Care Perspective: Barriers to Living ‘Care-Filled Lives’ and Resistance Tactics Among ‘Forced’ Transnational Families in the UK

Abstract

Heavily restricted humanitarian protection schemes, protracted waiting periods, and immobility regimes are increasingly disrupting familyhood and intra-/intergenerational caregiving practices for many forced migrants and their extended families. This paper draws from the experiences of 16 displaced families of diverse ethnicities living in the UK with higher care needs related to disability, chronic illness and/or mental health, which have hitherto been overlooked. Integrating feminist ethics of care with the notion of ‘enforced transnationalism’, the analysis shows how displaced families are subjected to a continuum of migration, welfare, and social care policies over time which result in processes of family ‘nuclearization’ and immobility. Barriers to family visits and reunification compound limitations on welfare and social care support when families seek to fulfil transnational caring obligations. This increases the pressures on the middle and younger generations providing informal care and negatively affects families' relational wellbeing. Despite this, transnational families deploy resistance tactics through maintaining and re-building intra- and intergenerational caring relationships and values of family solidarity to live ‘care-filled lives’ in the places where they have sought sanctuary. The paper significantly deepens the theoretical and empirical scope of the concept of ‘enforced transnationalism’, bringing relational selves and care front and centre in studies of forced migration and transnational familyhood.