Kinship Care for Transnational Children
Kinship Care Week has provided a forum for the discussion and analysis of many of the issues and challenges encountered when relatives and friends assume care for a child who can’t safely remain with their parents. Kinship care is well established as a form of alternative care in the UK which is often ‘unrecognised, undervalued and unsupported’. 1
The recent Independent Review of Social Care (2022) has devoted a chapter to ‘Unlocking the Potential of Family Networks’, and whilst there are criticisms of the review, it at least seeks to address the inequalities and adversities experienced by kinship carers and the children they look after. 2
Despite this, there remains a lack of attention given to the ‘potential of family networks’ which span national borders. It may be an opportune time to consider in a bit more detail transnational family networks as a site for international kinship care placements.
Many of us have extended family and friends across the world. Maintaining these connections can be challenging when there is a physical distance. However, distance does not in itself extinguish these connections or lessen their strength. Family dynamics are more complex than that. We can feel very close to people who live very far away from us, and very distant from family nearby.
An integral part of arriving at a decision as to whether it is in a child’s best interests to live with a kinship carer involves assessing the strength and quality of the relationship between the child and their kin. This is particularly challenging when a child lives in a different country to a prospective kinship carer.
However, it may be important to identify that a family’s experiences of migration may give rise to a distinct relationship between a child and their kin overseas, which cannot be assessed by reference to a regulatory framework designed to assess ‘domestic’ kinship relationships.
A few examples from migration studies of transnational families can demonstrate the way that children experience their connections to kin overseas. These examples cannot begin to scratch the surface of the rich scholarship in this area, but may serve as a reminder of the multitude of ways in which children can experience their connections to different countries and extended family overseas:
Nedeclu (2017) study of Romanian migrants in Canada and Switzerland found a means of ‘transnational grandparenting’, supported by information technology. This ‘ICT mediated co-presence’ with their children and grandchildren, created ‘an everyday environment in which grandparents can take on their role as childcare providers across borders and develop transnational lifestyles.’ 3
Moskal and Sime’s studies of Polish migrant children’s experiences as bilingual children living in Scotland found that the children may have had a ‘bifocal…aspects of local belonging’ as well as being ‘bilocal’ – culturally competent in two systems and feeling a sesnse of home in both Scotland and Poland.4 Language was an integral part of this picture.
Mand has emphasized the need for children’s experiences as transnational family members to be analysed by reference to their emotions, focusing on the experiences of British-Bangladeshi children visiting Bangladesh with their parents. This approach permits an analysis of children as independent agents in a transnational family structures. Mand’s interviews with children who describe their experiences of visiting Sylhet and undertaking ‘kinship work’ identifies the ‘emotional labour children perform as competent social actors in transnational families’ as they navigate generational structures in different socio-economic environments. 5
These insights can go some way to bring out the individual nature of transnational kinship relationships from children’s perspectives.
Language, culture, emotions and memories, physical experiences of countries can all play into the way that children may experience and perceive the lives of kin who live overseas. This may indicate a need to better conceptualise transnational kinship relationships in a legal context, permitting a social work exploration of these connections which is open and unrestricted by domestic legal criteria.
1 https://kinship.org.uk/get-involved/kinship-care-week/
2 J MacAlister, The Independent Review of Children’s Social Care: Final Report (May 2022), 105.
3 Nedelcu M. Transnational grandparenting in the digital age: mediated co-presence and childcare in the case of Romanian migrants in Switzerland and Canada. Eur J Ageing. 2017 Jun 30;14(4):375-383. doi: 10.1007/s10433-017-0436-1. PMID: 29180943; PMCID: PMC5684042.
4 Polish Migrant Children’s Transcultural Lives and Transnational Language Use Marta Moskal*, Daniela Sime** Central and Eastern European Migration Review October 2015, pp. 1–14
5 Kanwal Mand, ‘Childhood, Emotions and the Labour of Transnational Families’ (2015) https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-439352