Intergenerational Care and Intersecting Inequalities Among Transnational Families in Europe

ABSTRACT

This special issue has a central focus on intergenerational spaces of care , which have been rather under‐explored in studies of transnational families to date. In this introduction, we outline the potential innovative contribution of care ethics to understanding intergenerational caring relations within and across borders, showing how several papers in the special issue are enriched by this conceptual framing. The special issue also advances understandings of the intersecting inequalities that may marginalise different generations of transnational families. Such structural inequalities are often embedded within increasingly restrictive im/mobility regimes that characterise contemporary migration landscapes in Europe and beyond, within the wider global context of ‘crisis’‐driven displacement and post‐pandemic times. We call for a relational, intergenerational understanding of care and intersecting inequalities in transnational families. Future research needs to ensure children's and young people's perspectives are included, involve multiple generations to produce relational family analyses, and to connect studies of transnational families with those on family caring relations more generally. Finally, this special issue shows the harms caused by restrictive immigration, care and welfare regimes and the need for policies to be based on more expansive, non‐normative definitions of ‘family’ that recognise the significance of transnational family care in filling gaps within sedentary welfare regimes and enabling different generations to live ‘care‐filled lives’.