Transnational families, care and wellbeing: The role of legal status and sibling relationships across borders

Abstract

With transnational mobility on the rise, care is today increasingly carried out across borders, which profoundly impacts the wellbeing of migrants and their families. Drawing on two in-depth qualitative studies with Brazilian migrants in the United States, this article extends discussions on transnational care circulation by exploring two understudied dimensions in transnational care arrangements: legal status and sibling relationships. These two dimensions highlight the importance of legal (undocumented) status and larger family networks, besides the traditional aging parent-adult child dyad, in transnational care practices, family cohesion and wellbeing. The article’s findings are two-fold. First, it shows that undocumented siblings experience long-term psychosocial stress resulting from the legal impossibility of their return visits and to make up for that, they provide emotional forms of care from a distance. Second, it reveals a gendered and sexualized component to care provision within family and sibling relationships, wherein women and gay siblings are typically expected, almost as a ‘naturalized’ role, to take on care responsibilities. This is the case regardless of being a migrant or non-migrant, documented or undocumented sibling.