Care Across Generations: Solidarity and Sacrifice in Transnational Families by CSWS faculty affiliate Kristin E. Yarris is due out in August from Stanford University Press. An assistant professor in the UO Department of International Studies, Yarris has been an active member of the CSWS Narrative Health and Social Justice Research Interest Group.
From the publisher: “Global inequalities make it difficult for parents in developing nations to provide for their children. Some determine that migration in search of higher wages is their only hope. Many studies have looked at how migration transforms the child–parent relationship. But what happens to other generational relationships when mothers migrate?
“Care Across Generations takes a close look at grandmother care in Nicaraguan transnational families, examining both the structural and gendered inequalities that motivate migration and caregiving as well as the cultural values that sustain intergenerational care. Kristin E. Yarris broadens the transnational migrant story beyond the parent–child relationship, situating care across generations and embedded within the kin networks in sending countries. Rather than casting the consequences of women’s migration in migrant sending countries solely in terms of a ‘care deficit,’ Yarris shows how intergenerational reconfigurations of care serve as a resource for the well-being of children and other family members who stay behind after transnational migration. Moving our perspective across borders and over generations, Care Across Generations shows the social and moral value of intergenerational care for contemporary transnational families.”
“Care Across Generations is an eloquent and sharp examination of the role of grandmothers, the unsung heroes, in providing care and love in Nicaraguan transnational families. This book will be of great interest to researchers and policymakers concerned with the well-being of children whose parents migrate in search of better livelihoods.”
—Elzbieta Gozdziak, Georgetown University
