Care at a Distance: Ukrainian and Ecuadorian Transnational Parenthood from Spain

Maintaining intimate relationships in transnational families depends on various care practices that involve the circulation of objects, values and persons. Comparing our observations among Ukrainian and Ecuadorian labour migrants in Madrid, we argue that such care practices are structured by geographical distance, and that the distinction between overseas and overland is significant. We claim that differences in distance produce diverse constraints, possibilities and preferences for migrants' practices of remitting, communicating, revisiting and reuniting with their children left behind. Care at a distance moves through formal and less-formal market channels—like international communication technologies, remittance enterprises and transport facilitators. From our material we are able to identify clear distinctions in how migrants of the two nationalities make use of these market channels to nourish their relationships with their children. We also argue that there is a correspondence between geographical and cultural distance (where language communion vs language rupture is crucial) on the one hand, and the preference of Ecuadorians for family reunification and of Ukrainians for revisits to children left behind, on the other.