Care Issues in the Transnational Families. A Polish Research Review

Polish culture is strongly linked to both nuclear family and family networks, which are believed to safeguard stability and sense of security for individuals and communities. The migrations of young Polish men and women, which often scope to entire families, significantly alter the fundamentals of the above guarantees. The migration of Polish youth changes social expectations, possibilities of a family existing in an unchanged form, as well as provisions of care to those who need it, primarily children and elderly members of the kinship structure. For families affected by temporary migrations and experiencing increasingly settlement-oriented mobility, being “on the move” becomes “a way of life,” in which periods of “togetherness” are intertwined with much longer phases of separation. The practices and strategies employed by migrants in the hopes of overcoming the aforementioned challenges require thorough analysis. Therefore, a main goal of our article is to focus on multi-dimensional consequences of migration that pertain to the changes of ties and relationships in families, as well as the organization of child and elderly care.