Transnational daughters – The inter-generational migration project of Russian au pair workers and their families

Caterina Rohde

Transnational daughters – The inter-generational migration project of Russian au pair workers and their families

 

Having been brought up with the ideal of ones living a better life, the biographical acting of Russian young females, who come to Germany as au pair workers, often is strongly oriented towards fulfilling parents’ expectations and hopes for their social upward mobility. While the parent’s generation has fully experienced Russia’s transformation and often assumes that migration is the ultimate life chance, their children actually may experience negative sides of the migration process such as discrimination and exclusion or homesickness, so that they sometimes opt for returning to Russia.   

  On the basis of 17 biographical interviews with Russian women, who have worked in Germany as an au pair and thereafter either settled there or returned to Russia, I would like to investigate the impact of transnational family relations on biographical acting of young female Russians.

 The spatial separation of the family requires young women to construct and practice the role of a “transnational daughter”. In my paper, I will argue that the change of the daughter’s position in the family emerges from two interplaying dynamics of maturing and migrating. First, the au pair stay takes place in the crucial life phase of young adulthood, when young people normally attain autonomy from their parents and develop a rather equal relationship to them. Second, the spatial distance due to migration requires migrants to compensate their absence and substitute the missing direct care for family members with transferable symbols and goods. Both of these dynamics integrate into the development of the transnational daughters’ role as the family provider via remittances and presents.