The Place of Families: Transnational Marriages and the Circulation of Care between Morocco and Italy

The aim of this paper is to reframe how family reproduction and transnationalism are conceived in migration studies by focusing the analysis on transnational marriages, i.e. conjugal unions between individuals of the same nationality or national origins who are connected through kinship or community ties. Specifically, I consider transnational marriages as a particularly valuable circuit of ‘reverse remittance’ (Mazzucato 2011) through which distant kin support individuals in making matches, celebrating the wedding, and settling the household abroad. I argue that this perspective significantly expands the scope of the “care circulation” research field, especially given that the range of processes, practices, and relationships which fuel the horizons of migrants’ social reproduction from and beyond the context of origin have yet to be exhaustively explored. Based on qualitative data collected among Moroccan couples living in Italy, my analysis considers how mate selection took place across the Mediterranean, examining the nuances between marriages arranged and by choice. Most importantly, I consider how marriage events are interrelated with and triggered by transnational kinship networks. Exchange flows can be seen as multidirectional when reconstructed in this perspective, in that I show how families and relatives from countries of origin support migrants’ care in the country of destination, and not only vice versa. Furthermore, by mapping the ways these family cycles unfold, I suggest that family transnationalism shapes not only relationships at a distance, but also proximity relationships and the process of emplacement. In times of increasingly enforced national borders, kinship networks play a key role – and not only as circuits enabling the circulation of care. By mobilising affective and social resources more broadly, they literally drive the relocation of spheres of social reproduction abroad, thereby extending the features of family transnationalism (Decimo 2024).