Transnational Care: A Catalyst for Vulnerability or a Strategy for Mitigating It?

Migrants forced to leave their countries due to protracted humanitarian crises face a number of challenges related to the process of departure, transit and arrival in destination countries. These "survival migrants" (Betts, 2010) face new critical situations in the country of arrival, such as legal insecurity, socio-economic precariousness, discrimination and racism, etc. Due to insufficient social protection/public welfare services, the elderly staying in crisis countries face not only the deprivation of their basic rights, but also violence and daily insecurity. In these conditions, the elderly depend on their "survival migrant" adult children for support and care. This situation raises the question of transnational care in contexts of protracted humanitarian crises.

In sum, for "survival migrants", who have to assume and cope with different situations of vulnerability related to the process of arrival/settlement in the new country, there is the added responsibility of transnational care for parents in countries of origin, countries facing crisis situations. While this responsibility can be a source of stress and emotional distress and therefore an additional source of vulnerability, it can also be a source of motivation to face new challenges and avoid vulnerabilities. It is on this theme that this paper will focus. This paper is based on preliminary narrative interviews with Syrian men and women in Switzerland who take on transnational care tasks for their parents in Syria. These interviews have been conducted within the framework of an ongoing project (Carbajal, Baghdadi, Cavagnoud, 2023) investigating two cases of protracted humanitarian crisis migration: Syrian migrants in Switzerland and Venezuelan migrants in Chile and Peru. The project focuses on the analysis of perceptions and strategies of transnational care for elderly parents who remain in the (crisis-affected) countries of origin.