The Mental Load and Transnational Care: Understanding How South Asian Migrant Mothers Undertake Caregiving in Melbourne, Australia

This paper argues that the mental load framework—commonly used to understand the cognitive, domestic and emotional work involved in managing daily life—offers a valuable lens for analysing the complexities of transnational family dynamics post-migration. By building on Baldassar and Merla’s care circulation framework, this study integrates the mental load to explore the often-invisible burdens migrant mothers face in managing caregiving responsibilities across borders.

Focusing on South Asian migrant mothers in Melbourne, a key site of migration and multiculturalism in Australia, this paper presents findings from in-depth interviews that highlight the intersectional challenges faced by racialised migrant mothers. These women frequently juggle caregiving duties in both their host and home countries, navigating the emotional, logistical, and cultural complexities of transnational caregiving. This research underscores how these mothers experience diverse forms of mental load, particularly when caregiving responsibilities are distanced, asymmetrical, or inadequately shared among family members.

This study contributes to existing scholarship in two key ways: (1) it emphasises the diversity of migrant mothering experiences, particularly within South Asian communities, and (2) it suggests that the care circulation framework’s roots in collectivist care practices can be adapted more widely to help alleviate the mental load of mothers in transnational contexts. By centering the experiences of BIPOC migrant mothers—who are often excluded from focus in family and migration studies—this paper fills a critical gap in understanding how the mental load framework can enhance analyses of caregiving in transnational families and calls for a more nuanced approach to understanding caregiving in an increasingly globalised world.