5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

This panel invites a discussion to mark the 10^th anniversary of Baldassar and Merla’s edited volume, Transnational Families, migration and the circulation of care. The notion of care circulation offered a framework to account for the way in which family solidarities and obligations are organised in transnational families. The concept complemented and extended political economy approaches, in particular the global care chains thesis (Hochschild, Parreñas), with an approach that traces the multidirectional and asymmetric care flows through which members of transnational families maintain a sense of belonging. This framework recognizes the multiple forms of support that 'circulate' across borders through ICTs and during visits. These issues are approached from a “situated transnationalism” perspective (Kilkey & Merla, 2014) that pays attention to the role of institutional contexts (migration, employment and social protection policies), and intersecting dimensions like gender, class, and generation.

The past decade has seen significant changes. Factors such as populism, armed conflict, and pandemic-related border closures have led to “immobilizing regimes of migration” (Merla, Kilkey & Baldassar, 2020). Additionally, climate change will impact migratory patterns, prompting transnational families to reconsider mobility and caregiving strategies.

In this session, we aim to further explore these shifts, assess the ability and limitations of the circulation of care approach to account for and explain the dynamics at work, and collectively rethink this concept for the future. We are thus interested in papers that make use of, or critique, the care circulation framework to help examine its continuing relevance to the field.