Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies

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Who Takes Care of the Children? Albanian Migrant

Parents’ Strategies for Combining Work and
Childcare in Greece

Armela Xhaho, Ajay Bailey & Erka Çaro

To cite this article: Armela Xhaho, Ajay Bailey & Erka Çaro (2022) Who Takes Care
of the Children? Albanian Migrant Parents’ Strategies for Combining Work and
Childcare in Greece, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 24:5, 815-835, DOI:
10.1080/19448953.2022.2037963

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/19448953.2022.2037963

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JOURNAL OF BALKAN AND NEAR EASTERN STUDIES
2022, VOL. 24, NO. 5, 815–835
https://doi.org/10.1080/19448953.2022.2037963

Who Takes Care of the Children? Albanian Migrant Parents’

Strategies for Combining Work and Childcare in Greece
a b c
Armela Xhaho , Ajay Bailey and Erka Çaro
a
Graduate School of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands; bInternational
Development Studies, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, University of Utrecht,
Utrecht, The Netherlands; cFaculty of History and Philology, Department of Geography, University of Tirana,
Tirana, Albania

ABSTRACT
This paper aims to explore the strategies Albanian migrant parents
in Greece employ to reconcile their work and childcare responsi­
bilities. The institutional context, the informal work setting, and the
agency of the migrants all play crucial roles in their childcare
arrangements. This research draws on 36 biographical interviews
conducted during 2014–2016 with parents in Greece. Our findings
suggest that migrants use different coping strategies to manage
their work and care responsibilities. These strategies include
mother-centred strategies or mothers making career sacrifices to
meet their care responsibilities, shared parenting, relying on
extended family and friends, delegating care to older children,
leaving children to care for themselves, taking children to work,
and transnational care practices. This study shows how care
arrangement options were constrained and continuously shaped
by migration, care, gender, and labour regimes.

1. Introduction
Managing childcare responsibilities can be quite challenging for migrant parents, as they
need to employ multiple strategies to reconcile their care arrangements and work
demands. Among these strategies are care delegation (formal or non-familial informal
care), mother-centredness (mothers cutting back on working hours), negotiation of care
within the nuclear family, child neglect (leaving children alone), and taking children to
work.1 Childcare arrangement practices are embedded in and shaped by structural
factors, welfare regimes, family networks, and opportunities in both the home and the
host countries.2
Concerning the home country-Albania, care work is generally delegated to women3
and extended family members.4 Studies have shown that kinship structures do play
a key role in mediating care arrangements, especially across borders.5 As regards the
host country- Greece, both welfare and immigration regimes do play a key role in
shaping care practices among migrants. The migration regime of Greece has long been
criticized because it has neither designed nor implemented a concise, long-term

CONTACT Armela Xhaho [email protected]

© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly
cited.
816 A. XHAHO ET AL.

integration policy for immigrants.6 Although Greece has been the leading destination
country for 500,000 Albanians, they could be regularized only in the late 1990s and
early 2000s.7 In addition, Greece Southern Mediterranean welfare model does not
provide many formal care options and opportunities for labour market flexibility,
which adds another layer of complexity to the care arrangements.8 Care negotiation
among migrant families becomes even more challenging taking into consideration the
irregular migrant status. This paper sheds light on the experiences and challenges
Albanian working parents in Greece face in managing childcare while subject to the
intertwining effects of migration, care, gender, and labour regimes. Although there are
a vast number of studies exploring Albanian migration and return migration,9 the
literature on the childcare arrangements of Albanian migrant parents is quite limited.10
In this paper, we explore the work-care reconciliation strategies of Albanian migrants
in Greece, focusing particularly on their transnational care arrangements. Through the
analysis of extensive biographical interviews with Albanian parents on childcare, this
research aims to fill this gap. The research question we address is as follows: What are
the coping strategies migrant working parents employ to reconcile their work and care
responsibilities?

2. Childcare arrangements in migration and transnational care practices

Migration scholars maintain the idea that child care management in migration is quite
stressful and demanding for parents, as they must come up with various strategies to
reconcile paid work and child care demands.11 Parents can choose between the regulated
and unregulated childcare options with the latter being a less stressful option.12 While
unregulated care may be formal (such as care provided in an unregulated day home or by
a privately employed nanny) or informal (such as care provided by grandparents, other
relatives, or friends), the regulated care has to do with formal care provision which is
under government oversight.13
Much of the literature on childcare arrangements in migration have focused exten­
sively on transnational care practices resulting from international migration.14 In
a transnational setting, care can be exchanged and performed beyond physical
proximity.15 Such exchange practices include sending remittances, visiting the home
country, engaging in long-distance communication, and sending letters and photos.16
More often, mothers tend to use multiple strategies to negotiate gender role expecta­
tions, which resonate with the idea of ‘good mothering’ or ‘hegemonic ideologies of
motherhood’.17 In the light of this rhetoric, mothers attempt to compensate for their
absence through ‘intensive mothering’18 or by maintaining frequent contact with their
left-behind children via regular communication and/or by sending money and gifts.
The term ‘transnational motherhood’ has been coined to describe such practices.19
However, more recent articles have tried to deconstruct hegemonic ideologies of
motherhood, by introducing new practices of mothering ideology, in response to
changing social conditions and women’s creative notions of agency.20 Such mother­
hood practices are coined with the term ‘extensive mothering’21; ‘integrated
mothering’.22 These ideologies reinforce the importance of kin and community mem­
bers in facilitating child-care practices and encourage work outside the home as a new
normal of ‘good mothering’.23
 JOURNAL OF BALKAN AND NEAR EASTERN STUDIES 817

2.1. Structural factors influencing care strategies: migration, labour, care, and
gender regimes
The institutional context and the agency of migrants play important role in configuring
care arrangements among transnational parents.24 Several structural factors can influ­
ence parents’ specific care strategy choices. Among the factors that influence how care is
delivered are countries’ migration, labour, care, and gender regimes.25 Studies have
shown that both migrant mothers and fathers negotiate care arrangements within the
changing dynamics of migration, labour, care, and gender regimes26 and within the
multiple roles, they play as migrants, workers, and parents.
First, a country’s migration regime refers to its immigration policies governing
entry, exit, and settlement in the country, including the rights of individuals and
their family dependents, naturalisation rules, and anti-discriminatory legislation.
Migration policies may either restrict migrants’ spatial mobility or offer them the
opportunity to bring their children to live with them in the host country.27 Second,
a country’s labour or employment regime refers to its labour market divisions in terms
of ethnicity, gender, nationality, and migration, which are, in turn, reflected in
hierarchies of wages, skills, precarity, and social rights and protections. Studies have
shown that labour regimes can greatly influence migrant parents’ experiences by
offering them more flexibility in the workplace or opportunities to organize their
working hours to meet their childcare responsibilities.28 Third, a country’s care regime
refers to the amount and kind of care provided (through payments, cash benefits, care
allowances, services, tax credits) by the public, voluntary, and private sectors.29 To
maintain a healthy work-life balance, working parents need access to formal and
informal care arrangements and the support of pro-family policies. After they migrate,
families have to look into the availability of care resources and facilities in the host
country, which might constrain their choices. The situations of families become even
more challenging if they lack personal, family, and social networks to provide hands-
on childcare.30
Finally, country’s gender regime refers to the complex norms and rules that create
normative expectations about gender relations in society by allocating different tasks to
women and men.31 Moreover, work-life arrangements are experienced differently by
mothers and fathers, since gender shapes the coping strategies in child care.32 The
burden of care work mostly falls to mothers, who are perceived as the primary
caregivers.33

3. Methodology
3.1. Field work
Our analysis draws on 36 biographical interviews with Albanian migrant parents living in
Greece. The data were gathered between November 2014 and November 2016. The
fieldwork was conducted in Athens, where a considerable number of Albanian immi­
grants have settled. We gained access to Albanian immigrants first through main gate­
keepers (Albanian network groups in social media, heads of NGOs in Greece, social
networks in Albania), and we used a snowball technique to interview potential study
participants.
818 A. XHAHO ET AL.

3.2. Methods
We use a biographical approach,34 which implies the collection and analysis of detailed
narratives of life histories of the participants. The biographical interview is particularly well-
suited to transnational migration research, as it enables us to empirically capture and
reconstruct the diverse, complex, and the transformational character of the migration
experience.
In the first part of the interview, the participants were asked to tell their own life
stories, to encourage them to provide a rough outline of their experiences, while
revealing the parts of these experiences to which they attach more value. To obtain
a fuller picture of each migrant’s story, the interviewer asked questions about their
initial journey to Greece, the work-life balance and division of labour within the
household, focusing on gender roles expectations and practices of child care arrange­
ment. Though the majority of participants started to talk spontaneously about the role
of kinship and family networks in facilitating care work, specific questions were
designed to circle back to critical issues such as the impact of immigration status,
welfare, gender and labour regimes shaping their care options and opportunities.

3.3. Data analysis and presentation

All interviews were conducted in the Albanian language and lasted from 1–4 hours.
All interviews were tape-recorded after oral consent was obtained from the partici­
pants. We assured the participants that the information would be kept confidential
and that pseudonyms would be used instead of their real names. All interviews were
transcribed while preserving the original language, coded with the qualitative program
MAXqda 12. version, and thematically analysed.

3.4. Characteristics of participants

The primary analysis of this study relies on interviews with 19 working mothers.
However, to get a gendered perspective, we also derived some information from 17
interviews with fathers in Greece. In three cases, we interviewed both partners in
a couple. The migrant parents we interviewed had at least one child and one working
experience in the host country and had an average of two children. The vast majority
of women in our study entered Greece legally through a tourist visa, and became
undocumented migrants after overstaying their visa. Some of them had crossed the
border illegally, and a few entered through family reunification procedures. However,
all the migrant women had regularized their immigrant status by the time of the
interview. While the majority of migrants had finished high school (89%), only a few
(11%) had a university degree. With respect to occupation, most of the women were
employed in the low-skilled service sector. Almost all of them had at least one job
experience in the domestic sector, or worked in parallel in other sectors, such as the
service sector. The majority of men had been working in the construction sector and
were currently unemployed. The great majority of migrants (87%) had been living in
Greece for an average of 20 years (16–24 years)(see Table 1).
Table 1. Migrant’s profile
No. Name Occupation Age Gender Migration year Education
1 Ardo Unemployed 58 M 1991 High School
2 Marjola Domestic worker (DW) 54 F 1993 High School
3 Hasan Unemployed 56 M 1991 High School
4 Besa DW 58 F 1991 High School
5 Dona DW 52 F 1992 High School
6 Fabiola Hairdresser/DW 36 F 1993 High School
7 Aldi Unemployed 40 M 1992 High School
8 Geni Entrepreneur 48 M 1992 High School
9 Stavri Unemployed 47 M 1991 High School
10 Anisa Hairdresser/DW 32 F 2002 High School
11 Ilir Entrepreneur 37 M 1996 High School
12 Bela DW 47 F 1997 High School
13 Glauk Unemployed 49 M 1991 High School
14 Shqipe DW 65 F 1997 High School
15 Zani DW 22 M 1991 High School
16 Alma DW 50 F 1993 High School
17 Nandi Unemployed 51 M 1993 High School
18 Fredi Unemployed 33 M 1997 High School
19 Naim Deliveryman 35 M 1996 High School
20 Shpresa DW /cook 42 F 1995 High School
21 Landi Barber 31 M 1997 High School
22 Lajda DW 26 F 1997 High School
23 Klodi DW/office cleaner 35 F 2001 University
24 Ejona Seller 36 F 1997 High School
25 Bardha DW 52 F 2004 High School
26 Fati DW 36 F 1997 High School
27 Eno Graphic designer 29 M 1998 University
JOURNAL OF BALKAN AND NEAR EASTERN STUDIES

28 Gimi Specialist 59 M 1993 High School

29 Orida Agriculture/ DW 35 F 1998 High School
(Continued)
819
 820
A. XHAHO ET AL.

Table 1. (Continued).
No. Name Occupation Age Gender Migration year Education
30 Besi Construction 29 M 2004 High School
31 Ela Cleaner/DW 41 F 1999 High School
32 Tatjana Waiter/DW 22 F 2003 University
33 Vladi Unemployed 55 M 1997 High School
34 Kastriot Welder 54 M 1992 High School
35 Sonila DW 54 F 1997 University
36 Mira DW /seller 38 F 1997 High School
 JOURNAL OF BALKAN AND NEAR EASTERN STUDIES 821

4. Reconciling work-care responsibilities in migration

This section explores how the Albanian migrants negotiated their job demands in order
to balance their caregiving roles and responsibilities.

4.1. Migrant parenting in Greece

Our empirical data show that the migrant parents faced intense pressure to reconcile
work and childcare, as they often had to overcome obstacles related to their illegal status
and informal employment, lack of access to family-friendly policies, and other structural
barriers in the host country. This experience was highly gendered, and thus had different
effects on men and women. Given her precarious position as a newly arrived unskilled
migrant, Shpresa, a 42-year-old mother in Greece, explained her daily struggles in
managing work and care responsibilities, while facing barriers related to her migrant
and employment status. Her lack of access to work-family reconciliation policies made
her situation even more precarious:

I was working almost nine to ten hours on the black market and it was quite difficult to work
if you had a little baby. We didn’t have documents, we were illegal. There was no available
option for kindergarten. So, we had to struggle quite a lot to take care of the children and
manage to work at the same time. My ambition was to work hard, take care of my home and
children, and that was what I had to do as a mother and a woman (Shpresa, 42, cook, Greece).

Another migrant mother talked about her sense of guilt, loss of identity, and struggles to
balance the multiple roles she has in different life domains:

I was a mother, I was a worker, a wife. My primary duty was to be a mother, but I did not
meet all the expectations of the “good mother”. I felt embarrassed about my family and
children because I could not get through and stay with them when they most needed me.
(Fati 36, domestic worker).

This quote points to the gender role expectations in terms of childcare arrangements.
Geni, a 48-year-old hairdresser and entrepreneur, married with one child, expressed
regret about not having enough time to spend with his child. Although he was living with
his daughter, his job commitments often forced him to spend a long period away from his
family. He explained what it means to be a migrant father in Greece:

I rarely see my little daughter. I don’t see her that often, but that’s how things work here.
This is the sacrifice of a migrant father. So, you don’t have many options to choose. I don’t
really have much time to take care of her, but whenever I return home we have fun at a kids’
playground and hang around together. I know that being away from her is painful, but
whenever I have some free time, I try to do my best (Geni, 48, hairdresser and entrepreneur)

As it is clear from the above-mentioned quote, as an undocumented migrant father he

did not have many job options to choose. The abovementioned cases illustrate that the
work-care experiences of working migrants are embedded in the host country’s migra­
tion and labour regimes.
822 A. XHAHO ET AL.

4.2. Family-based care arrangements

The following section explores the coping strategies the Albanian migrant parents in
Greece employed to reconcile their work demands and childcare arrangements.

4.2.1. Mother-centred strategies

While the responsibility for caring for children lies with both parents, the cultural
expectations and patriarchal norms in Albania mean that mothers bear the primary
responsibility for childcare. The narratives of our migrants show that mothers were
more likely to sacrifice their jobs to meet their care responsibilities. This tendency is
well-illustrated by Ejona, a 36-year-old mother who was working in a clothing store
from 9 am to 3 pm and from 5 pm to 8 pm. She struggled to find time for her
children. She had been working at the same store for the last 13 years, but soon after
the birth of her first child, she asked her employer to change her work schedule to
enable her to meet her care responsibilities. In many cases, the migrant mothers
reported making even greater sacrifices to pursue the ‘mother-centred’ strategy, by
working in even more precarious jobs to accommodate their children’s needs. Alma,
a 50-year-old domestic worker, said that she felt compelled to sacrifice her well-paid
job at a pizzeria, in which she was in the social insurance scheme because she was
required to work late into the night. She decided to work in a more physically
demanding and less well-paid job as a domestic worker in order to be with her
children in the evening. In the narratives of our working mothers, the theme of
sacrificing for the children was quite evident. Although mothers were continually
influenced by these ideologies, they did not strictly adhere to them. They would rather
make negotiations about their working time and conditions than opt out of work and
become ‘stay- at-home-mothers’.
Labour market flexibility did not offer these migrant women many opportunities to
combine childcare and employment. Many mothers returned to work soon after giving
birth. They were also less likely than fathers to either reduce their working hours or
work under flex time when their children were very young. In some cases, mothers
would look for part-time jobs that enabled them to be with their children after school.
The ‘mother-centred strategies’’ foregrounds the observation that mothers are more
likely than fathers to organize their time around their children’s timetable to meet their
care responsibilities. The mothers’ greater willingness to adjust their employment to
meet the needs of their children than their similarly situated husbands was in line with
the culturally prescribed nurturing norms of motherhood. The gender regime in the
home country seems to have influenced gender role expectations in the host country.
Having to take care of a child is sometimes seen as an obstacle for mothers who work in
precarious jobs without social insurance. But the migrant mothers faced a double
disadvantage: first, because of their motherhood role; and, second, because of their
migrant status.

Just before signing the job contract, my co-workers told me that I had to assure my
employers that I will not get pregnant while working there, otherwise they would fire me.
I didn’t want to stay with only one kid, so when I got pregnant and gave birth to my son,
 JOURNAL OF BALKAN AND NEAR EASTERN STUDIES 823

I had to quit the job, because I had no help from others in terms of childcare. My husband
was working all the time and this is what it means to be a mother – you have to sacrifice, but
at least I was the mother I wanted to be (Ela, 41, domestic worker).

The case of Ela (41, domestic worker) shows how the patterns of childcare were often
informed by labour and welfare policies in the host country. The fathers’ narratives
showed that they also felt guilty about not spending enough time with their children, but
they were less likely than their wives to report rearranging or sacrificing their work
schedule to meet childcare responsibilities. Vladi (55, unemployed) recalled:
When I think about my past, I would have preferred to dedicate much more time to the kids.
Something that I have always felt like a hostage in my life was the fact that I was not present
when my third daughter was born. I was not there as a father to see my daughter, to take care
of her; and I was not there as a husband to support my wife. I felt very bad. My wife had to
stay home and take care of the children up to the moment they had to go to kindergarten.
There was no other option, and there was no need for her to work. It was my duty as a father
and husband to work. I could not leave my job.

Naim, 35, a father of two daughters works as a pizza deliveryman in Athens. When asked
about work-care arrangements, he responded:
I am trying to fulfil all the duties, but it is better this way. I would rather prefer to miss my
family and children instead of not being able to provide for them. Instead, my wife was quite
brave in taking care of the kids.

By contrast, Kastriot (54, welder) reported that as part of job requirements, he had to
travel and leave his family for several days to a month. It is interesting to note that he
perceived his wife as substituting for him or ‘managing’ the situation in his absence:
Being away from my family was indeed a sacrifice. Of course, it has not been easy to fulfil at
the same time my role as the father and my duties as a worker. I think that that they have felt
my absence, my love, my care, but still this situation is managed very well by my wife.

The above narratives show that gender norms and attitudes affected the ways the migrant
parents negotiated care within their partnership. Thus, regardless of their economic
contributions as full-time workers, many of the migrant mothers in our study continued
to maintain their traditionally ascribed roles, which resonates with the idea of women as
the main caregivers in the Mediterranean welfare model. Moreover, although the
Albanian and Greek contexts seem not to be that different in terms of gender/caring it
is interesting to note how migration intersects with these norms and expectations and
provide another burden for them.

4.2.2. Relying on ‘significant others’

After migration, family networks serve as the main source of support and solidarity for
many migrants.35 The migrant mothers relied on a wide range of other caregiving
arrangements. In the section below, we highlight the importance of ‘significant others’
in care practices.
a. Shared childcare with husbands;
Narratives of participants show that parents would often share the care responsibil­
ities. Yet, the vast majority of the migrant parents in our study maintained strong
gendered boundaries in terms of childcare. Although some of the migrant women had
824 A. XHAHO ET AL.

to rely on their husbands, they still perceived themselves as the main care providers and
their husbands as the main breadwinners. Many of the participants said that even when
their husbands were unemployed, they would not change the babies’ diapers or engage in
‘more feminine caring chores’. While maintaining their status as ‘good mothers’, they
considered their partners as less competent and prepared for caring tasks, perpetuating in
this way dominant ideologies on caring and providing. Mira’s narrative best illustrates
this idea:

Sometimes we share the care work, but you can realise how difficult is for men to do
women’s stuff. Once I left my three-year-old boy with D [her husband], but he could only
feed him, nothing else. Yep, he was brave to keep the baby busy by playing but that’s all he
could manage. He will wait for me to come and change the diapers (Mira, 38, domestic
worker and cooker).

Moreover, the deregulation of the labour regime in Greece following the economic crisis
affected the childcare arrangements among the migrant parents in Greece. In a few cases
when men were unemployed, the care burden would be handled by them. These practices
seem to challenge the cultural expectations that place mothers as the central and primary
caregivers. Although the majority of the migrant women with an unemployed husband
acknowledged that they had been trying to help with the childcare to some extent, they
stressed that Albanian patriarchal norms demand that men adhere to more traditional
masculine roles. This again shows that gender-based caregiving arrangements are heavily
influenced by the traditional gender roles of the origin country, which are expressed in
the most extreme form in northern Albania.36 For example, Fredi stressed that working
mothers and fathers manage their shared responsibilities differently:

My wife was the main responsible person that could take care of the children. I have been
part of the parental care as the father, but not to the extent my wife did. She has managed
excellently all the household, such as cleaning, cooking, ironing, taking care of children.
I have been responsible for accompanying them to the kindergarten, doing shopping or
other physical labour (Fredi, 33, unemployed).

In addition to demonstrating that care work is gendered in Albania, the above cases
show that men and women provide care in gender-specific ways. The mothers were
more likely than the fathers to make sacrifices to meet their care responsibilities. These
sacrifices were often shaped and reinforced by the gender regimes, expectations, and
power hierarchies between women and men embodied within the Albanian migrant
families.
b. Delegation of care to older children;
Delegation of care responsibilities to other older children was considered an option
for some Albanian migrant parents who found themselves with extremely limited
alternatives. When no other childcare option was available, children as young as
seven years old had to take care of their younger brothers and sisters. Marjola recalled
her experience:

I had to leave alone my three children: the oldest child was seven years, the second was in
kindergarten, and the youngest was 1year old. I left the bottle with milk for the little baby
and I was begging my son to feed the little one until I returned from work. I was crying on
 JOURNAL OF BALKAN AND NEAR EASTERN STUDIES 825

the train to work. If something happens to them, who will let me know. Many times, I found
the Albanian neighbours in my home, because they found the children crying (Marjola, 54,
domestic worker, Greece).

While delegating caring responsibilities to other older children was quite an uncomfor­
table situation for many mothers, it was sometimes the only option available to them.
I was somehow obligated to leave my eight-month-son in the hands of my seven-year-old
daughter. I know it has been an enormous sacrifice and I was very anxious all the time, but
there was no other choice. I was obligated to do that. I had to work because otherwise we
would have nothing to eat. I had to teach her how to take care of my little baby and she was
used to do that and even nowadays she says to me: “I became a mother when I was seven
years old”. She had to do that because I was working nine to 10 hours and it was quite
difficult for young mothers with little babies. In such conditions, I was obligated to withdraw
my daughter from school, because she had to take care of my other child (Bela, 47, domestic
worker, Greece).

As these accounts show, children played an active role in care management. They often
eased their parents’ care responsibilities by taking care of their younger sisters or
brothers. The majority of the working migrant mothers felt they had no alternative to
leaving their children in the care of their brothers and sisters. Thus, as the abovemen­
tioned cases demonstrate, older children were often the principal caregivers when no
other options were available, which points to the forms of extensive rather than intensive
mothering.37
c. Social and family networks in the host country;
Cultural values and kinship solidarity play an important role in the exchange of
care across borders.38 Grandparents play an active role in both migration and the
management of transgenerational transnational care.39 Narratives of family solidarity
were evident in our interviews with Albanian migrants in Greece, who often were able
to rely on their social/familial and kin networks. Extended family members were able
to join the family and provide hands-on care for the children only when the status of
Albanian migrants was regulated. For instance, Laureta, a 52-year-old house cleaner
in Greece and the mother of three children, had to rely on her younger sister, a 14-
year-old girl. Laureta’s sister came to Greece from Albania with only one purpose: to
help take care of her older sister’s baby. Then, when Laureta’s younger sister returned
to Albania, she had to rely on her sister-in-law for childcare, Another mother
recounted:
I had to rely on my family members for childcare. I returned to work within the first few
days after giving birth. She was so kind to my kid, and for her, it was like a leisure activity,
not an obligation. She was supposed to feed the baby, wash him, and other kinds of
activities. She was quite helpful and assisted me with the kid. You know, it used to be
always like that in Albania. We were raised altogether by our relatives. They are our
saviours in the most difficult time, the time when we most need them (Klodi, 35, domestic
worker Greece).

The narratives of our working mothers show that their family members and kinship
structures represented a good and reliable source of childcare help. The migrant
parents in Greece were often assisted by their mothers, mothers-in-law, sisters, sister-
in-law, friends, and other family and network members. This was considered
a practical solution to compensate for the mothers’ absence; a strategy that could
826 A. XHAHO ET AL.

be conceptualized as ‘indirect mothering’.40 Because Albania is close to Greece, it was

quite common for the Albanians in our study to have their relatives visit and help
with childcare. This shows that kinship networks play a significant role in care
circulation and delegation and that migration for caregiving tasks can lead to linked
migration.

4.2.3. Leaving children alone and taking children to work

Leaving children (under age seven) alone in the house to care for themselves was
a strategy used by many migrant parents in Greece who could not afford any of the
abovementioned strategies. Sonila (54, domestic worker, Greece) recalled:

I left her [her daughter] alone in the apartment because we were both working long hours
and could not find any other solution. We were living in the basement and once my
neighbours told me that they had heard the little baby crying. I was freaking out they
could find out I left my baby alone, so the next day I switched on the TV and went to work.
They could not hear the noise.

Another woman (Besa, 58, domestic worker, Greece) remembered leaving her 18-month-
old son alone in the house:

I used to tie him up/cover “kopanec”41 with ropes and sheets so that he could not move.
Only his arms were out of the sheets. I left a bottle of milk near his hands, so whenever he felt
thirsty he could grasp the bottle and feed himself. This lasted only for a few hours, but these
were the most terrible hours I have experienced. I was in constant fear he would get
suffocated. The fear was so strong that one day I took the train back home again upon my
arrival at the place of destination because I was not feeling comfortable at all.

Thus, children contributed by taking care of themselves, even if they were quite young.
The mothers reported that they did not feel at all comfortable with this option, and were
in constant fear that something bad would happen to the children alone in the house. But
given their circumstances as undocumented working migrants, they saw this option as
the only available solution. In such situations, they were forced to bring their children to
work. For example, Fabiola remembered:

If you need to survive you had to “invent” a solution. I took my three-year-old daughter to
the house I had to clean. She was a courageous kid and the house owner was so nice to her.
(Fabiola, 36, hairdresser, Greece).

In some other cases, children as young as eight years old would assist their mothers by
doing some household chores at the houses where they were working. How care
arrangements are organized and utilized in the receiving countries may be strongly
influenced by the nature of work and employment regimes. Therefore, the lack of formal
childcare options for migrant women in the host country and the absence of social
networks that might provide informal childcare forced these women to consider such
alternatives.
 JOURNAL OF BALKAN AND NEAR EASTERN STUDIES 827

4.3. Transnational care across borders

In cases in which none of the abovementioned options was available to the working
parents, they decided to send their children back to Albania to be cared for by family
members. Almost all the working parents in Greece had to rely on their extended
family members, usually women, to look after their children for a couple of years.
Many of the migrant mothers reported that although they planned to leave their
children in Albania for just a few months, their illegal status made it impossible to
stick to the initial plan. Thus, they had to prolong their children’s stay. Dona explained
her situation..

The initial plan was to leave him [my son] with my parents in Albania for one year, but it
lasted longer. He stayed there for around two years without seeing me. I had to go through
a severe nervous breakdown - the worst period of my life. I went back to Albania after three
years and it was shocking because my son did not realise I was his mother. He didn’t want to
stay with me, he could not call me mum. I was a foreigner for him. This was a painful
situation and I could do nothing to bring things back. I lost the love of my son, I lost being
called mother. I know it was devastating at that time and it is painful to reveal, but in the
end, all my efforts were worth it. I was getting rewarded and earning quite a lot of money.
I tried everything to compensate, but nothing could substitute the lost time. Everything I did
I did for them, so they could have a better future. I can’t get back that lost time. (Dona, 52,
domestic worker, Greece).

The anxiety about missing the most important years of their children’s childhood
persisted for a long time. Structural and institutional barriers, such as strict migration
policies in Greece restricted the migrants’ spatial mobility as well as their childcare
choices. Migrants’ choices are continuously negotiated within the opportunities and
constraints they face in the host country. ‘To understand the choices that migrants
make, we must also, therefore, imagine the lack of choices which they may be
confronted with’.42 Many claimed that if they returned to Albania, they risked
being arrested by the police and never coming back to Greece. Therefore, when
faced with such constraints, they decided to work rather than move back with their
children. Leaving children in Albania was considered a viable option to better manage
their full workload and ease the cost of living expenses. Although performing mother­
hood from a distance was not easy, it was not considered as a deviation from the
traditional norms. The undocumented mothers had to deal with low self-esteem and
self-worth because being physically apart from their children led them to feel
depressed and anguished. Because of their undocumented status, they could neither
go home to visit their children nor bring their children to the host country. Indeed,
one theme that emerged in the mothers’ accounts was that they tried to compensate
for their absence by buying their children gifts, giving them a better future through
remittances. The majority of them complained of being unable to maintain regular
communication due to limited opportunities for mass communication at that time.
The mothers reported feeling homesickness and embarrassment about their left-
behind children, but also that they were happy they could build a better future for
their children. One of the interviewees explained:
828 A. XHAHO ET AL.

I stayed more than two years without my children. I was going through a terrible time,
wondering whether I could live any more. I was almost experiencing a nervous break­
down. I was not enough mother. I was longing for something bad to happen, so I would be
obligated to return to Albania and stay with my kids. Upon my return, the most terrible
moment was to see how affectionate they were with my sister and my mom, but not me. It
was terrible, I was lost. Did I fail as a mother? Sometimes yes, but everything was meant
for them. I knew that they would have a bright future if they were in a better economic
position. At least I could change their future for the better (Orida, 35, agriculture worker
in Greece).

I feel very bad. I think that Kejda [her three-year-old daughter] got shocked by my absence.
She cried a lot those days I was absent. I think she suffered from my absence and I suffer this
situation more than her. Is it the way good mothers behave with their children? I know that
it is my fault. Maybe I should not have left her alone for such a long time (Bardha, 52,
domestic worker).

Feelings of guilt were reported by many of the migrant mothers who expressed
concern that they were not fulfiling the social expectations of motherhood. The
migrant mothers in our study provided an expanded understanding of motherhood,
by challenging the key tenets and expectations of hands-on care with ideas of family’s
and children’s best interests. This implies that a good mother was not necessarily
someone who would be attentive to the children’s physical and emotional needs, but
someone who would actively contribute to the household economy. While we do not
underestimate the influence of cultural expectations in care arrangements, the idea of
good mothering goes beyond the physical and emotional commitments to the chil­
dren. The emotional burden and the cost of separation were at some point softened
by the economic rewards, which led to better financial stability. The narratives
showed that mothers’ commitments towards their children were often revealed
through intensive work and economic provison, instead of intensive caring.

V. Conclusions and discussion

This article advances our understanding of the various strategies migrant parents in
Greece employ to manage their childcare responsibilities in the context of international
migration. Our research suggests that the need to combine work and childcare in order to
provide for their family led the migrant mothers in particular to develop arduous coping
strategies and make profound sacrifices. In this article, we have shown that these
migrants used a wide range of childcare strategies similar to those mentioned in other
studies.43 This article makes a novel theoretical and empirical contribution by high­
lighting the diversity of the care arrangements and practices of the migrant parents,
which were influenced by the intertwining effects of migration, labour, care, and gender
regimes.
While both the mothers and the fathers struggled to manage childcare, the working
mothers were more likely than the working fathers to sacrifice their time to provide
daily physical childcare. We found that even in cases in which the childcare was
shared in dual-earner couples, the mother was the primary caregiver most of the time.
From the interviews with migrant mothers, it was clear that they had to make many
sacrifices to balance their dual role (as worker-parent) and survive in the host
 JOURNAL OF BALKAN AND NEAR EASTERN STUDIES 829

country. They tried to meet the ‘social expectations of motherhood’ by adjusting their
working lives to accommodate the demands of their children. This is what we called
a ‘mother-centred strategy’. In a few cases, the husbands assisted with childcare
responsibilities. However, while the majority of mothers did not overlook their
economic contributions to their care practices, they continuously reinforced the
rhetoric of ‘good mothering, and the importance of emotional bonding and nurturing.
The mothers’ inability to stay with their children was a source of anxiety and guilt.
This was partly because when the women came to Greece to join their husbands,
they were the primary caregivers, while the men were working longer hours in more
physically demanding jobs. However, in order to support their families, they were
obliged to find a job. This situation put them under constant pressure because they
did not know where to leave their children while they were struggling to work on
what was usually a non-standard schedule. Because of their undocumented status and
precarious working conditions when they first came to Greece, these women had few
childcare options. They could not rely on formal care options or on family networks
(since these options were not available directly after arrival). Thus, when they arrived,
they had to choose between having their husbands or their older children provide
care, a practice that seems to reject the idea of mothers as the single primary
caregivers.
Our study confirmed the assumption that care work is gendered. This means that the
main responsibility for providing care continues to fall on women, even when they are
employed full-time. It also appears that the division of care labour confirmed the
gendered differences in care practices. In other cases, the parents had to rely on the
older children of the family to provide care. Thus, the authors have given voice to other
invisible actors of care work such as older children, who challenge the normative under­
standing of care delivery and the prevailing narratives of children as passive dependents
who need care.
In a few cases in which none of the above options was available the women had to
leave their children alone in the apartment or take them to work. This shows how
structural challenges in the labour market put women in very precarious positions.
Abandoning their job could push them into poverty, so they had to work in order to
earn a living. Thus, the strategies they used reflected their position in the labour market,
while also pointing to the conflicts they experienced in combining work and care as
migrants. The majority of the parents also had to rely on social and familial kinship
networks for childcare. However, this option was often not available until a later stage,
when their relatives or friends could join them through family reunification procedures
or other strategies. Moreover, it is important to recognize that the authors were able to
shed light on the importance of reverse remittances44 within the context of reciprocal
social relations.45 Finally, in cases in which the parents had no other childcare options,
they were forced to leave their children behind in their origin country for an extended
period. As it is evident, nearly all the mothers relied on the support of the family and kin
network for child care, reflecting a more delgatory practice of mothering—integrative
mothering.
While the article does not disregard the dominant cultural depictions of ‘good
mothering’ as an ideology embedded and shaped by the traditional gender role
models of the Albanian family, it provides a more nuanced and novel understanding
830 A. XHAHO ET AL.

of the concept, by unpacking the complexities of motherhood roles as opposed to

a more normative understanding of ‘hegemonic and intensive mothering’. The irre­
gular immigrant status and the precarious working conditions in the host country
made it impossible for mothers to strictly abide by the physical and emotional care
commitments towards children. While in few cases mothers had to adjust work to
comply with the social expectations of motherhood, in many other cases when they
were confronted with economic hardships and instability they would rather reject the
predominant expectations of caring responsibilities and let in other family members
take care of their children which resonates with more delegatory forms of
motherhood.46 The stories revealed that often cases, they had to rely on their family/
social networks for the care of their children or leave them in self-care. In contrast to
the existing scholarship on ‘intensive mothering’, Albanian migrant mothers found it
difficult to contact their left-behind children for an extended period (up to 3 years)
due to their undocumented status. In addition, in the late 90s communication via
mobile phones and social media with family members in Albania was uncommon
practice, due to lack of access to such technologies after the collapse of the commu­
nist regime.
This article shows that the motherhood concept is fluid and evolving in time and
space. Hegemonic ideologies of motherhood are constantly challenged and shaped by
structural and cultural forces women find themselves in (gender regimes, immigrant,
welfare and labour regimes). In addition, this article makes an important contribution
in terms of the agentic capacities of mothers, who were in several cases able to make
their own independent choices regarding care arrangements. When confronted with
limited opportunities for formal and informal caring assistance, instead of moving
with their children in Albanian, they decided to leave their children in the care of
their families back home, shedding light on the importance of other caregivers.
Reframing motherhood along the lines of intensive mothering entails a narrow under­
standing of the concept. A closer look at their narratives reveals that mothers would
justify the separation from their children by emphasizing their economic indepen­
dence and the ways their employment benefited the family and children. It is
noteworthy to mention that, in general, they did not want to be stay-at-home
mothers, the status they had when they first arrived in Greece. These narratives
illustrate a novel contribution to mothers’ sense of creative agency47 and their
resilience in challenging the hegemonic underpinnings of motherhood with alternative
forms of mothering, which implies: a) economic- self-reliance—financial indepen­
dence; expanding the notion of good mothering with ideas of working mothers; and
reliance on family and kin network for childcare.48 Meanwhile, the study showed that
caring and earning are not ‘opposed categories’, and that motherhood and fatherhood
are not binary identities, but relational concepts unfolding and overlapping with each
other.49
This study shows that while some migrant parents had more childcare options,
others were quite constrained by various structural opportunities in the host coun­
try. The migrant mothers were quite active in trying to navigate within various
childcare strategies and chose the ones they considered best given the obstacles and
opportunities they faced, which were shaped by the migrant policies, labour mar­
kets, and welfare and gender regimes in the destination country. The study has
 JOURNAL OF BALKAN AND NEAR EASTERN STUDIES 831

highlighted that the migrants’ childcare arrangements and practices varied from one
case to the other. Why the mothers chose one strategy over another, or how they
combined various childcare practices, needs to be analysed in light of the resources
available to them. This study offers important insights into how work and care are
organized transnationally at the intersection of migration, labour, care, and gender
regimes.50 Migration policies played a key role in either facilitating or hindering the
migrants’ childcare options. Some of the undocumented migrant women had extre­
mely limited options concerning care strategies, as their precarious legal and
employment status was a major constraint for most of them. Moreover, the gender
ideologies in childrearing practices these women brought from their home country
dictated how and by whom their children were cared for. The lack of family-friendly
policies promoting the integration of work and family life in their host country
affected the migrants’ childcare strategies.
Our findings have widened our understanding of how migrant parents utilize care
strategies and maintain emotional ties with their children. These new childcare
practices and strategies are embedded beyond the nuclear family and physical
proximity. While there was considerable diversity in the strategies the parents
used to manage childcare, not all of these options were available at a particular
point in time. It is important to note that different groups of migrants face different
hardships in their host countries, which makes managing childcare quite challen­
ging. Undocumented migrants are more likely to be segregated in low-level and
informal jobs sectors.51 Their precarious working situations make it difficult for
them to reconcile work and childcare. Therefore, when analysing parents’ care
strategies, it is important to take into consideration a variety of other factors,
such as their migration status, gender, place of residence (urban vs rural), ethnicity,
race, class, nationality, educational attainment, and professional work experience.
Finally, the study contributes to the limited research literature on how Albanian
migrants manage childcare within their socially defined roles as parents, workers, and
migrants. The life course approach integrated these three domains and allowed us to
see the dynamic interrelatedness and chain changes that one role can bring for the
other life domains. Therefore, change in one’s status i.e from irregular to regular
migrant or from illegal to legal employment status provided better job opportunities
for parents, which triggered changes in other life domains i.e, better work and care
reconciliation strategies.
This article looked at the childcare strategies and arrangements utilized by work­
ing parents, and especially by mothers, but it did not consider the quality of care
provided by other caregivers or the diversity of parenting styles. The intersections of
age, gender and class backgrounds in mothers’ narratives is an important topic for
future research. In order to provide a fuller picture, future studies might examine
practices not only from the perspectives of the mother and the father, but from the
perspectives of the children themselves as care receivers, and other caregivers, such
as family members.
832 A. XHAHO ET AL.

Notes
1. K. Wall and J. J. São, ‘Managing work and care: a difficult challenge for immigrant Families’,
Social Policy & Administration, 38(6), 2004, pp. 591–621.
2. V. Mazzucato and B. Dito, ‘Transnational families: cross-country comparative perspectives’,
Population Space and Place, 24(7), 2018.
3. E. Danaj, ‘Albanian women’s experiences of migration to Greece and Italy: a gender
analysis’, Gender & Development, 27 (1), 2019, pp. 139–156.
4. J. Vullnetari and R. King, ‘“Washing men’s feet”: Gender, care andmmigration in Albania
during and after communism’, Gender, Place and Culture, 23(2), 2016, pp. 198–215.
5. King and Vullnetari, op. cit, p. 19; King et al.,op. cit, p. 736.
6. A. Triandafyllidou and R. Gropas, ‘Immigration to Greece: The Case of Poles. Hellenic
Foundation for European and Foreign Policy’, ELIAMEP, Athens, 2006.
7. Speed and A. Alikaj, ‘Rights Denied: Albanians in Greece Face Long-Term Limbo’,
BalkanInsight, 2020, See https://balkaninsight.com/2020/07/01/rights-denied-albanians-in-
greece-face-long-term-limbo/ (Accessed date 30 April 2021).
8. D. Ziomas, N. Bouzas and N. Spyropoulou, ‘Investing in children: Breaking the cycle of
disadvantage: A Study of National Policies, Country Report—Greece. National Centre for
Social Research (EKKE), EU, Greece, 2014.
9. T. Maroukis, ‘Albanian Migrants in Greece: Transcending ‘borders’ in Development,”
Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans, 7(2), 2005, pp. 213–233; Th. Maroukis,
‘Albanian migrants in Greece: transcending “borders” in development’, Journal of
Southern Europe and the Balkans, 7(2), 2005, pp. 213–233; R. King, ‘Albania as
a laboratory for the study of migration and development’, Journal of Southern Europe and
the Balkans, 7(2), 2005, pp. 133–155.
10. R. King, E. Cela, T. Fokkema and J. Vullnetari, ‘The migration and well-being of the zero
generation: transgenerational care, grandparenting, and loneliness amongst Albanian
older people’ Population, Space and Place, 20(8), 2014, pp. 728–738; E. Gemi,
‘Transnational practices of Albanian families during the Greek crisis: unemployment, de-
regularization and return’, International Review of Sociology’, 24(3),2014, pp. 406–421;
E. Çaro, A. Bailey and L. Van Wissen, ‘Exploring Links between Internal and International
Migration in Albania: A View from Internal Migrants’, Population Space Place, 20, 2014,
pp. 264–276.
11. P. Hondagneu-Sotelo and E. Avila, ‘“I’m here but I’m there”’: the meanings of Latina
transnational motherhood’, Gender and Society, 11(5), 1997, pp. 548–571; Wall and José,
op. cit, p. 616.
12. L. Craig and B. Churchill, ‘Parenting stress and the use of formal and informal child care:
associations for fathers and mothers’, Journal of Family Issues, 39(12), 2018, pp. 3203–3224.
13. R. Breitkreuz and K. Colen, ‘Who cares? Motivations for unregulated child care use’, Journal
of Family Issues, 39(17), 2018, pp. 4066–4088.
14. V. Mazzucato and D. Schans, ‘Transnational families and the well-being of children:
conceptual and methodological challenges’, Journal of Marriage and Family, 73(4), 2011,
pp. 704−712; Mazzucato and Dito, op. cit,p. 1; M.Poeze, E.Dankyi and V. Mazzucato,
‘Navigating transnational childcare relationships: migrant parents and their children’s
caregivers in the origin country’, Global Networks-A Journal of Transnational Affairs,
17(1), 2017, pp. 111–129.
15. A. Souralova and M. Zakova, ‘“Everybody takes care of everybody”: Care circulation and
care relations in three-generation cohabitation’, Journal of Family Issues, 40(17), 2019,
pp. 2628-2657.
16. L. Baldassar, ‘Transnational families and the provision of moral and emotional support: the
relationship between truth and distance’, Identities, 14(4), 2007, pp. 385–409.
17. See M. Murray, ‘Back to work? Childcare negotiations and intensive mothering in santiago
de Chile’, Journal of Family Issues, 36(9), 2015, pp. 1171–1191.
 JOURNAL OF BALKAN AND NEAR EASTERN STUDIES 833

18. It is understood as an ideology that holds mothers as primarily responsible for child rearing
and as always readily available to care for their children, regardless of the circumstances.
Thus, women’s identities are perceived as tied to their nurturing roles. See S.Hays, The
Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood, New Haven Yale University Press, CT, 1996;
Murray, op. cit, p. 1171.
19. Hondagneu-Sotelo and Avila, op. cit., 1997.
20. R. E. Hryciuk, ‘(Re)constructing Motherhood in Contemporary Mexico: Discourses,
Ideologies and Everyday Practices’, Polish Sociological Review, 172, 2010, pp. 487–502.
21. K. Christopher, ‘Extensive Mothering: Employed Mothers’ Constructions of the Good
Mother’, Gender and Society, 26 (1), 2012, pp. 73–96.
22. M. Marie Dow, ‘Integrated motherhood: beyond hegemonic ideologies of motherhood’,
Journal of Marriage and Family, 78, 2016, pp. 180–196.
23. Ibid., p. 194.
24. M. Kilkey and L. Merla, ‘Situating transnational families’ care-giving arrangements: the role
of institutional contexts’, Global Networks, 14 (2), 2014, pp. 210–247; H. Lutz and
E. Palenga-Möllenbeck, ‘Care, gender and migration: towards a theory of transnational
domestic work migration in Europe’, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 19(3),
2011, pp. 349–364.
25. J. Williams, Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to do about It,
Oxford University Press, USA, 2000; Bonizzoni, op. cit, p. 210; Santero and Naldini, op. cit.,
2017; mWall and José, op. cit., 2004; H. Lutz, Migration and Domestic Work. A European
Perspective on a Global Theme, Ashgate, Aldershot, 2008.
26. Bonizzoni, op. cit, p. 2.; Williams, 2000, op. cit, p. 389.
27. R. Raijman, S. Schammah-Gesser and A. Kemp, ‘International migration, domestic work,
and care work: undocumented Latina migrants in Israel’, Gender Society, 17 (5), 2003,
pp. 727–749. Fresnoza-Flot, op. cit., 2009, p. 256.
28. B. Janta, ‘Caring for Children in Europe: How Childcare, Parental Leave and Flexible Working
Arrangements Interact in Europe, RAND Europe, CA: European Union, 2014.
29. Bonizzoni, 2014, op. cit., p. 196.
30. Ibid., p. 7.
31. D. Sainsbury, ‘Introduction. Gender and Welfare State Regimes’, in D. Sainsbury (ed.),
Gender and Welfare State Regimes, Oxford University Press, Oxford,1999, pp. 1–14.
32. Y. Peng and O. M. H. Wong, ‘Who takes care of my left-behind children? migrant mothers
and caregivers in transnational child care’, Journal of Family Issues, 37(14), 2016, pp. 2021–
2044.
33. W. Wei Da, ‘Transnational| Grandparenting: Child Care Arrangements Among Migrants
from the People’s Republic of China to Australia, JIMI/RIMI, 4 (1), 2003.
34. A. Mrozowicki, Coping with Social Change: Life Strategies of Workers in Poland’s New
Capitalism, Leuven University Press, Leuven, 2011.
35. Gemi,op. cit., 2014; King et al.,op. cit., 2014.
36. E. Çaro, A. Bailey, L van Wissen, ‘I am the god of the house’: How Albanian rural men shift
their performance of masculinities in the city, Journal of Balkan and near Eastern Studies,
20(1), 2018, pp. 49–65.
37. Christopher, 2012, op. cit,73.
38. King and Vullnetari,op. cit, p. 19.
39. King et al., op. cit, p. 729.
40. Fresnoza-Flot,op. cit, p. 255.
41. It is an Albanian traditional practice of clothing infants with sheets and ropes.
42. E. Pratsinakis, ‘Aspirations and strategies of Albanian immigrants in Thessaloniki’, Journal
of Southern Europe and the Balkans, 2, 2005, pp. 195–212.
43. Wall and José,op. cit, p. 616.
44. Reverse remittances are considered a form of exchange that allows people back home to
create and maintain reciprocity with migrants. They are in the form of services and include
childcare and helping with migrants’ investments (Mazzucato 2011).
834 A. XHAHO ET AL.

45. V. Mazzucato, ‘Reverse remittances in the migration-development nexus: two-way flows

between Ghana and the Netherlands: reverse remittances in the migration-development
nexus’, Population, Space and Place, 17(5), 2011, pp. 454–468.
46. Marie Dow, op. cit.p. 91.
47. Hryciuk, op. cit.
48. Marie Dow, op. cit.
49. A. Doucet, ‘Father Involvement, Care, and Breadwinning: Genealogies of Concepts and
Revisioned Conceptual Narratives’, Genealogy, 4, 2020, p. 14.
50. Lutz and Palenga-Mollenbeck,op. cit, p. 350; Bonizzoni, op. cit, p. 2010.
51. F. Williams and D. Brennan, ‘Care, markets and migration in a globalizing world:
Introduction to the special issue,” Journal of European Social Policy, 22 (4), 2012, pp. 355–
362.

Acknowledgements
We would like to express our gratitude to Prof. Dr Clara Mulder for her helpful comments and
suggestions on earlier drafts of this article. Special thanks go to our research participants for
sharing their life stories during interviews. Finally, we would like to thank the Regional Research
Promotion Programme for Western Balkan for supporting this research, through the Industrial
Citizenship and Migration Project.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding
This article is supported by Regional Research Promotion Programme (RRPP). TheRRPP is
coordinated and operated by the Interfaculty Institute for Central and Eastern Europe (IICEE)
at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). The programme is fully funded by the Swiss Agency
for Development and Cooperation (SDC), Federal Department ofForeign Affairs.

Notes on contributors
Armela Xhaho is a PhD Research Fellow at the Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of
Groningen, Netherlands. She holds a MA in Gender Studies, from Central European University,
Budapest and BA in Psychology from University of New York Tirana/State University of
New York. Armela Xhaho works as a researcher at the Institute for Democracy and Mediation
since March 2016. She has over 10 years of solid experience in civil society sector, coordinating
national and multi-stakeholder research projects in the area of human rights, social inclusion and
migration. She has robust competencies in project cycle management, fundraising, policy advo­
cacy, research methodology, data processing and analysis. In the framework of Industrial
Citizenship and Migrating project (2015–2017) she has coordinated research activities (confer­
ences, workshops and policy events) and field work with labour migrants in Albania, Kosovo,
Germany, Switzerland and Greece. Her main research interests are gender and migration studies,
human rights and social inclusion.
Prof. Dr. Ajay Bailey holds the chair in social Urban Transitions at Department of Human
Geography and Spatial Planning, Utrecht University. Prof. Bailey leads the research line Global
Migration, Culture and Place working at the interface of anthropology, geography, demography
and public health. As an anthropologist and a cultural demographer, Prof. Bailey has produced 30þ
 JOURNAL OF BALKAN AND NEAR EASTERN STUDIES 835

top peer-reviewed international publications; one highly cited monograph; and has supervised 10
PhD researchers. Prof. Bailey is passionate about qualitative research, teaching, and capacity
building of young researchers. His work significantly contributes to expanding the field of
transnational mobilities, ageing, inter-generational relations, health systems research, health
services, reducing barriers to care, while establishing meaningful North-South and South-South
collaborations.
Erka Çaro is a researcher and lecturer at the Department of Geography, University of Tirana,
Albania. Moreover, she is a senior researcher and a member of the executive board of Western
Balkans Migration Network. Dr. Erka Ҫaro completed her PhD in 2011 in Demography from the
Faculty of Spatial Sciences at the University of Groningen, Netherlands, and has since then worked
as a post-doc on the TWES project. Her research interests include areas such as migration, labour
mobility, labour and migration politics, trade union relationships with migrants, gender studies,
human and political geography, Western Balkans, Southern Europe.

ORCID
Armela Xhaho http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7560-8617
Ajay Bailey http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3163-6805
Erka Çaro http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9183-9642