The critical temporalities of serial migration and family social reproduction in Southeast Asia.

The prevailing neoliberal labour migration regime in Asia is underpinned by principles of enforced transience: the overwhelming majority of migrants - particularly those seeking low-skilled, low-waged work - are admitted into host nation-states on the basis of short-term, time-bound contracts, with little or no possibility of family reunification or permanent settlement at the destination. As families go transnational, 'family times' become inextricably intertwined with the 'times of migration' (Cwerner, 2001). In this context, for many migrant-sending families in Southeast Asian source countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines, parental migration as a strategy for migrating out of poverty or for socio-economic advancement requires the left-behind family to resiliently absorb the uncertainties of parental leaving and returning. Based on research on Indonesian and Filipino rural households (studied from 2008 through 2017) including paired life-story interviews with parental/non-parental adult carers and children, the article investigates the crucial links between the time construct of seriality in migration on the one hand, and the temporal structure of family based social reproduction on the other. It first focuses on how serial migration produces, and is produced by, spiraling needs and expanding aspirations, hence creating its own momentum for continuity. The paper then explores how competing temporal logics create difficult choices for migrants, leading to the recalibration of priorities within constrained resources. By drawing attention to the co-existence of and contradictions between multiple temporalities in the lives of migrants and their families, a critical temporalities framework yields new insights in understanding the social reproduction of families in a migratory context.

Grandparenting left-behind children in Javanese Migrant-sending villages: Trigenerational care circuits and the negotiation of care.

Parental labour migration requires recalibrations of care arrangements within the left-behind family. Existing studies of left-behind families, however, have largely concentrated on parental rather than grandparental caregiving of grandchildren. We argue that grandparents are pivotal to care work and changing family formations within migrant-sending villages. Grandparents provide supplementary care, substitutive care and even reconstitutive care, depending on the migration and marital status of the parents. The paper emphasizes the often unilateral care-contracts between grandparents and migrant parents, drawing on material primarily from the qualitative interviews of grandparent carers of left-behind children, and the grandchildren themselves. By considering a variety of family contexts in flux as a result of parental migration (mother, father or both parents) and marital dissolution amidst migration, we examine family situations holistically by taking into account the different modes of care provided by grandparents (occasionally in tandem with aunts) within changing care contexts.

Doing Family in "Times of Migration": Care Temporalities and Gender Politics in Southeast Asia.

The prevailing labor migration regime in Asia is underpinned by rotating-door principles of enforced transience, where low-wage migrant labor gains admission into host nation-states based on short-term, time-limited contracts and where family reunification and permanent settlement at destination are explicitly prohibited. In this context, we ask how migrant-sending families in Southeast Asian "source" countries-Indonesia and the Philippines-sustain family life in the long-term absence of one or both parents (often mothers). Through temporal concepts of rhythm, rupture, and reversal, we focus on how temporal modalities of care for left-behind children intersect with gendered power geometries in animating transnational family politics around care. First, by paying heed to the structuring effects of rhythm on social life, we show how routinized care rhythms built around mothers as caregivers have a normalizing and naturalizing effect on the conduct of social life and commonplace understanding of family well-being. Second, we explore the potential rupture to care rhythms triggered by the migration of mothers turned breadwinners and the extent to which gendered care regimes are either conserved, reconstituted, or disrupted in everyday patterns and practices of care. Third, we examine the circumstances under which gender role reversal becomes enduring, gains legitimacy among a range of poly care rhythms, or is quickly undone with the return migration of mothers in homecoming. The analysis is based primarily on research on Indonesian and Filipino rural households conducted in 2017 using paired life story interviews with children and their parental or nonparental adult caregivers.

El régimen dominante de la migración laboral en Asia está respaldado por los principios de puerta giratoria de forzosa transitoriedad, donde el trabajo migratorio de paga baja consigue admisión en naciones­estado anfitrionas, bajo el estilo de contratos laborales a corto plazo y por tiempo limitado, y en donde la reunificación de la familia y el asentamiento permanente en el lugar de destino de la migración están prohibidos explícitamente. En este contexto, en los países "fuente" del Sudeste Asiático preguntamos sobre el modo como las familias que envían migrantes ­­Indonesia y las Filipinas­­ sostienen la vida familiar durante la ausencia de largo plazo de uno o ambos padres (a menudo las madres). A través de los conceptos temporales de ritmo, ruptura y la reversa, nos enfocamos en cómo las modalidades temporales del cuidado de los niños que se dejan atrás se cruzan con las geometrías de poder por género para darle ánimo a las políticas transnacionales de familia. Primero, prestando atención a los efectos estructurantes del ritmo sobre la vida social, mostramos cómo los ritmos rutinarios del cuidado construidos en torno a las madres como prestadoras de cuidados tienen un efecto normalizador y naturalizante en la conducta de la vida social y el corriente entendimiento del bienestar de la familia. Segundo, exploramos la ruptura potencial de los ritmos del cuidado disparados por la migración de las madres, convertidas en las que ganan el pan, y la extensión con la cual regímenes de cuidado por género son conservados, reconstituidos o perturbados en los patrones y prácticas cotidianas del cuidado. Tercero, examinamos las circunstancias bajo las cuales la reversa del papel del género se hace duradera, gana legitimidad entre un rango de ritmos de cuidado, o es rápidamente deshecha con la migración de retorno de las madres al regresar al hogar. El análisis se basa primariamente en la investigación de hogares indonesios y filipinos conducida en 2017 usando entrevistas de historia de vida por pares, con sus hijos y sus cuidadores adultos emparentados o no.