Shifting notions of gendered care and neoliberal motherhood: From the lives of Latvian migrant women in Guernsey

Women's Studies International Forum xxx (2014) xxx–xxx

WSIF-01740; No of Pages 11

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Shifting notions of gendered care and neoliberal motherhood:From the lives of Latvian migrant women in Guernsey

Aija Lulle⁎University of Latvia, Faculty of Geography and Earth Sciences, Alberta, Latvia

a r t i c l e i n f o

⁎ Room 407, Department of Human Geography, FacuEarth Sciences, University of Latvia, Alberta 10, Riga, L

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2014.04.0010277-5395/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: Lulle, A., Shifting nwomen in Guernsey, Women's Studies Inter

s y n o p s i s

Available online xxxx
In this article I analyse how socioeconomic constraints structure the geographical mobility ofLatvian migrant women working on the island of Guernsey. A shifting notion of gendered careis revealed through a time-geographic investigation of distant emplacements of workplace andhome, and through the neoliberal-informed evaluations by the mothers themselves. Theirjustifications emphasise the belief that care from a distance should be prioritised over physicalproximity to those in need of care. With examples from interviews with mothers who haveprovided care during their movements between Latvia and Guernsey, I demonstrate how theoutcomes of shifting notions of gendered care are placed within a wider context of the genderregime in a transforming Latvia. A specific version of a neoliberal mother, shaped by genderregimes in post-socialist Latvia and a demand for female labour in Western Europe, emergesamong women with care responsibilities.
© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction

“I just work here, I live in Latvia!” a migrant woman, whohad been shuttling between Latvia and island of Guernsey forfive years, once exclaimed to me in an interview. Indeed, formany of my research participants, who have worked outsideof Latvia since the 1990s, working abroad was a project ofbetterment for themselves and their family members athome. Physical separation from their families was usuallymeant to be a temporary solution but evolved into morelong-term and diverse patterns over time. This situationresonates closely with Morokvasic's (2004: 9) famousargument that engaging in transnational practices offers a“space of possibility” for Eastern European migrants to adjustto changes in post-socialist countries.

European Union (EU) enlargement in 2004, which includedeight post-socialist countries, brought changes in the legalstatus of migrants from these countries, allowing them easier

lty of Geography andV 1050, Latvia.

otions of gendered carenational Forum (2014), h

movement and settlement in Western countries. Indeed, thepattern of being “settled in mobility” (Morokvasic, 2004)provides a useful point of departure to unpack the continuitiesand changes in the migrant female labour market and aparticular notion of a neoliberal mother which I investigate inthis article. Most importantly, the freedom of spatial mobility iscompromised by several constraints; for example, legal status,available money, and transport infrastructure. Time-geography,which investigates human mobility in time and space, empha-sises that by understanding constraints, we can more clearlydepict what people are free to do; in other words, whatconstraints constitute and shape the space of possibility(Ellegard& Svedin, 2012). In this article, I explore howgenderedcare arrangements, stemming from various constraints, unfoldthrough a reading of time-geography alongside feministarguments on social restrictions, constraints over access, andthe distribution of resources along gender lines (Jackson, 2001).

Guernsey, where my research took place, is a dependentterritory of the British Crown. The island is an excellent researchsite where role of gender and care in relation to temporary andcirculatory migration patterns can be seen in sharp relief andinvestigated at close range as in a kind of a ‘spatial laboratory’

and neoliberal motherhood: From the lives of Latvianmigrantttp://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2014.04.001

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2014.04.001


http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/02775395


2 A. Lulle / Women's Studies International Forum xxx (2014) xxx–xxx

(King, 2009). Along with other locations in the United Kingdomand Ireland, it was one of the first places in the West whereLatvianswent to findwork in the 1990s. Guernsey's population isaround 62,000 inhabitants (Policy Council, 2010) and in order toavoid overpopulating the island and tomaintain living standards,it has specific housing and work licence systems that givepriority to temporary migrants: licences for non-local workersrange from renewable nine months in seasonal sectors such asagriculture, andup to five years in other sectors. In the beginning,only women were recruited into the horticulture sector onnine-month contractswhen the opportunitywas first created forLatvian citizens in 1997. Initial contracts were often prolongedand many women returned to the island each year after thenecessary three months in Latvia. In contrast, the hospitalitysector, starting in 2001, was open to both men and women.Many later changed employment sectors to find work that didnot stipulate regular absences from Guernsey, or they marriedlocal partners.

Housing regulations on the island allow non-workingfamily members to join a migrant worker only if the familychooses to live in the so-called ‘open market’, where rentalprices are at least 50% higher than in the ‘local market’. This isa specific regulation related to the limited size of the island;similar settlement restrictions can be found on many islandsand small territories in Europe and globally. But the definingcontrolling instrument for time-limited stay is specific tocapitalism: sufficient monetary resources that support amigrant and their family – their ability to pay for a flatinstead of a simple guest-worker's room, and monetarysupport for non-working family members. In a sense, theseare conditions that migrants face in many situations:co-presence abroad with family members requiring care ismore costly and was also not fulfilled by my researchparticipants in locations other than Guernsey. The biggestdifference from most of the state provisions in Europe is thelack of social allowances for migrants and their children. Inthis sense, Guernsey's ‘spatial laboratory’ case providesadditional evidence of the place-specific importance of aninterplay between gender and migrant status (Kontos, 2009;Morokvasic, 2003); in particular, access to childcare allow-ances is limited due to the status of temporary migrant.

I do not aim to provide a statistically rigorous outline ofpatterns of female migration and rearrangement of careresponsibilities among Latvian migrants. Instead, the purposeof this article is to qualitatively investigate how the notion of aneoliberal mother shifts over space and timewithin amigratorycontext. McRobbie (2013), in her analysis of a neoliberalmotherwho is expected to demonstrate her abilities tomanageworkinglife and the household along with glamorous or sexualisedself-presentation, emphasises the centrality of the middle classin neoliberal ideas. In the post-Soviet context of migration (seealso Näre 2014 and her concept of intrinsic capability formobility), the figure of a neoliberal mother, who aspires for abetter future for herself and especially for her offspring, revealscomplex relations betweenmigration, gender and social change.In Soviet ideology there was in theory no class, but stratificationpractices emerged immediately after wealth was distributedthrough privatisation processes, access to well-paid jobs andeducation.

I argue that a particular version of a neoliberal motherwhois also a migrant woman emerges out of the specific

Please cite this article as: Lulle, A., Shifting notions of gendered carewomen in Guernsey, Women's Studies International Forum (2014), h

socio-economic constraints of post-socialist society. Simulta-neously, this version of motherhood takes place within thecontext of preference for female workers in the labourmarket in a particular Western space.

My argument is developed in the following manner: first,I will conceptualise the requisite tools to analyse mobility,gender and care, which helps to understand this particularversion of a neoliberal mother on the move. Second, I willsummarise recent migration patterns from Latvia, thesocialist gender legacy, and how both are related to thepost-socialist gender regime. Third, I will analyse themobility projects of mothers through the following threeframes: (1) in which contexts a translocal mobility projectwas favoured over the mobility project of close proximity inLatvia; (2) how conflicts of gendered responsibilities weremanaged and support for care from a distance was achieved;and (3) how, and whether, translocal mobility projects ceaseafter the mothers' care responsibilities end. Finally, I willexamine how shifting notions of gendered care are related tobroader socio-spatial changes.

Conceptualising mobility projects of care

Lawson (2007: 1) has argued that in contemporary societymarket relations have been extended and penetrate into “caringrealms of our lives”. She urges a geographical approach as thisshift happens against the backdrop of uneven development,reduced or withdrawn public support, and ubiquitous emphasison personal responsibility for poverty or unemployment. Thisargument is particularly relevant in the context of post-Soviettransformations from planned to market relations, a neoliberaleconomic turn and the reality of large-scale emigration fromLatvia. Moreover, such penetration of market relations intointimate lives were new in a post-Soviet societywhere, as Illouz(2007) has argued, the forces of capitalism have become deeplyemotional, while intimate relationships – “cold intimacies” –

have become increasingly shaped by bargaining or exchange.Paying attention to the meaning and significance that my

research participants attached to their migration decision inorder to fulfil care responsibilities, two main mediumsemerged. The first was the idea of how to live a better life in asociety, where, indeed, an individual is pervasively shamed fornot being a responsible achiever. If solutions regarding careresponsibilities are not satisfactory at home, then Latviansconsider the new option of moving abroad under the EU'sregime of free movement of labour. The second medium ismoney, more of which can be earned abroad in order toprovide care in terms of material support at home.

Developing Lawson's (2007) argument, I suggest thattime-geography, if read from a feminist perspective, providesa useful basis to understand place-based gendered caremobilities and, moreover, can help to trace shifting notionsof care, revealing specific outcomes of how market relationsare penetrating into intimate “caring realms”. It is preciselytime-geography's attention to constraints which opens it todiscussion from a feminist perspective (Scholten, Friberg, &Sandén, 2012). According to this perspective, each individualengaged in mobility has a project: an individual movessomewhere motivated by an idea that leads him/her to adifferent location. Mobility projects are constrained in threeways: capability, authority and coupling. The first refers to



3A. Lulle / Women's Studies International Forum xxx (2014) xxx–xxx

physical and biological limits, the second is concerned withpower and legal restrictions, and the third are constraintslinked to meeting others in certain locales (Hägerstrand,1982, 1985). Coupling constraints are of particular interest inthe light of migration and the notion of a neoliberal mother:time-geography's emphasis on material reality helps us seebetter that a physical absence from children can benegotiated and discursively normalised in the particularcontext of Latvia my research participants found themselvesin prior to and during migration. But physical constraints ofcoupling while being in distant places bring emotionaldistress.

However, if a place where money can be earned is at aconsiderable distance, a corporeal co-presence or absencewith those who receive care has to be negotiated. Accord-ingly, two main gendered care mobility projects can bedistinguished: one which allows for earning sufficient moneyand eases the financial constraints of a mother, yet alsoimplies separation from their family; and another whichenables co-presence but the care provider is constrained bylow income. To solve the conflict between these two projects,a solution is found in the relocation of the whole family;however, this is not often possible due to specific restrictionsin Guernsey. But there are also timing resources which can beused to maintain a mobility project: most notably childrenwho are now old enough to take care of themselves withoutthe supervision of their parents and could join them also asmigrant workers as soon as they come of age. By payingattention to these factors, I am able to empirically explorehow mobility projects are set into competition in time andspace, based upon ideas of what a ‘good mother’ shouldprovide to her offspring and the constraints that are placedupon mothers no matter where they choose to live.

Some projects need to be prioritised over others. Besides,they are constituted and shaped by the contexts in whichthey take place, what time-geography defines as pockets oflocal order (Hägerstrand, 1985) – how things are done incertain households, workplaces or states. Since they aresimultaneously embedded in dominant social ideas, I inter-pret them as operating according to localised genderregimes: how gender responsibilities are seen in certainsocieties and what gendered expectations are ascribed to itsmembers. I use the term gender regime to refer to a systemthat sets social constraints and distributes material resources(Jackson, 2001). In order to explore the shifting notion ofgendered care, I examine the following questions. Whatsocio-economic constraints structure women's mobility pro-jects according to geography and gender? What specificmobility projects of gendered care compete against eachother and how is undertaking one or other project justified?

Furthermore, time-geography is a scale-sensitive perspec-tive; therefore it is compatible with feminist arguments on howgender operates at various spatial scales (Mahler & Pessar, 2001,2006). Specifics of gender regimes reveal themselves on nationalas well as local scales as different sets of policies are intertwinedwith cultural meanings and practices and shaped by materialinequalities. To see how these scales are interlinked, I utilise thenotion of translocal scale (Brickell & Datta, 2011). This approachviews people as being place-based, but their emplacements andmobilities are not always transnational. Bydeliberately confusingthe local and trans-(regional, national, cultural), these authors


came upwith a valuable conceptwhich allows for the examiningof places through their connectedness and how translocalnegotiations shape the migration project. I found the translocalto be a key spatial practice of my research participants, andespecially suited to the specificity of Guernsey's location withinthe UK. Moreover, people who I interviewed lived, worked andmoved to specific locales elsewhere in Europe and also camefrom or returned to concrete places in Latvia.

Gender regime specificity and care in the context ofpost-socialism

After two decades of independent statehood between thetwo world wars, Latvia was annexed to the Soviet Union;independence was restored during the collapse of the SovietBloc in 1991. The 1990s brought not only political indepen-dence, but also changes in gender regime: a return to the values,norms and laws of pre-Soviet independence during the 1920sand 1930s, portrayed as a prosperous time when Latvia wasalignedwith Europe,with a new emphasis on the nuclear familyin laws and its consequences on gendered care. As Novikova(2006) has pointed out, the socialist ideology of ‘sex-equality’,wherein the USSR provided full employment and childcare sothat aworkingmother could fulfil herwork and care duties, wasfollowed by a patriarchal post-socialist ideology that was bornout of nostalgia for a pre-socialist gender order.

In the 1990s, the nationalist discourse called upon Latvianwomen to fulfil their duties as wives and mothers, whilesocial support for childcare barely existed (Novikova, 2006:102–103). This resulted in the reality of a need to performpaid work and care, with extended family often lending ahand to fulfil care duties. Latvia's type of childcare policythroughout 1990s and 2000s, which Szelewa and Polakowski(2008: 127-8) called “female mobilising”, aimed to mobilisefemales to participate in the labour market but significantlylacked continuity in terms of childcare provisions andservices. It is also important to highlight that, in Latvianneoliberal market ideology, there was an attempt to erase theSoviet era from social memory, while the poor and theemerging working class were silenced and denigrated(Balockaite, 2009). Against this backdrop of mixed genderedvisions, in the 1990s Latvian workers experienced strongoccupational segregation with resulting feminisation ofpoverty. The union of a neoliberal economic framework anda neoconservative gender ideology functioned as a “restate-ment of women's disempowerment, a politics of exclusion interms of age, ethnicity, and class” (Novikova, 2006: 109-10).

In order to understand the context of what is understoodby family in contemporary Latvia, it is important to underlinethat throughout the 2000s government policy supported thetraditional family unit which defined marriage as between aman and a woman, who live in the same household, as theonly favourable model for a family. Other forms, such asdivorced families, single-parent families, or children cared forby grandparents, were considered as ‘families in crisis’(Putnina & Ziverte, 2008: 3). Such state provisions remainunchanged in the Welfare Ministry's family policy guidelines,despite the fact that only just over half (55.8% in 2003 and56.5% in 2009) of all children are born in marriages instead ofunregistered partnerships (Family guidlines, 2011: 63). Inthe mutual support arrangements in separated, unmarried, or




extended families that I found among many of my researchparticipants, where a female relative or the grandparentslooked after an absent mother's children, family membersoften did not even consider getting any help from the state ormunicipality because such family arrangements are seen as adeviation from the norm and thus stigmatised.1 The divorcerate is about 50% in Latvia, and in most cases children staywith the mother. If a separated mother, who is the onlybreadwinner in the family, loses her job, the risk of poverty isreal. According to Eurostat (2013), 43.6% of all children inLatvia are at risk of poverty and social exclusion, among thehighest of all EU member-states. In comparison, in the EU theaverage rate is 27% and in the Nordic countries it hoversaround 16%. But it is not only the risk of extreme povertywhich contributes to the decision of Latvians to work abroadin order to provide better material support to their families. Itis also the pronounced inequality in post-socialist Latvia.According to the Gini index, which measures incomedistribution equality, Latvia is among the most unequalcountries in the EU (Eurostat, 2012a).

Gendered migration patterns from Latvia

The scale of recent emigration for such a small country isvast. About 230,000 people migrated between 2001 and 2011,leaving the Latvian population hovering around 2million (CSB,2012). However, therewas also a counter-stream; between theyears of 2004 and 2008, 40% returned. Revealingly, womenwere a minority amongst returnees (39% versus 61% for men),even though they were a majority among emigrants (57%during 2001–2008, rising to 60% during 2009–2010) (Hazans,2011).

When Latvia joined the EU in 2004, the economy wasbooming, but the country was profoundly affected when theglobal economic crisis hit in 2008. GDP growth ofmore than 10%per year in 2005–2007 dropped to –14.8% in 2009, and thenslowly began to climb, reaching 5.9% in 2011 (Eurostat, 2012b).But even during the boom years not everyone was enjoying thefruits of the capitalist way of life. Short-term, circular and repeatmigration were among prevailing geographic mobility patternsamong Eastern European migrants. Until accession into the EU,moving abroadwas constrained bywork permit restrictions andhigh prices for travel and communication. Besides, relocatingwith the whole family creates higher expenses both in terms ofmoney and adjusting to a new environment, especially schools(Hazans, 2011: 71). Therefore, many Latvians engaged inshort-term and circular migration to Western European coun-tries as single adult migrants (Krisjane, 2007). Similarly to otherEastern European countries, low opportunity structures inLatvia's labour market pushed people to look for work abroad(Morokvasic, 2003). Although this was thought to be atemporary solution in the early 2000s, the profound crisis inLatvia, which started in late 2008when the Latvian governmentsought support from the European Commission and theInternational Monetary Fund to maintain the state budget andadopted severe austerity measures, removed prospects of fastreturn, especially for women. Unemployment skyrocketed from6% to 19%, two-thirds of the unemployed did not receive anyunemployment benefit, and for those in work salaries were cutby 25–30% (Eurostat, 2012c; Hazans, 2011: 73–6). Child supportpayments were also curtailed.


Great Britain has been the main destination country sinceLatvia embarked on the road towards accession to the EU,accounting for more than 40% of all emigrants during 2000–10.During the crisis therewas even a steeper increase ofmigrationto this destination, reaching 60% and estimated to be at least100,000 by 2011 (Hazans, 2011: 79). Family members joinedthose who were established already abroad – particularlyduring the crisis. In an internet-based survey (n = 1117)carried out in 2012, 27% of respondents said theywere residingin Great Britain with children (Apsite-Berina, 2013:72–3).

Thus far, I have set out the context of the changing Latviangender regime on a national scale and shown how conserva-tism in gendered norms, neoliberal practices and austerityresponses to crisis provide a meaningful context for under-standing gendered patterns ofmigration among a post-socialistpopulation. However, there is a lack of data and insight onwhatmigrant mothers, who care for their families, think about theprocess of migration. The voices and opinions of these womenare now going to be heard.

Data and methods

Between 2010 and 2012 I interviewed 90 (58 women and32 men) Latvian migrants in Guernsey. Ten of these researchparticipants were interviewed repeatedly over two years.Interviewees could choose the language they felt mostcomfortable in, Latvian or Russian. I also interviewed 16employers and representatives of state or non-governmentalorganisations in Guernsey. These interviews were conductedin English. All names of your interviewees are pseudonyms.

The Latvian research participants ranged in age from 18 to67 years, while the length of time that they had spent abroadwhen the interviews were recorded was from one month tothirteen years, covering the period from the mid-1990s to2012. I did not ask specifically about gender as I wanted tounderstand what is meaningful for the migrants themselveswithout bringing in my own ideas about gendered discourse. Iusually started with an open question, for example, “do youremember why it was that you came/went abroad?” Thisgeneral question usually led into a longer narrative producedby the research participants, allowing them to provide theirown significance to subsequent events in their migrationbiographies (Halfacree & Boyle, 1993). The interviews werealso conducted as though they were a conversation in order toencourage an interviewee to talk about the broad aspects oftheir life during migration, their geographic mobility trajecto-ries, and future prospects. All interviews were given with anexplicit informed consent and all names and some small detailswere changed to protect the research participants' anonymity.

I also engaged in numerous non-recorded conversationswith migrant workers, employers, colleagues and spouses ofmy research participants. I made sure to conduct participantobservation, such as shopping trips together with researchparticipants, whichwere valuable observation opportunities asthey allowed me to see the types of material goods theypurchased to send to their families back in Latvia. Women, onthewhole, were explicit when talking about caring experiencesfrom a distance and when returning home. I interpret this aspartly related to my positionality – I am Latvian myself, I am amother and I have lived outside of Latvia and have beenseparated from my family for some time. My female research




participants said that it was easier for them to explainconditions they were in prior to and during migration, as theycould be better understood by me than by somebody whowould lack direct experience of the Latvian gender regime andlife abroad. Since migrant women who have care responsibil-ities at home often face moral stigmatisation (Morokvasic,2003: 2), I follow the feminist approach by giving voice to thosewho are often silenced. I purposely place the standpoints andvoices of mothers, those who most often provide genderedcare, at the heart of this article in searching for a more justunderstanding of geographies of care (Harding, 2004; Wright,2010). Furthermore, I viewed interpretations of gendered careas also underpinning the interviews given by male migrantsand employers. This strengthened the interpretation of thecontext within which a new version of the neoliberal motheremerges.

“You are like worker bees”: temporary expectation offemale labour

Labour markets throughout Europe are gendered andthere is a demand for foreign female workers in particularsectors. Many of the gendered labour markets where womenwork, such as domestic and elderly care and seasonal sectorsin agriculture and hospitality, also operate around the ideathat migrant workers are just temporary. They are expectedto leave when businesses no longer require their labour. Also,developments in labour markets in the EU in the 2000sshowed an increasing demand for female migrant labour anda preference for temporary migrants (Kontos, 2009). This isparticularly true in Guernsey.

Women's presence in migratory flows is fundamentallyshaped by care relations and welfare models in countries oforigin and destination aswell by the specificity of labourmarketpreferences in various countries (Kepinska, 2013; Oso &Catarino, 2013). Regarding the characteristics of the preferencefor femalemigrant labour in horticulture, Guernsey's example isclose to what can be found in places in Southern Europe: inSpain an EU-funded project to diminish numbers of undocu-mented workers in the mid-2000s demonstrated how marriedwomen with children were the ideal targets for the state andemployers to ensure circularity because they returned to theirhomeland due to care responsibilities (see Plewa, 2009 cited inAndall, 2013: 529).

When I interviewed employers in Guernsey, additionalinteresting characteristics emerged. Employers actively main-tained a discourse of female migrants' circulation – thattemporary status is mutually beneficial and employers act as‘benevolent helpers’ to ‘hard-working mothers’ whose familiesstay back home. Let us hear the words of the employersthemselves:

“For us it is middle-aged people whom we are using.Probably because they could work harder and are havingpersonal responsibility for the household and understandthat themore they earn themore they can send back home.(…) In Latvia, they earned the equivalent of 300 pounds amonth. And now they were earning that virtually everyweek. I think that the labour we have matches ourrequirements but it also matches their requirements. Theyknow that when the peaks [of production] are off, they can


go back and see their families when they do not have towork that hard. (…) And then come back again.” (Employ-er, Guernsey, horticulture sector, November 2010).

So employers in certain sectors gave a clear preference forolder women with care responsibilities (see Andall, 2013). Tosome extent such circular work arrangements provided anopportunity to reconcile work and care responsibilities inexpanded time-space (nine months in Guernsey and threemonths back in Latvia with their families). Moreover, sucharrangements were seen by women themselves, if not asdesirable, then at least an acceptable strategy in theneoliberal context in Latvia to provide care and materialsupport for their children. Another employer emphasised thecirculation policy as of mutual benefit:

“It is much better for workers to come for nine months,because they can support their families back home, theysend a lot of money back home from their wages. They arehere to help us, and I hope we are helping them to supporttheir families.”(Employer, horticulture sector, January 2010).

These constraints, imposed by Guernsey's governmentand businesses upon some low-skilled sectors, containcertain implications for mobilising resources for settlementin one place. When I spoke to a Latvian woman in her sixties,who had been shuttling back and forth between Guernseyand Latvia for more than ten years, she told me how she hassupported her family all of these years and has earned theGuernsey pension to support herself when she eventuallyreturns to Latvia. The woman referred to an event when localcommunity representatives spoke about Latvian migrants:

“I liked very much, how one local representative said:“You are like worker bees, who diligently work and thenreturn home again” (Elvira, 60s, November 2010).

One of the most powerful symbolic resources, where myresearch participants derived strength andmoral justification fortheir worth, was the label of (“hard working”) “worker bees”(biologically, non-reproductive female bees, who carry pollenback to the hive). This label demonstrates how bothmaterialismand feminism matter in geographic mobility (Jackson, 2001); inthis case, the division of productive and reproductive labour inthe use of temporary migrant female labour as practices ofcapitalism. It also characterises deeply ingrained and genderedexpectations that, similar to guest-workers in Europe inthe 1960s and 1970s, “diligent” Eastern European temporaryworkers in the West will return back home.

Proximity versus a translocal mobility project

For working mothers, whose paid work is outside of thehome, infrastructure is important: how to get to theirworkplace and how to return home. Moreover, work shouldprovide an income that covers their needs for care. What ismeant by a satisfactory level of income for these needs isshaped not only by individual definitions but also byhegemonic social ideals.

A person cannot be physically present in two places at once.Therefore, even when they are working close to home, amother must switch back and forth between work and home.




In the case of international migration, large distances preventmigrant workers from returning home –where they would beable to care for their children and the elderly on a day-to-daybasis. Therefore, they must undertake negotiations with otherswho live closer to home, who can provide a stronger physicalpresence and take over caring for the migrant's familymembers. In these cases, a mother's decision to work abroadbecomes a collective project for the entire household.

The conventional mobility model of close proximity wasconsidered by most of my research participants prior tomigration. However, the amount of money that they couldearn in Latvia was felt to be unsatisfactory. In the late 1990sand even during the years of strong economic growth inLatvia, it was still a small amount in comparison to whatcould be earned abroad. Referring to the stagnating salariesfor some and growingwealth for others in Latvia, amother ofa teenager justified her migration from a coastal town inLatvia to Guernsey:

“I worked for seven years in a foreign investor's enterprisein Latvia, but my salary remained as it had been from thebeginning (…) I was living with my teenage son, but wasdivorced already at that time. Heating [was expensive],and the windows needed renovation. It was difficult tobear all of the payments (…) So, I decided to improve myquality of life, that I had to improve it somehow. I initiallythought I could go to Ireland, but I was asked to pay formy own, expensive, airline tickets. Since I did not havethat type of money, I accepted a proposal to go toGuernsey, because the flight was paid for by the employerand the money was deducted from the salary there later.”(Santa, 40s, January 2010).

Working abroad, especially in English-speaking countrieswhere one could learn a useful language, was seen as a ticketto a better future. In this context, the decision to leave wasseen as temporary and as a compromise. Eva was a divorcedmother of a 10-year-old daughter when she decided to leaveLatvia for one year with the goal of improving her Englishskills in order to apply for better job back in her home town:

“One could not get any decent jobs in Latvia with poorEnglish skills. So mymotivation was to earn money and tolearn Englis” (Eva, 40s, November 2010).

However, upon return for the first time, she realised shecould not get a job even with her newly acquired conversa-tional English skills, which would generate an incomecomparable with that earned abroad. Relocating the familyto the capital city of Riga was seen for her as too expensivedue to high rental payments.

Gendered age discrimination experiences in Latvia wereprevalent among research participants over 40. Work abroadwas seen as a rare chance to break through the socialperception of an ageing woman's lack of capacity to work:

“I was already 48 years-old, and I could not find apermanent job. One of my acquaintances found a jobabroad through a recruitment agency and I also appliedthere. I was very, very lucky that they accepted me. I havenever been afraid of work and that saved my life.” (Alma,60s, June 2011).


“Very lucky” implies a newly obtained hope, and “savingher life” is meant not only as a chance to make a living, butalso a chance to redefine her overlapping care responsibili-ties. She was widowed, and although two of Alma's childrenwere already grown-up, her younger son was still a teenager.Additionally, her mother was reaching an age where sheneeded her daughter's support again.

To sum up, by opting for work abroad, almost all mothersin their interviews revealed how they were bound to theprevailing ideas of what good mothers should provide fortheir families: material things for her children that can beconverted into instruments for pursuing a better future life.This topic will be discussed later in more detail, but first it isimportant to lay out how the economic crisis in Latvia shiftedthe ways in which translocal mobility projects were under-taken. The crisis also contributed to the removal of thestigma, among migrant women, of being an absent mother.

“God save any woman..”: crisis departure

A young mother from the Latvian countryside told methat she came to Guernsey during the crisis period, when shehad an eighteen-month-old toddler back home. Other familymembers were looking after him while she was working inGuernsey for nine months. The woman spent three monthsback home but returned again due to the inability to findwork close to home in Latvia. I observed how she activelyshopped in second-hand stores and car-boot sales. She notonly sent money remittances, but also goods, from furnitureto toys and clothing, back to her home in Latvia. She told me:“If I could earn 200–250 lats [approximate 400–500 USdollars/290–360 euros/250–310 British pounds] in Latvia, Iwould not be here.” Her earning expectations were humble,as they were just above the minimum Latvian monthly wage(180 lats before tax in 2010), sufficient to cover the bareminimum of daily needs in a small town.

For those still working in Latvia, low income endangeredtheir ability to provide minimum support for their children:

“The salary was criminal,2 200 lats, I was alone with twochildren, you know, it is very, very serious.” (Sanita, 40s,November 2010).

Feminist arguments allow me to interpret this quote notonly as Sanita's evaluation of what she has to do – toundertake a personal responsibility of care by engaging in thespace of possibilities of transnational migration (Morokvasic,2004); it also reveals her evaluation and emotions of how thegender regime plays out in her situation as a manifestinjustice, where she is left with no other possibilities but toleave for work abroad (Wright, 2010). The decision to leaveduring the crisis was sometimes narrated as a radical,lifesaving move: the only option left “when the last strawbroke”, as one research participant put it. In Ilze's story, thedecision to leave is expressed as a mother's duty whenburdened by financial debts, a difficult divorce, and aresponsibility for two daughters, 7 and 15 at the time:

“I lost my job and was living at home, caring for mychildren for a year. My husband put me down saying I wasa nobody. Our relationship started to fall apart and wedivorced. He left me with everything: two daughters,




mortgage loans, he even took a TV set for which I am stillpaying the loan. The court ruled that he had to payalimony for our two daughters, but he said he had no joband no money. I tried to be understanding. But I HAD tosupport my children [as a mother], nobody asked me if ICOULD! (…) After the divorce, I found work again, but Isimply could not bear it anymore. I did not see my girls. Iwas working in a shop by day; at 7 pm I ran to a carservice to wash cars. I was at home by midnight, but thechildren were sleeping already. The older one took care ofthe younger one. She made dinner, heated the house, didher homework. After midnight, I had to prepare food forthe next day. The only time when I saw my girls was inthe mornings when I took them to school and went towork. And so it went on all of the time. I understood that Icould not manage it any longer. And everything declinedin Latvia.” (Ilze, 40s, January 2010).

Like many others, Ilze's extended family agreed to take onthe responsibility for taking care of the children while sheearnedmoney. Prior to leaving the country, Ilzemoved into herchildhood home in the countryside, where hermother and oneof her sisters lived, sharing living expenses. Such local movesprior to international migration were also typical in otherresearch participants' stories. For a mother, moving awayentailed enlisting the resources of other family members tostay in Latvia to care for her children. This strategy included theultimate expectation of return. Ilze continued:

“We did not see any other solution to paying back loanswhile I was living alone with the children. I decided toleave the children with my sister and mother. I thought Iwould earn enough money to repay the loans in a year orso. Now I understand that these were unrealistic dreams”.

Many of the interviews were interrupted by crying. Irinaleft her young teenage daughter under similar constraints:

“Of course, she suffers, of course she misses me. But thething is, God save any woman from a situation where youhave to make a decision to either be close to your child…Oh, I cannot speak [cries]…or to choose a life, inwhich evenI could not support her.” (Irina, in her 30s, January 2010).

During the crisis, solidarity towards women who neededto care for their family members also emerged. A youngbeauty therapist who was invited to join her ex-colleague inGuernsey, told me that she was also asked to recruit onemore specialist to come to the island. While still in Latvia, sheplaced an advertisement on the internet:

“I received hundreds and hundreds of applications withgood diplomas and experience (…) Alona toldme about hersituation – that she was working from home but during thecrisis almost all of her clientele disappeared. She had a four-year-old child and could not cover utilities for the flat. So, Idecided, I will take Alona with me!” (Baiba, July 2010).

Crisis turned out to be the strongest catalyst to shift thenotions of gendered care from ‘absence’ as a ‘satisfactorysolution’ not only by immediate families, but also amongwider population.


Despite the exclusionary way that the housing regimeoperates in Guernsey, the island has been seen as attractivecompared to other destinations in Europe due to the demandfor migrant work in the local labour market, which was ofspecial value during the global recession. Usually work can berelatively easily obtained and full-time employment can evenbe supplemented by part-time earnings – most notably incatering and cleaning. Many of my research participants havehad translocal stops elsewhere: e.g. Ireland and Iceland,which were also hit by financial crisis and rapidly risingunemployment in the late 2000s. A young couple, Zane andDidzis, in their early 30s, told me in summer 2010, how theytried to establish themselves in England, with a hope thattheir school-age daughter, who was cared by grandparents inLatvia, could finally join them:

Didzis: “England was A BIG MISTAKE.”Zane: “It was agood lesson.” [optimistically]Didzis: “We were practicallywithout work for half a year. We went to many, manyrecruitment agencies, to all of them. (..) On and off we hadsome few hours of work per week. (..) On New Year's Evewe could not afford to buy even a chocolate bar, we weredrinking water instead of champagne.”Zane: “On NewYear's Eve I had to wait, when they [parents, daughterfrom Latvia] will call me, I did not have money to top-upthe phone credit. This was particularly hard emotionally.”

“The money is the most important”: building thefamily support

Mobility practices are normalised through stratification –

particularly through consumption. A ‘good mother’ canprovide an education and material things for her children,all the while maintaining a home in Latvia as a place to returnto at an undisclosed future date. In this way, income becomesa defining tool to provide present and future care to one'sfamily:

“I like it here, because money is a bit more than what Icould earn in Latvia, but the negative is the separationfrom the children, of course. But the money is the mostimportant (…) When I am in Latvia, I do not work, I live athome with the children, take them to school, and thenback home. The money has been earned and it should bedistributed during those months [while back home] (…)Of about eighty women who work here [work colleagues],probably two or three do not need to send money backhome.” (Skaidrite, 30s, November 2010).

The importance of money in Latvia deserves a furtherexplanation beyond that of poverty and inequality. As Eglitis(2010) has explained, in today's Latvia, with its neoliberalcapitalist order, stratified class positions are produced throughconsumption and displayed through new cultural markers thatsignal style, lifestyle, and distinction. Drawing upon dominantideas and practices in society, a ‘goodmother’ should provide theconditions whereby her offspring can achieve upward mobility.

Lack of education is seen as a constituent part of thebarrier to achieving upward class aspirations. Irina, whocomes from a region of Latvia where most of the inhabitantsare Russian-speaking, saw her poor income as partly being a




result of her lack of higher education and her poor Latvian.3

She looked upon them as tools that might have opened upbetter opportunities for her in her home country:

“I was still a young woman [when I decided to leaveLatvia]. I also wanted to look good. I had my interests, Iwanted cosmetics, even if they were cheap, and perfume.That despair [I felt] fighting for a living, I simply could notlive like that (…) Maybe I could have achieved somethingmore in Latvia, but I did not have a higher education, so Iwas working in retail.” (Irina, 30s, January 2010).

In the cases where their children were already teenagers,the mothers sometimes spoke about the strength that theygained from their children's approval. The relocation ofyoung teenagers is also avoided because mothers are afraidthat it might traumatise them. “Schools are better in Latvia”,stated Irina, highlighting one of the reasons why it is believedto be better for older school-age children to remain in Latvia.

A young mother told me how deeply she was influenced,after she visited her own mother who worked in Guernsey,by the quality of life she believed she could aspire to there.She was separated from her child's father, and he did notprovide any financial support. Lasma herself had not finishedcollege and said she could not find any sufficiently-payingemployment in her hometown:

“Mom was already working in Guernsey and I visited herfor ten days when my baby was about six months old. Icame back with a completely different view of the world.And from that moment I knew that I wanted to get out ofLatvia (…) I wanted something more in my life! (…) Ispoke to my mother on the phone and I said I wanted towork abroad too. She tried to dissuade me, she told mevery strongly that I cannot, I must not because my childwas still so small. But my dad knew howmuch I wanted tochange something in my life and the very next day hesaid: “You know what? I can look after the little one. Youcan go.” And I went. (Lasma, 20s, July 2011).

This example demonstrates how moral support from hermother, who years ago negotiated her own absence from thefamily when she left Latvia to work abroad, was initiallydenied due to her mother's belief in the importance of Lasmamaintaining a closer physical co-presence to her child.Lasma's mother would still be able to continue sendingremittances to support her daughter and grandson. However,Lasma herself was striving to get out of Latvia and ultimatelyfound support in her father: “I was sending money to my dadall the time. I was ready to send ALL of my money just to beable to stay here.” After a couple of years of separation, sheestablished a new family in Guernsey, which allowed her torelocate her son to the island:

“My son sometimes whines that he wants to go home, hewants to meet his grandpa (…). I tell him that there is nohome there anymore, your home is here.”

A close family member, often a female relative (but notalways, as in the case above), is entrusted with the role ofcaretaker for the children. In some cases there are no closefemale relatives willing or available to take on this role.Teenage children are sometimes left to care for themselves,


but often under the supervision of, again, a female relativewho can check in on them while their mother is abroad.Mothers also actively keep in touch with their family backhome and manage their daily obligations, such as payingbills. In cases where children are left with a father or agrandfather, they often move-in to live with their femalerelatives or are taken abroad to join their mother as soon aspossible:

“In the beginning, my husband stayed with our daughters,but now my mother is taking responsibility. They are veryindependent, I can only be proud of how independentthey are. We remind our daughters all the time: youshould endure, you should keep studying.” (Aiga, 40s,January 2010).

This is also an example of how mothers negotiateapproval with their teenage children: as soon as the care ofyounger children is over, which often means cleaning andcooking, neoliberal ideas of a responsible achiever may betransmitted to their children. Note how Aiga stressed heradvice to her daughters that they should endure temporaryemotional difficulties while both parents are working abroadin order to provide material support for their children, andthat teenage girls should keep studying to enhance theiropportunities for a better life. Emotional distance was lessemphasised in interviews not because it does not happen. Itdoes, as revealed in other research on transnational mothers(e.g. Parrenas, 2001, 2005). Therefore in the neoliberalcontext migrant mothers' emotional distress was oftenrevealed as an ultimate price one should pay – ‘cold intimacy’due to her absence from her children.

“The most terrible thing of all [about leaving] was that myyounger daughter did not remember that I said good-byeand that I promised that I would return. [sighs, cries]. Shebecame mean; I lost my connection to her heart. Oh, whatI have done to her! Children need a mother, they need amother, but I did not think about that so deeply; that weall need to love somebody and somebody to love us. Andsuddenly that centre you revolve around is broken.” (Vija,50s, July 2010).

Failure in bargaining intimate relationships (Illouz, 2007),since a daughter did not remember the mother's promisethat she will return, was blamed in this case, while in theother quote above (Aiga) a mother takes pride in how theneed to earn money was accepted by her daughters and theintimate distance should be endured.

However, it is important to highlight that the womenoften made the realisation that, even though finding workabroad often comes at the expense of conflicts or alienationfrom relatives, the life of a long-distance mother does workand can be maintained, despite the emotional burden that amother feels. Gunita, a mother of two, says: “Actually I amunhappy that I do not have my children here. But I am happythat I have a job here”. Only one mother told me that sheterminated her work contract the very next day after a phoneconversation with her child, who begged her to come homedespite the fact that there was no work for her in Latvia.However, after remaining with her family in Latvia for sometime, she applied for work abroad again.




When migrant working mothers go home, the returntrajectory is typically structured according to the obligationsof their working life and other constraints like housingregulations. Work schedules are dictated by a labour contractthat needs to be synchronised with school holidays, anniver-saries, and other important family events. Moreover, thefreedom to choose when and how often to go home isconstrained by money and the available infrastructure fortransportation. Travel between Latvia and Guernsey requirestwo connecting flights, or a ferry ride and a flight, or severaldays by car. Longer home visits can be a serious financialburden and despite the emotional distress and guilt a mothermay feel from being absent (“My daughter had grown tallerwhile I was away” – Eva), home visits can actually serve as acatalyst to reinforce the decision to go back abroad again, toreturn less frequently or to visit for shorter periods of time:

“Now I have decided that I will not go home for threemonths and will stay in the open market [housing]. I willnot lose [earning] time. I know it will be difficult not tosee the children, but I will go for a couple of weeks. And Iwill not get into debt again during a longer stay in Latvia.”(Gunita, 40s, January 2010).

Gunita explained that three months back in Latvia was tooshort to find paid employment there and she had to live onsavings from money earned abroad, which melted fast fordaily expenses. According to Gunita, who was mainly buyingdiscounted food in supermarkets in Guernsey, expenses fordaily groceries were higher in Latvia.

Does the translocal project end?

So, how long does it take to maintain gendered caretranslocally? Most often, if the entire household was notrelocated, circulation back and forth between Latvia andplaces abroad continued until the children grew up.Grown-up children still need financial support, either forstudies in Latvia or abroad or to ease their initial steps inliving outside of their family's home. It was much morecommon for migrant parents to encourage their grown-upchildren to a life abroad than for the children to pull theirparents back to Latvia. Due to national-scale earningdifferences and availability of jobs and temporary accommo-dation in particular places across borders, by remainingabroad, a migrant woman can increase the opportunities forher relatives to earn fast money – especially for those whocould join her for a short period of time, for exampleschool-age adolescents during the school break.

Some of my informants maintained individual resolutionsto not return back home until retirement – even if theirbeneficiaries were no longer in need of support. Theseresolutions were ironically narrated as being gifts to thestate: “I will use any opportunity to stay abroad for as long asI physically can. I am over fifty-years-old and nobody needsus in Latvia. I want to give young people a chance there”(field notes, Marita, 50s, April 2012).

Changes in mobility patterns occur as the migrantwoman's social life expands in the place where she worksand contracts back home. This is especially true when newmeaningful relationships are formed abroad. If a new partner


does not want to return to Latvia or a migrant womanmarries a local person, the frequency of visits declines.

“Since I met my future husband here, I go to Latvia just forvacations, about once a year.” (Nora, 30s, November 2010).

Nora stressed that she is seen only as a guest in her oldhouse in Latvia. She took her son from her previous marriageto Guernsey as soon as her legal status as a spouse of a localperson allowed it. Her son, she said, already has grownreluctant to visit Latvia because his friends, family and leisureactivities all are related to a new homeland:

“My life is stable, secure, I feel secure about my work andabout my family. This is a very secure place to raise mychildren. I visit my family, look around, and can see thatthings are different. I DO NOT THINK I will return, NOTSOON – as long as I work and my children grow up. I feelvalued here as a woman, as a worker, as a mother, as aworking mother (…) Maybe in retirement I could startthinking about returning as Latvia might be a cheaperplace to live on my [Guernsey- earned] pension.”

Nora, her Latvian-born son and Guernsey-born youngerchild, like hundreds on the small island of Guernsey and manythousands of Latvians elsewhere in Europe, embody thegreatest social and spatial changes in post-socialist Latviawhere, as I have argued throughout this article, gender regimeshave played a significant role in the decision to work abroad.

Conclusion

Although my research site in Guernsey has specificregulations that emphasise circulation, and has constraintson the relocation of whole families, this study allows for amore in-depth probing into gender within the context ofmobility, neoliberal ideas and post-socialism. In-depth re-search on this specific place and space, where genderedrecruitment prevailed and various types of mobility could betraced back over fifteen years, has enabled me to give a voiceto migrant women to express their opinions and to justifytheir mobility projects.

Through an analysis of post-socialist gender regimes, Idemonstrated, firstly, how neoconservative and neoliberalgendered ideas have become intertwined. I also laid out thefoundation for the contexts wherein which many migrantwomen have found themselves constrained to fulfil careresponsibilities in Latvia. Emerging continuities and changesbecome analytically visible when they are unpacked at differentscales: the nation, and the family, living andmoving to and fromdifferent places across national borders. The large scale ofemigration from such a small and rapidly ageing country likeLatvia, which has barely 2 million inhabitants, is the mostdramatic socio-spatial change with possibly long-term andfar-reaching consequences for the country's development.

Secondly, my analysis in this article also contributes tobetter understanding how geography and gender matter inthese changes. First, through the utilisation of time-geographicconcepts of a mobility project and constraints combined withfeminist arguments, I demonstrated the shift in the idea ofwhois capable of doing valuable work and where. There werevarious patterns of geographic mobility: short-term work




abroad, “being settled in mobility” for years (cf. Morokvasic,2004), forming a new or relocating the whole family abroad. Iexplained the context of themobility project of close proximitybetween home and workplace and how possibilities to earn aliving and discharge care duties in Latvia were abandoned infavour of translocal work and care. This allowed for the tracingof a shiftingnotion of gendered care andhowanewversion of aneoliberal mother emerged. The emotionally uneasy physicalabsence of amother who cares for her familymembers becamegradually accepted by themothers themselves and their familymembers and co-migrant workers. They endured the emotion-al burden as a temporary solution, by shifting the temporaryaspect from the counting of calendar years to the time whenthe children finally become self-sufficient.

Third, I demonstrated how migrants gained the strengthto justify their translocal mobility project because they, notthe neoliberal state, provided an alternative welfare networkfor those who stayed behind. The coupling constraints, whichinevitably emerge through migration and preclude a motherfrom caring for her children on day-to-day basis, give rise to afeminist care ethic and configurations of individualisticmobility projects where a neoliberal migrating mother canachieve her goals for providing material support andensuring care for her children through the help of others orbargaining with her own teenage children directly. Eventhough physical separation between a mother and herchildren could be a cause for shame, among migrantwomen themselves it was accepted as a harsh reality and arational choice.

Long-distance care for children (and ageing parents) is apersonal and major change in households, often positive inthe production of available income, but one that also impliesan emotional burden. However, these dramatic changes infamily lives and their geographies have actually supportedthe continuation of the neoliberal state model in Latvia. Byleaving Latvia, these people did not exert the pressure on thestate to provide social support for those in need. My researchparticipants who left during the crisis stated that they did nothave a choice to stay and fight, nor did they trust that theirvoices would be heard and their minimum needs met by thestate. It is an outcome which operates according to neoliberallogic in post-socialist countries like Latvia, where socialmobilisation, protests and a plea for social justice aredenigrated because such leftist ideas are discursively linkedto the socialist past. Only in late 2012, in the framework ofthe formation of a policy on the diaspora, has a discussion onthe need to provide child support comparable to similarpolicies in other EU countries emerged. However, it has nottranslated into concrete steps towards changes in the genderregime in Latvia (MFA, 2013).

There are several future research avenues to be pursued onthis topic. In the context of Latvia, there is a need to understandhow various modalities of a neoliberal mother emerge inmigratory and sedentary contexts, as well as through locallyunderstood class terms. Both in Latvia and in otherpost-socialist countries, which went through similar funda-mental transformations and have experienced large-scaleemigration, generational transmissions of gendered carepatterns could possibly yield many important insights intohow geography and gender are intertwinedwith social change.And finally, return is often imagined only after an earned


pension is secured abroad, a strategy that reveals anotherpossibility for future social change and potential divisions ofgendered care among the retired population in Latvia.

Acknowledgements

The research was partly supported by the Kone Founda-tion, Finland. This article has been significantly improvedthanks to valuable comments and constructive critique oftwo anonymous reviewers and the editors. I am grateful tomy external supervisor Prof. Russell King for his sage advice.Thanks to Lauren M. Rhodes for English language editing.

Endnotes

1 For example, the media in Latvia maintains a discourse of moralmisbehaviour to leave children behind in search for a better life abroad. Insome regions, state and municipal institutions maintain registers of howmany ‘orphans’ of migrant parents are left in Latvia; for example, that almost800 children in the coastal town of Liepaja are left behind by parentsworking abroad (BNS, 2011). According to data gathered by the LatvianMinistry of Education and Science, at the beginning of the 2010/2011 schoolyear, 3,449 school children had at least one parent working abroad (Broka,2011: 92-3). In 2006, the Latvian government issued a document on how toprevent the social exclusion of children whose parents work abroad,Regulations No. 655 (2009). However, this document was not implementedinto policy.

2 The word ‘criminal’, in colloquial Latvian, is used in an indirect sense todescribe a negative effect of something.

3 Approximately one third of Latvia’s population speak Russian as anative language, while Latvian is the only official state language. Sufficientknowledge of Latvian in required for many professional positions in thecountry. This aspect is not analysed in this article but see Novikova (2006:109-10).

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Aija Lulle is a PhD researcher at the University of Latvia, Department of HumanGeography. She has studied also at the Stockholm University (2011) and was avisiting researcher at the London Metropolitan University, Working LivesResearch Institute (2012). She uses interdisciplinary approach and has anextensive research background in Latvia and Europe as a national expert onmigration and labour market issues. In 2010-2012 Aija Lulle carried out anethnographic research project on the transnational practices of Latvianmigrants in the Channel Island of Guernsey.


http://www.lm.gov.lv/upload/berns_gimene/lmpamn_200111_gvp.pdf

http://www.lm.gov.lv/upload/berns_gimene/lmpamn_200111_gvp.pdf

























http://www.femipol.uni-frankfurt.de/docs/femipol_finalreport.pdf

http://www.femipol.uni-frankfurt.de/docs/femipol_finalreport.pdf










































http://s3.amazonaws.com/politika/public/article_files/1634/original/neredzamas_viena_dzimuma_gimenes.pdf?1332318075

http://s3.amazonaws.com/politika/public/article_files/1634/original/neredzamas_viena_dzimuma_gimenes.pdf?1332318075
















Documents

Shifting notions of gendered care and neoliberal motherhood: From the lives of Latvian migrant women in Guernsey