Transnational grandparenting in the digital age: mediated co-presence and childcare in the case of Romanian migrants in Switzerland and Canada

This study resulted in the author’s PhD dissertation Migratory patterns and cosmopolitanism in the digital age. The highly skilled Romanian migration to Canada. For more details, see Nedelcu (2009b).

Swiss National Foundation Research Grant 100015-124842. For more details, see Nedelcu and Wyss (2015, 2016).

These aspects suggest that our findings cannot be easily extrapolated to Romanian grandparents, nor to migrants’ parents in general. However, preliminary findings from an ongoing research (entitled “Intergenerational solidarities in transnational families. An approach through the care arrangements of the Zero Generation, these foreigner grandparents involved in raising their grandchildren in Switzerland”)—in which we are interviewing dyads composed from migrants and their G0 parents originally from Germany, Italy, France, Portugal, Romania, Brazil, Algeria and Morocco—let us think that migration regimes and structural constraints are more discriminating factors than social class and geographical distance.

At the time when the interviews were conducted, conditions in Canada and Switzerland differed noticeably in this respect. In Canada, the zero generation grandparents arrived for the most part with a visitor’s visa, which was usually granted for a maximum of 6 months during a year; but many migrants’ parents were also entitled to family reunification, as Canadian immigration law allows for the sponsorship of parents and grandparents under certain conditions. The Canadian Federal Family Reunification Plan has changed in 2010 when the Federal government put a moratorium on this sponsorship program. A “parent and grandparent super visa” was implemented as a “stop gap,” providing multiple entries for a period up to 10 years, which entitles eligible parents and grandparents to visit family in Canada for up to two years without the need to renew their status. Since 2014, an annual quota of 10,000 applications was introduced for family reunification sponsorship for parents and grandparents. In Switzerland, family reunification for migrants’ parents is rather unusual, and it is rarely achieved (Bolzman et al. 2008). Since 1998, Swiss migratory policy based on a binary model, the so-called model of two circles, makes a distinction between EU nationals and nationals from other countries. This policy reveals unequal opportunities for elders of the zero generation to enter, sojourn and establish themselves in Switzerland. Romanian nationals experienced both status: as non-EU citizens prior to 2007 when Romania formally adhered to the EU, they couldn’t enter Swiss territory without a tourist visa until 2004; after June 2009, when Switzerland extended—under certain transitory restrictions—the Agreement of Free Circulation to Romania, they gained more freedom and could potentially reside there on a permanent basis as retired Europeans, if they were able to meet certain (high) economic requirements. Interviews conducted in 2010 and 2011 showed however that childcare arrangements in the Swiss homes of Romanian migrants usually involved multiple short visits, but also (ir)regular overstays frequently associated with social isolation and vulnerability.