Practising Motherhood at a Distance: Retention and Loss in Ecuadorian Transnational Families

This article builds on an ethnographic study of a migration flow linking Ecuador and Italy. Through personal relationships built up during fieldwork, I was able to delve into the changing interactions between migrant mothers and the children they leave behind, looking also at constructions of 'mothering at a distance' in both their host and their home societies. For migrant women, practising transnational motherhood entails communicating frequently, sending remittances and showing a deep affective involvement. The attitudes and practices of migrant mothers suggest an ambivalent commitment: an attempt to exert control from afar over their children's daily lives, alongside a perception that any such attempt may prove inadequate; a struggle to work and save hard, alongside fears that the money sent home may be spent improperly; and a framing of migration as a necessary self-sacrifice, together with concerns about losing their grip on their children's upbringing. The article also looks at the role of some key variables-for example, the role of other family members in care arrangements; the influence of temporal and spatial distances on the evolution of intimate relationships; and the prospects for family reunion-in accounting for the impact of transnational caregiving practices. A final question arises. To what extent and in what realms-that is, in relation to the affective domain, the realm of communication or the area of material reproduction-can a transnational caregiving relationship be mutually interchangeable with a proximity-based one?