Child Health and Migrant Parents in South-East Asia: Risk and Resilience among Primary School-Aged Children

Psychosocial resilience among left-behind adolescents in rural Thailand: A qualitative exploration

When parents migrate, they often leave children behind with relatives. Despite being at higher risk of socio-emotional problems, many left-behind children have good health and social outcomes, suggesting their resilience. We sought to understand how adolescents with internal and international migrant parents build resilience in Thailand. We conducted qualitative interviews with 24 adolescents aged 10-19, and six caregivers, parents and community leaders. Interviews were transcribed, translated and analysed, drawing on techniques from grounded theory. We found that resilience was built in a context where for many families, migration was a financial necessity and the parent-child relationship was mainly phone-based. Adolescents built resilience using three key 'resources': warmth (love and understanding), financial support and guidance. Adolescents with insecure parent or caregiver relationships, or with caring responsibilities for relatives, were less likely to have access to these resources. These adolescents sought emotional and financial independence, prioritised friendships and identified role models to obtain key resources and build resilience. The findings indicate practical and psychosocial barriers to building resilience among left-behind adolescents in Thailand. Further work could explore pathways to mental illness in this population, interventions that build peer networks and caregiver-child relationships and the use of technology to support remote parenting.

The situation and well-being of custodial grandparents in Myanmar: Impacts of adult children's cross-border and internal migration

Custodial care for grandchildren left behind by migrant parents is an important contribution made by grandparents for their families and societies, given rising migration flows and increasing prominence of skipped-generation households in low- and middle-income countries. Yet, little is known about the scope and consequences of custodial grandparenting in developing settings. Analyzing unique data from the 2017 Myanmar Grandparents Caring for Grandchildren Survey, this study examines the extent to which the middle generation's cross-border and internal migration are associated with caregiving intensity, perception towards grandchild care, and psychological well-being among grandparents. Results suggest limited negative impacts of the middle generation's migration on the situation and well-being of grandparent caregivers. Custodial grandparents, particularly those caring for children of cross-border migrant mothers, experience heightened caregiving responsibilities and perceived difficulties in grandchild care. Nevertheless, all else equal, the middle generation's migration is not significantly associated with grandparents' psychological well-being. Remittances from migrant children and care support from non-coresident family members are found to reduce grandparents' caregiving intensity, improve caregiving perception, and lower psychological distress. In sum, findings echo Myanmar's widespread norms of grandchild care provision by grandparents and underscore mutual interdependence across generations, as evidenced in the importance of remittances from migrant children and informal care support networks in determining the well-being of Myanmar grandparents. This study extends current theoretical perspectives that emphasize custodial grandparenting either as a response to family crises or as a household strategy to facilitate middle-generation migration. Instead, our evidence suggests that, when conceptualizing custodial grandparenting practices in developing settings, it is instructive to consider not only opportunities but also challenges and ambivalent situations associated with the middle generation's diverse migration patterns.

Under one roof? Left-behind children's perspectives in negotiating relationships with absent and return-migrant parents

Children-whether left behind or as migrants-have remained largely invisible in Southeast Asian migration scholarship. Their experiences and perspectives on migration, as well as how they demonstrate agency within the limits of culturally/socially constructed childhoods influenced by a "hybridisation" of global and local conditions, are often overlooked in favour of adults'. This article addresses this research lacuna by focusing attention on how left-behind Indonesian and Filipino children between 9 and 11 years of age engage and react to the changes in their everyday lives brought about by both parental migration and parental return. Using both quantitative and qualitative data collected from a larger study on child health and migrant parents in Southeast Asia with return-migrants, left-behind carers, and children, this article highlights the experiences of left-behind children by revealing their agency and creativity in managing changes in their daily lives due to the frequent and transient comings and goings of one or both parents.

Parental migration and disruptions in everyday life: reactions of left-behind children in Southeast Asia

Increasing feminisation of transnational labour migration has raised concerns over potential 'care crises' at home, and consequently a 'care deficit' for children left in origin countries. Our paper focuses on how left-behind children from Indonesia and the Philippines understand, engage and react to changes in their everyday lives in their parents' absence. While many children had no say over their care arrangements, some were able to assert their agency in influencing their parents' decisions and eventually migratory behaviours. Their thoughts and actions reinforce the importance of including children's views in development and migration studies to improve both the children's and families' well-being, and make migration a sustainable strategy for all.

Living a tormented life: Caregivers' experiences of caring for a child with autism in Northeastern Thailand

Caring for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can be a demanding challenge to caregivers. The aim of this study was to learn what caring for children with ASD means to caregivers who live in rural Thailand. A hermeneutic phenomenological approach was used to analyze narrative data from interviews of five caregivers. Three themes emerged: (a) being sensitive to the word autism, (b) being trapped in a tunnel of distress, and (c) being the universe for the child. Healthcare professionals need to be sensitive to the caregivers' cultural customs in order to meet their expectations in a respectful way.

Engaged parenting, gender, and children's time use in transnational families: An assessment spanning three global regions

Global circuits of migration regularly separate parents from children. How families navigate this separation has changed markedly. The sharp decline in the cost of international communication makes possible new forms of transnational parenting. In many contexts, migrants are now actively engaged parents, involved in decisions, knowledgeable of children's schooling, employment, and activities, and in some cases, even conversant face-to-face with children via videoconferencing. These practices, however, are not universal. We use data from surveys in three countries to document the frequency and variability of intensive, engaged transnational parenting in the diverse global regions of Asia, Africa, and the Americas. We then ask whether the organisation of children's lives-specifically, time allocated to school homework, leisure, and household chores-varies by the degree to which migrant parents stay connected to sending homes. The gender of the migrant parent, stay-behind caregiver, and the gender of the child emerge as explanatory factors for engaged parenting and children's time use. However, and unexpectedly, in the Philippines, migrant mothers are less likely to practice engaged parenting. In sending households, girls in two of the three countries spend more time doing household chores than boys, but parental migration does not mitigate this difference. Although we find some evidence of more traditional gender practices, we also find exceptions that suggest potentially fruitful avenues for future research.

Towards a model of resilience for transnational families of Filipina domestic workers

Many Filipinos experience poverty and poor employment opportunities. In order to alleviate poverty and provide sufficient resources for their families, numerous mothers leave the Philippines to become domestic workers. The present study aimed to build a model of family resilience for transnational families. A total of 33 participants consisting of Filipino transnational families, domestic workers, and key informants participated in a series of focus group discussions and interviews. A new model of resilience among transnational families of Filipina domestic helpers was created using a constructivist grounded theory approach. The model highlighted how temporal and spatial elements are embedded in collective migration experiences. Family narratives begin with the sacrifice of separation, where mothers leave their families for a chance to solve economic problems. To successfully adapt to their separation, the families undergo five relational processes. First, families communicate across space using technology to bridge relational distance. Second, families restructure across space through role sharing and the validation of each other’s efforts in their family roles. Third, families rebuild ties through temporary family reunification that bridge physical and relational distance. Fourth, families have the collective goal of permanent family reunification by ending migration to become complete again. Fifth, they strive to commit to their families by prioritizing them instead of succumbing to difficulties. Family resilience for transnational migrants is a collectivistic process, negotiated by each family member.

Migrant mothers, left-behind fathers: the negotiation of gender subjectivities in Indonesia and the Philippines

The distinct feminization of labour migration in Southeast Asia - particularly in the migration of breadwinning mothers as domestic and care workers in gender-segmented global labour markets - has altered care arrangements, gender roles and practices, as well as family relationships within the household significantly. Such changes were experienced by both the migrating women and other left-behind members of the family, particularly 'substitute' carers such as left-behind husbands. During the women's absence from the home, householding strategies have to be reformulated when migrant women-as-mothers rewrite their roles (but often not their identities) through labour migration as productive workers who contribute to the well-being of their children via financial remittances and 'long-distance mothering', while left-behind fathers and/or other family members step up to assume some of the tasks vacated by the mother. Using both quantitative and qualitative interview material with returned migrants and left-behind household members in source communities in Indonesia and the Philippines experiencing considerable pressures from labour migration, this article explores how carework is redistributed in the migrant mother's absence, and the ensuing implications on the gender roles of remaining family members, specifically left-behind fathers. It further examines how affected members of the household negotiate and respond to any changing gender ideologies brought about by the mother's migration over time.

Parental migration and the mental health of those who stay behind to care for children in South-East Asia

The international migration of parents from the global south raises questions about the health impacts of family separation on those who stay behind. This paper uses data collected in 2008 and 2009 for a project on Child Health and Migrant Parents in South-East Asia (CHAMPSEA) to address a largely neglected research area by investigating the mental health of those who stay behind in Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam to care for the children of overseas migrants. A mixed-methods research design is employed to answer two questions. First, whether carers in transnational (migrant) households are more likely to suffer mental health problems than those in non-migrant households; and secondly, whether transnational family practices and characteristics of migration are associated with mental health outcomes for stay-behind carers. The Self-Reporting Questionnaire (SRQ-20) was completed by carers in selected communities (N = 3026) and used to identify likely cases of common mental disorders (CMD). Multivariate logistic regression and thematic analysis of qualitative interviews (N = 149) reveal a nuanced picture. All stay-behind carers in the Indonesian sample are more likely than carers in non-migrant households to suffer CMD. Across the three study countries, however, it is stay-behind mothers with husbands working overseas who are most likely to experience poor mental health. Moreover, infrequent contact with the migrant, not receiving remittances and migrant destinations in the Middle East are all positively associated with carer CMD, whereas greater educational attainment and greater wealth are protective factors. These findings add new evidence on the 'costs' of international labour migration and point to the role of gendered expectations and wider geopolitical structures. Governments and international policy makers need to intervene to encourage transnational family practices that are less detrimental to the mental health of those who stay behind to care for the next generation.