For many migrants, mediated communication and other forms of contact can provide a means to maintain some semblance of family life across distance. For others, economic and other constraints can make meaningful long-distance connections challenging or impractical. This chapter highlights how some migrants reconfigure family life not by bridging physical distance with biological kin but by developing close connections in their host communities. The authors draw from their research on Philippine rural-to-urban migrants who work as yayas (i.e., live-in, domestic workers caring for children) and how they build family life with peers in their neighborhoods and with their employers in the context of paid domestic work. The chapter highlights how culturally embedded notions of family are reflected in these fictive kinships and how indigenous notions of obligations and family life can provide protections and benefits but also make yayas more vulnerable to abuse in the workplace.
International migration of couples is rising. Still, there is little evidence on men’s and women’s domestic work hours before and after migration. This is despite the fact that domestic work provides deep insights into family life and, for migrants, is directly linked to integration. Therefore, this study examines how immigrant men and women change their domestic work hours following migration, using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Our results show that domestic work hours increase for both genders after immigration. However, men are more responsible for running errands than women in the first years after migration. In the long term, the gender gaps return to the pre-migration state, with women shouldering a greater load than men. Accordingly, this study shows that migration only has a short-term impact on couples’ division of domestic work.
La protección de la vida familiar de las personas desplazadas, de las demandantes de asilo, de las refugiadas y de las apátridas en el Derecho Europeo // The protection of the family life of displaced persons, asylum applicants, refugees, in European Law
