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Scholars sometimes conceptualize migrants and their kin as ‘transnational families' in acknowledgement that migration does not end with settlement and that migrants maintain regular contacts and exchange care across borders. Recent studies reveal that state policies and international regulations influence the maintenance of transnational family solidarity. We aim to contribute to our understanding of how families' care‐giving arrangements are situated within institutional contexts. We specify an analytical framework comprising a typology of care‐giving arrangements within transnational families, a typology of resources they require for care giving, and a specification of institutions through which those resources are in part derived. We illustrate the framework through a comparative analysis of two groups of migrants – Salvadorans in Belgium and Poles in the UK. We conclude by arguing that while institutions matter they are not the sole factor, and identify how future research might develop a more fully comprehensive situated transnationalism.

Data gathered from 21 at-home fathers living in Belgium were analyzed and compared to results from research conducted in Australia, Sweden and the USA on fathers taking primary responsibility for childcare. The dynamic process of managing the tension between assigned norms and personal identity was studied through a comparative overview of how at-home fathers come to assume the primary responsibility of childcare, the norms they are confronted with in their daily interactions and the strategies used by these fathers to (re)construct a positive self-image. The fathers' increased involvement in childcare challenged masculine self-definitions and self-presentations in normative contexts where men's predominant involvement in paid work is privileged and childcare is largely defined as feminine. In response, Belgian fathers developed strategies and discourses that drew on a multiplicity of masculinities that appear in many cases to be both transgressive and yet complicit with hegemonic definitions of masculinity.In industrialised countries, professional and family life balance has long been considered a "women only" issue (Barrère-Maurisson, 1992; Hochschild, 2003). Women's growing presence in the labour market and the challenge posed by women's movements to the traditional male breadwinner/female caretaker model has made the articulation of paid work and family more acute. Concerns about paid work/family balance are heightened by ageing populations and decreasing birth rates, both of which affect social security systems in most Organisation for Economic and Cooperation Development (OECD) countries. In the Nordic countries, where gender equality policies date

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In this paper, I focus on the transnational care practices of Salvadoran refugees living in Perth (Western Australia) and who care for their ageing parents who have remained in their home country. The analysis is based on a conceptualization of transnational care as a set of capabilities that include, but are not limited to, mobility, social relations, time allocation, education and knowledge, paid work and communication (Merla and Baldassar, 2011). I focus in particular on the impact of Salvadoran refugees’ difficult access to, and use of, these capabilities on their capacity to fulfil their culturally defined sense of obligation to care for their ageing parents. Results show that extended transnational kinship networks play a major role in helping migrants overcome obstacles to transnational caregiving.

Rooted in two qualitative research studies of stay-at-home fathers (70 Canadian and 21 Belgian) at the beginning of the twenty-first century, this article explores the innovative ways that families seek to create workÁ family balance in two countries where relevant social policies are still focused on the encouraging of private family-based solutions to balancing paid and unpaid work. At the level of workÁ family policy, we note that both Canada and Belgium remain relatively weak in the provision of childcare, especially for children under the age of three, as well as in flexible working options that would allow families to effectively balance work and home. In light of these limited options, some fathers who have a weaker employment position than their female partners, or who are reconsidering their current careers, may opt out of the labor market for months or years in order to provide a private solution to an issue which still has little policy support. Nevertheless, while fathers are at home, they only partially 'trade cash for care'; that is, they also remain connected to traditionally masculine sources of identity such as part-time paid work, unpaid masculine self-provisioning work, and community work that builds on traditional male interests.Ancré dans deux recherches qualitatives portant sur les pères au foyer (70 installés au Canada et 21 en Belgique) au début du 21ème siècle, cet article explore les stratégies innovantes adoptées par les pères pour équilibrer vie professionnelle et vie familiale dans deux pays ou`les politiques sociales sont encore largement centrés a`cet égard sur l'encouragement de solutions privées. Certains pères ayant une position professionnelle moins avantageuse que leur partenaire, ou qui souhaitent revoir leur implication professionnelle se retirent du marché du travail pour quelques mois ou quelques années afin de fournir une solution privée a`une question qui reste peu prise en compte par les pouvoirs publics. Au niveau familial, ces pères ne renoncent que partiellement au travail professionnel au profit du soin des enfants ; autrement dit, alors qu'ils sont au foyer, ils entretiennent un lien avec les ressources identitaires traditionnellement masculines comme le travail a`temps partiel, le bricolage a`la maison, et le travail communautaire fondé sur des intérêts masculins.

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