Transnational caregiving has recently provoked a number of studies on the impact of migration on the reorganisation of care arrangements, family dynamics, and gender roles. Yet, the literature on transnational caregiving rarely discusses the ambivalences which migrants encounter in the provision of care. Twenty interviews with migrants from Poland in Germany and ten interviews with their relatives in Poland reveal that transnational childcare is mitigated between a wish for the integration of their children into the German education system and the need to maintain ties to relatives and friends in Poland. These mediations synchronise socialisation within and outside the (transnational) family, yet also connect families with each other (across borders) through reciprocity such as intergenerational contracts. The implications of caregiving are the differences in life chancesshaped by transnationality, class, gender, and agethrough participation in relevant social fields such as the labour market and the education system.

The culturally determined necessity of the personal fulfilment of children’s obligations to care for older parents, including personal care and practical household help, is a long-lasting element of the Polish normative system, strengthened by the weakness of the institutional support system. In the situation of migration the obligations (and the methods by which they can be realized) are modified but do not disappear. What become necessary are new types of social practices. The aim of this article is to analyse intergenerational caregiving and family remittance flows in transnational social space. The authors use the case study of working-class migrants in Iceland and their elderly parents in Poland to explore how remittances function in the later life stage of the transnational family. The main thesis is that in transnational social space taking care of elderly parents (mostly by women) in person in Poland is transformed into remittances (mostly sent by migrating women). The authors also discuss the impact of the economic crisis on transnational families, which in the present case had strongly hit Iceland but has (for the time being) bypassed Poland. The authors use quantitative and qualitative data collected during field research in Iceland and Poland.

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The recent massive arrival of war refugees has challenged Europe’s political unity and fanned the flames of anti-Muslim populism. Both discourses have been framed in terms of ‘shifting solidarity’ between the European Union member states, their citizens and the refugees. At stake, the article argues, is the delineation of the collectivity linked by the obligation of solidarity. Drawing on insights from research conducted among Polish-born migrants in Germany about their practices and attitudes towards helping the refugees, and critically engaging with social theory, this article offers a new understanding of transnational solidarity. Transnational solidarity, it argues, needs to embrace the tension between cosmopolitan and particularistic ideas around belonging. The article suggests defining transnational solidarity as an outcome of socio-culturally and spatio-temporally specific interpretations of the norm of solidarity. As a heuristic device, transnational solidarity helps us to understand the shifting alliances for and against refugees in Europe.