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In this paper, I analyse the changes that mothers and children experience in their relationship due to the physical separations and reunions entailed by the international migration process. I argue that the different geographical configurations that migrant families take over time are the outcome of a negotiation of care responsibility and desired geographies of family life, and are accompanied by changing meanings and practices in intimate relationships: the location of care relationships is influenced by the relatives' capacity both to take part in family negotiations as well as to overcome the constraints imposed by policies. Time is relevant because it leads to shifting meanings and practices of transnational family life, as well as to the changing role of children in the family.

It is often maintained that contemporary foreign labour recruitment programs have taken an increasingly selective stance and that skills are increasingly crucial in granting migrants easier access and stronger welfare and residency rights in receiving countries. The paper provides a retrospective account of the evolution of Italian labour migration management, paying attention to the changing selection criteria reflected in some of its “front, back and side doors”. It will be shown that Italian labour migration management is increasingly embracing a bifurcated regime of deservingness. Despite some recent tentative signs of change towards an increased evaluation of high skills as a selection principle embedded into a competitiveness‐driven frame, over the last decades labour migration management has been largely dominated by the recruitment of a low‐skilled workforce. The paper discusses the emergence of a specific construction migrants’ deservingness placing Italy in a peculiar position in a European context.

In this article we provide an understanding of the challenges that immigrants have to face to relocate their nuclear families abroad. We will show that immigrants are often forced to leave their dependent relatives behind for much longer than expected, and that, despite their efforts to maintain intimacy at distance, the transnational managing of remittances and care entails certain risks. Both the separation experienced and the living conditions that reunited members face in Italy can make reunification itself a very sensitive moment in the life-course of these families, since the process of adaptation to the receiving society leads relatives to reshape and renegotiate their respective family roles and responsibilities. We are going to highlight how the availability of extended ties can represent a concrete form of support for many immigrant couples and lone mothers both during the separation and in their struggle to reunite their relatives, as well as after the reunification has taken place.

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