Prethodno priopćenje
https://doi.org/10.11567/met.2025.13
Leaving, coming and ‘going back’: How caring responsibilities create volatile futures for migrants
Franka Zlatić
orcid.org/0000-0003-2490-3100
; Odjel za sociologiju, Sveučilište u Zadru, Zadar, Hrvatska
*
* Dopisni autor.
Sažetak
This paper examines how young migrants’ future plans in the UK were destabilised by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Uncertainty around health, employment, and most crucially, the well-being of family members in their countries of origin prompted many to reconsider return migration or the possibility of relocating relatives to the UK, concerns that had previously been marginal. While migration studies often centre individual agency, this research shows how family obligations and shifting external conditions reshape migrants’ trajectories and priorities. A recurring theme is the paradox of desiring return while continually postponing it due to structural and emotional constraints. Migrants found themselves caught between securing a stable future abroad and fulfilling caregiving responsibilities: financial, practical, and emotional, toward loved ones at home. Based on online interviews with 27 young and highly skilled migrants conducted between December 2020 and September 2021, the paper highlights how crises such as COVID-19 recalibrate migration decisions. It contributes to debates on return migration and transnational care by foregrounding temporality and migrants’ future imaginaries, showing how a once-distant future becomes an immediate and pressing concern, reshaping the meaning of belonging and home.
Ključne riječi
migration; COVID-19; transnational family; youth mobility
Hrčak ID:
338757
URI
Datum izdavanja:
18.11.2025.
Posjeta: 364 *