Abstract
In her book, Solari sets out to explain certain characteristics of the recent labor migration from Ukraine through the nexus of gender, nation-state building, globalization, and the transition to post-Soviet neoliberal capitalism. Based on extensive ethnographic work among domestic workers in Rome and California and among the children of labor migrants in Lviv, Ukraine, she describes how structural and discursive dimensions in both sending and receiving countries produce gendered migrant subjectivities situated in disparate transnational social fields. Through ten narratives from a total of 160 in-depth interviews, Solari engagingly tells the story of Ukrainian grandmothers who venture into the capitalist West to build a post-Soviet Ukraine from the outside in.
Solari’s multisited ethnography is reflected in the book’s structure. The first part describes how the difficult transition from socialism to capitalism in post-Soviet Ukraine, and the simultaneous transformation from an ideal of the extended to the nuclear family, has left middle-aged women marginalized from both the labor market and their traditional role of providing primary care to their grandchildren. This double marginalization has painfully pushed grandmothers out of their families and country and into labor abroad. Solari convincingly argues that the monetary and social remittances sent home by these middle-aged women are crucial for the transformation to a capitalist and “European” Ukraine. In addition, these grandmothers carry the burden of negotiating between the moral order of the old and the new in issues related to motherhood, childcare and gender roles.
The subsequent parts depict two very different transnational social fields of Ukrainian labor migration. Solari introduces a conceptual distinction between exile and exodus related to ideas about “forced” and “voluntary” migration to Italy and the United States respectively. The most evident indication of this focus is how Ukrainian migrants themselves refer to their destination country as “Gulag” in Italy and “the Promised Land” in the United States. Since the migrants in Rome and California basically perform the same kind of work (i.e., cleaning and caring for the elderly), Solari argues that the reason for these diametrically diverging understandings of the migration process can be found in the structural and discursive contexts in both the sending and receiving countries. Aspects such as migration history, how visas are obtained, the reception migrants experience in the receiving state, and moral discourses on motherhood and proper childcare in the sending country shape unique transnational social fields. Being stuck and separated from one’s family in Italy on an overstayed and expensive tourist visa in a social environment of women with similar migration stories, and at the same time being labeled a “bad mother” in Ukraine certainly create different relations to one’s home and destination country than does being reunited with one’s family in the United States after “winning” a green card, with few possibilities to engage in transnational practices with the home country and being praised in Ukraine as a “good mother.”
Solari’s project is an excellent example of the usefulness of comparative studies set in various migration contexts. The concepts of exile and exodus emerge from her deep understanding of structural and discursive elements in both Ukraine as a sending country and Italy and the United States as two very distinct destination countries. Based on this insight, Solari develops a framework for understanding transnational processes at the intersection between gender, nation-state building, and globalization.
The book is also an invaluable contribution to the study of the post-Soviet migration wave from Ukraine. Ukraine is one of the top sending countries of labor migrants. Nonetheless, Ukrainian migrants’ transnational practices are largely understudied. This is even more true for the migration experiences of middle-aged grandmothers from Ukraine.
This book’s rich and colorful ethnograpic descriptions were collected between 2004 and 2006, at the time of the so-called “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine. Although Solari tries to draw some lines to the 2014 Euromaidan demonstrations and its aftermath, I cannot but wonder how these dramatic changes, not least the implementation of a visa-free regime for Ukrainians to Europe in June 2017, affected the transnational social fields of her respondents. We can only hope she will explore this further in the future.
On the Shoulders of Grandmothers is primarily written for academics interested in migration, transnational families, gender, nation-state building, globalization, post-Soviet transformation, and Ukrainian issues. Still, the vivid ethnographic descriptions and engaging life stories of ten Ukrainian labor migrants make it easily accessible for a wider audience as well.