Transnational mothering and forced migration: Understanding the experiences of Zimbabwean mothers in the UK

Introduction

Numerous studies have documented the experiences of different groups of women and men involved in the maintenance and development of transnational families worldwide (see, for instance, Baldassar et al., 2007; Bauer and Thompson, 2006; Fresnoza-Flot, 2009; Gamburd, 2000; Goulbourne et al., 2010; Hondagneu-Sotelo and Avila, 1997; Merla, 2012; Parrenas, 2001; Pribilsky, 2004; Ryan, 2011; Zontini, 2010). What all these studies show is that proximity is not a prerequisite for family life as families can successfully be done from a distance.

Although all of these studies point out the difficulties involved in doing family transnationally, the emphasis is on their resilience and their ability to adapt to new and challenging circumstances. However, still very little is known about families that severely struggle to operate transnationally or are broken by the migration experience. We still do not know enough about the obstacles to the successful development and maintenance of transnational family life. For instance, when can we say that this type of family cannot be sustained? The literature that has highlighted the problems associated with transnational families is the one on global care chains (Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 2002; Hochschild, 2000; Yeates, 2009). Here the focus is on the implications of the transfer of care from the global South to the global North. The attention is on female domestic workers who leave their families behind to take up the caring tasks of more affluent families in the North. These studies, however, tend to focus on the structural aspects of migration highlighting the underlying causes forcing families apart and signalling the potential difficulties of these global processes for the actors involved, especially in relation to the children left behind. Furthermore, they are not based on detailed empirical analysis and tend to assume, rather than document, the obstacles to family life caused by separation.

Both the studies documenting the everyday practices of transnational family life as well as those focusing on the dangers of the globalization of reproductive labour have privileged the experiences of labour migrants, specifically of migrant women who work in domestic labour, focusing predominately on particular areas of origin such as the Philippines, Latin America and the Caribbean. Less attention has been paid to forced migrants and those entering Western Europe as asylum seekers even though they too are increasingly having to leave their children behind upon migration (Kofman, 2004). In this article, drawing on the literature on transnational motherhood combined with the findings of a previous study (Zontini, 2004) we highlight the factors that seem to shape the possibility to successfully parent across borders. We use this analytical framework to examine the experiences of a group of female Zimbabwean asylum seekers in the UK who are currently living separated from their children (Madziva, 2010). In doing so, we want to explore how transnational mothering in a forced migration context compares to that of labour migrants for whom transnational family life is rooted in global care chains (Asis et al., 2004; Fresnoza-Flot, 2009; Lutz and Palenga-Mollenbeck, 2012; Parrenas, 2001, 2005a; Zontini, 2010). Even though others have looked at refugees from a transnational perspective (see, for instance, Al-Ali et al., 2001; Merla, 2012) in these studies parents migrated with their children. What is specific about our case study is that our respondents migrated alone and were asylum seekers rather than formally recognized refugees. What also has to be noted is that they sought asylum at a time when governments are restricting access and provisions to migrants in general and to refugees in particular (see below). Thus, their situation seems to differ from that of other groups such as the Salvadoran refugees studied by Merla (2012) whose legal position and entitlements in Australia seemed more secure. However, we believe that some of the insights we provide may help to understand the experiences of other forced migrants, especially those separated from their children and seeking asylum in the current European context characterized by ever stricter immigration policies.

The empirical part of the article is based on a project entitled ‘ “A Living Death”: Zimbabwean Migrants in the UK who are Forced Apart from their Children’, which was based on in-depth interviews with 19 Zimbabwean asylum seekers in the UK (14 mothers and five fathers) who had left their children behind when fleeing their country (Madziva, 2010). The study was conducted between October 2008 and January 2010. This article focuses on the experience of mothers.

Transnational motherhood

In recent years, transnational scholars have increasingly paid more attention to the ways in which transnational family structures affect gender. Some of these studies have employed the term ‘transnational motherhood’ (Hondagneu-Sotelo and Avila, 1997; Parreñas, 2001), acknowledging the fact that it is now more common for mothers to migrate internationally for labour purposes, leaving their children behind in countries of origin. In countries of immigration, mothers increasingly take up paid employment particularly in domestic services where their duties involve taking care of other people’s children; a phenomenon which directly challenges traditional morals of motherhood (Erel, 2002; Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2001). However, in privileging transnational mothering, some transnational scholars have argued that mothers do not always relinquish their mothering duties or simply pass them down to other family members following migration. Instead, it is observed that, in addition to assuming a breadwinning role, transnational mothers also have the competence to retain and maintain their gendered roles, particularly by providing their children with emotional care and support from a distance in many varied ways (Dreby, 2009; Hondagneu-Sotelo and Avila, 1997; Lutz and Palenga-Mollenbeck, 2012; Parreñas, 2005b). Thus, as this literature suggests, it is the mother’s ability to provide for her children and her resilience in maintaining ‘emotional intimacy from a distance’ (Dreby, 2009: 34) that constitute a substitute for her not being physically present with them (Erel, 2002; Hondagneu-Sotelo and Avila, 1997; Parreñas, 2005b). In other words, gifts, goods and other luxuries that transnational mothers send to their children during their period of separation from them often serve as the ‘currency of transnational love’ (see Horton, 2009). Meanwhile, substitute carers look after children left behind in the absence of their biological parents, until such a time when they get reunited with their parents either in the country of emigration or immigration.

Reviewing the literature combined with the findings of a previous study on Filipino migrants (Zontini, 2004), we identify several factors that shape the variegated effects of transnationalism on women and their families. First of all, the context of departure seems important. By this we mean where migrants come from; the gender regime in their country of origin; how migration is seen and if it is supported; and what the migrants’ migratory projects are (Bonizzoni and Boccagni, 2012; Lutz and Palenga-Mollenbeck, 2012; Ribas, 2000; Zontini, 2010). In countries such as the Philippines, for instance, emigration has been supported and even encouraged by the state itself, which now sees it as essential in order to generate the crucial remittances on which the country has become dependent. Filipino women’s economic function tends to be recognized, valued and never ostracized. As Zontini’s (2004) study shows, it is even encouraged, so much so that mothers and wives can leave their families in search of a job and stay absent from home for periods up to 10 and even 20 years. Similarly, in the context of migration from Eastern to Western Europe, in spite of growing concern in public discourse in relation to ‘Euro-orphans’, as the children left behind are now called, women’s participation in the labour market is seen as the normal state of affairs and ‘the sending countries see their emigrants as investors in their national economies (Lutz and Palenga-Mollenbeck, 2012: 32). In the case of Morocco, on the other hand, even though migration is widespread, female independent migration is not supported and women (unless they are widows or divorcees) have to negotiate their moves against their families’ will and are therefore less able to leave without their children (Zontini, 2010).

The second important factor relates to immigration policies, which clearly shape the ability of people to migrate as a family and to bring in family members once they have moved to a new country (Kofman, 2004). Kofman reviewed family-related migration in the European context and found that criteria for family reunification are increasingly stringent, including minimum income and housing requirements. Furthermore, definitions of who is considered a family member for purposes of migration are being defined more narrowly. She notes that the situation of refugees and undocumented migrants is especially difficult since their right to family life is extremely weak. As a result, she observes that separations between parents and children are increasing also in the European context although these processes have received comparatively less attention than in other geographical areas such as the US or Asia (Kofman, 2004; Zontini, 2010). Meanwhile Kraler (2010: 10) argues that, although clearly important, there is currently a dearth of research and analysis of the actual impact of current legislation especially on ‘persons affected by it’. Fresnoza-Flot’s (2009) research has shown how immigration status impacted transnational parenting in the case of Filipinas in France. She found that ‘money gifts’ and transnational communication were larger and more intense for undocumented migrants, who had to compensate for their inability to visit and accomplish family reunification. What has yet to be explored is if despite their common vulnerable position there are any differences between the experiences of undocumented migrants, asylum seekers and refugees. In what ways does legal status (or lack of it) shape the way in which parenting from a distance can be done?

The third factor is the migrants’ ability to find jobs. This is crucial for ensuring the success of the migratory project of most migrants. For women who have to separate from their children the ability to provide from a distance is what defines their new role as transnational mothers. In most of the accounts provided by transnational mothers, their working abroad was expressed in relation to their need to provide for their children, educate them and ensure a better future for them (Fresnoza-Flot, 2009; Lutz and Palenga-Mollenbeck, 2012; Parrenas, 2001; Zontini, 2010). Financial resources also ensure migrants’ ability to maintain co-presence through the use of technology such as mobile phones and increasingly the Internet (Baldassar, 2007; Merla, 2012). For many mothers, initially, contact with home was sporadic as this was mainly achieved through writing letters and infrequent calls. Recently, however, some have started to make full use of the possibilities offered by mobile phones (Barber, 2008; Madianou and Miller, 2011) and increasingly also by computers and the Internet. ‘Skype mothering’ (Lutz and Palenga-Mollenbeck, 2012) seems to be a new phenomenon that allows transnational mothers a greater involvement in their families’ day-to-day communications and decision-making.

The fourth and last factor is family resilience, by which we mean the ability of families to sustain long-distance relationships with each other and maintain a sense of ‘unity’ and common purpose despite geographical separation (Bonizzoni and Boccagni, 2012; Goulbourne, 2002; Goulbourne et al., 2010; Reynolds and Zontini, 2006). Migrant families from the Philippines, the Caribbean and Italy, for instance, have been described as resourceful units offering individuals practical and emotional rewards across geographical space. Care resources circulate within networks which are themselves fluid and adapting to new challenges and circumstances. Grandparents, for instance, are not just receivers of care and remittances, they are also active providers as well (Goulbourne et al., 2010; Zontini, 2004). Similar findings are documented also in relation to Salvadoran (Merla, 2012) and Eastern European families (Lutz and Palenga-Mollenbeck, 2012). Thus, it can be argued that in spite of significant changes to gender roles and ways of doing family (for example, women breadwinning and men looking after children) many migrant mothers remain closely associated with the well-being of their families. But also the women who stay behind have crucial roles for the maintenance of these networks, including looking after children and elderly relatives, taking care of migrants’ properties as well as hosting them when they go home for their holidays (Fresnoza-Flot, 2009; Lutz and Palenga-Mollenbeck, 2012; Zontini, 2010). This is not to say that conflicts over remittance money or concerns over the well-being of children are not present (see Zontini, 2010) but that overall migrant women are able to navigate these difficulties and often are able to make successful alternative plans when original ones do not live up to expectations.

In what follows we explore the stories of a group of Zimbabwean women in the UK to try to understand if their experiences as asylum seekers differed from those of labour migrants discussed so far and if so, in what ways and with what consequences. We feel this is important as labour migration is continuously being curtailed in countries such as Britain and asylum remains one of the few routes of legal access there.

The migration context

The Zimbabwean mothers’ experiences of separation from children must be conceptualized within the particular contexts of their country’s migration history and trajectories. While mobility has always been a characteristic of the Zimbabwean population, the country’s historical migration pattern reveals that migration was primarily very gendered as it was mainly male-led and dominated (Bloch, 2005; McGregor, 2007; Tevera and Zinyama, 2002). However, the mid-1990s have seen a shift in the country’s migration trend as evidenced by the mass exodus of citizens of all ethnic backgrounds, classes and genders, as a direct response to the extremely complex interplay between political and economic violence. Over the past two decades Zimbabwean citizens have been increasingly relocating to other African countries, a phenomenon which has seen Zimbabwe coming to be viewed as a regional problem for producing uncontrollable floods of migrants who are sometimes described as having ‘swamped’ the region (Mawadza, 2008). Large numbers have also migrated to countries beyond the continent, especially, because of the colonial links, to the UK (McGregor, 2007).

Indeed, in the UK the population of Zimbabwean nationals applying for asylum increased significantly from 2000, a phenomenon which subsequently attracted a policy response whereby Zimbabwe was categorized as a visa country in 2002 (McGregor, 2007; Mbiba, 2004; Ranger, 2005). However, it should be noted that since 2005, the Home Office has not been deporting Zimbabweans whose asylum claims have been refused in recognition of the fact that deportees were in danger of facing potential victimization and torture by the Mugabe regime (Doyle, 2009; Ranger, 2005). Yet in policy contexts, the UK government has never wanted to legally acknowledge that there is no viable route of return to Zimbabwe. This absence of a clear policy has created a legal limbo in which Zimbabwean refused asylum seekers are not legally entitled to receive even the meagre ‘hard cases support’ that is granted to asylum seekers who are deemed unable to return to their countries of origin. Indeed, many have increasingly been designated as illegal immigrants who have no legal rights to paid work (Doyle, 2009). Some of these issues are raised in the discussions below.

The decision to leave home

For the 14 women Madziva interviewed, migrating to the UK was a decision that was largely influenced by their country’s wider political and economic violence but also as shaped by other gender-specific issues. She observes that the context of their departure had a major influence on their ability to make detailed migration plans. Of the 14 mothers she interviewed only seven managed to make appropriate childcare arrangements. Whereas in the other seven cases, mothers routinely cited a complex interplay of political factors and other family and gender dynamics – collectively, these factors forced the mothers to flee for their lives before they could make satisfactory plans. However, in all 14 cases, leaving children behind was described as a temporary measure as the mothers’ migration goal was that of being quickly reunited with their children in the UK.

The first case to be considered here is that of Chenai, a woman aged 45 who worked as a self-employed interior designer, but whose main clients were the white community in national parks, farms and hotels. It was within this context that Chenai became a victim of the country’s political situation, particularly following the government’s public declaration to take the land away from the white commercial farmers in 2000:

My association with the white community got me into trouble … the war veterans attacked me when I was coming from delivering my orders to my white clients … they forced me to surrender the cash, cheques … they then burnt my car. … I reported to the police … but they called me the following day and asked me to change my statement to say that I was attacked by thieves not war veterans. … I received a threatening letter for reporting this issue to the police: ‘we will dissolve you and your children in a drum of sulphuric acid and will get rid of your remains in the Zambezi river’. … I knew war veterans were capable of doing this. … My life was in danger …

In addition to being deprived of state protection, Chenai also said she was denied protection and support at the family level as her husband’s family felt that she was worthless and that she deserved to be punished by the war veterans:

When I suggested that I wanted to go out of the country for a while to ensure my safety one of his [husband’s] sisters said ‘which country will accept you when you cannot even speak English?’ … they said I did not need any support … war veterans continued to threaten me …

While existing research (e.g. Cheater and Gaidzanwa, 1996) confirms that circumstances in which an African woman’s migration is contested at family levels are not very unique, for Chenai this doubly vulnerable position hugely impacted on her ability to make meaningful migration plans:

… I did not get the chance to make alternative childcare arrangements, due to family tensions … my husband stayed with the children … my husband’s sisters just declared that since I had taken the decision to migrate against their will … I had no right to take the children anywhere …

Notwithstanding her complex situation, Chenai perceived the UK as having a very supportive asylum system. Thus on leaving home, she had high hopes of being quickly reunited with her children:

Coming here [UK] was like someone who was going to heaven. … In fact I did not even bother much about the children because of my picture of the UK. … What I thought was once I come to the UK I would be granted asylum at the point of entry and every form of support to bring my children over …

Not all women moved against their families’ will. Rute, a 49-year-old mother and teacher who was victimized by the war veterans, described how her husband helped her to migrate to the UK for safety:

When my husband allowed me to go, he also agreed to stay with the children as we saw this as a temporary measure … the plan was for them to join me as soon as possible. ‘Once I get to the UK’, I assured my husband, ‘the first thing that I will do is to make arrangements for you and the kids to join me’ … also there was a maid whom I believe was good with the children … she knew the system of the home very well …

As we can see, the mothers who situated their decision-making processes within the context of family arrangements did so in ways that clearly confirm Zimbabwean families as largely patriarchal (see Gelfand, 1979; Guy, 1987; Kesby, 1999). Indeed, deep notions of gender relations are clearly evident as mothers had to first get approval from their male partners before they could take the initiative to migrate, which concurs with D’Emilio et al.’s (2007: 8) observations that:

When the man emigrates, he generally leaves behind a household whose reproduction is guaranteed … when a woman migrates, she is profoundly insecure because she leaves behind her family and the traditional reproductive role expected from her.

On leaving the country, eight of the interviewees left their children to individuals who were both relatives and non-relatives other than spouses. It is however interesting to note that discussions about childcare arrangements routinely led mothers to cite issues of relatives competing for their children, perhaps in order to benefit from remittances that the mothers would sent. The case of Mary is one such example. Mary, a 37-year-old mother noted that she left her three children with a maid and the reasons behind this decision were cited as follows:

… I left my children with a maid. … My children used to go to a very good school in the town where we lived … and my mother lived in the rural area. … Also I didn’t trust my mother more generally. The arrangement was that I would send money to a friend who would buy my children food, pay rent and pay the maid. … Both my mother and sister were very disappointed … they said ‘you want outsiders to enjoy your money not us …’.

As the quotation explains, for relatives, being entrusted with a migrant’s children is an important assertion about social hierarchies and social relationships which then translate into questions of honour. Thus, in the case of Mary immediate relatives felt dishonoured by the fact that children were fostered to people who were considered somehow lower down the extended family hierarchy. Most significantly, fostering a migrant’s children in the current economic situation of Zimbabwe seems to have an in-built support system linked to the remittances that surrogate carers will attract.

Thus, in relation to the context of departure, we have seen that Zimbabwean mothers had less time and resources to make detailed plans and to put in place alternative childcare arrangements before leaving home, a situation which contrasts with that of other migrant mothers, such as Filipinas, Polish and Ukrainians (see Fresnoza-Flot, 2009; Lutz and Palenga-Mollenbeck, 2012; Zontini, 2010).

The UK asylum policy context and the Zimbabwean mothers’ experiences

The Zimbabwean mothers’ experience of seeking asylum must also be conceptualized within the UK’s asylum and immigration policy contexts. Although the UK has a longstanding track-record for hosting refugees under the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (see Ward, 2006), recent decades have seen the British government crafting an immigration regime that focuses on reducing freedom of movement particularly of the so-called ‘illegal immigrants’ as a direct response to what has been perceived to be an ‘asylum influx’ (Goodman, 2008). As asylum debates continue to dominate political and media spaces, media coverage has helped to incite a ‘moral panic’, reinforcing the public perception that illegal migrants in general, and asylum seekers in particular, are a threat to national sovereignty (see Goodman, 2008; Sales, 2002). These perceptions have attracted a policy response in the form of draconian incremental asylum and immigration policies by successive UK governments in order to deter migrants from gaining entry and tighten asylum determination procedures through advancement of the rhetorical separation of ‘genuine’ and ‘bogus’ asylum seekers (Goodman, 2008). Asylum policy has also directly been focused on restricting and curtailing the social and economic rights and entitlement of the asylum seeking population, including the rights to work (Bloch, 2008). These restrictive asylum measures are mainly mirrored through major legislation such as the Asylum and Immigration Acts of 1999, 2002, 2004, 2006, and the more recent ones (see Clayton, 2010).

In practice, the UK asylum process involves lodging a claim either at the port of entry or in country. Asylum claimants who present themselves both at the port of entry and in country are subjected to screening procedures that involve interviews. Depending on the situation, some applicants can be detained at this point, but those who are not subject to detention are allocated accommodation as well as being entitled to receiving welfare support until the time their claims are settled. The outcome of an asylum claim can either be a refugee status, other humanitarian forms of leave to remain or simply a refusal. Refused asylum seekers, depending on the reasons for refusal, can either be granted the right to appeal or face deportation where the right to appeal is withheld (see Clayton, 2010).

In this study, 10 of the mothers Madziva interviewed told that they had been detained, but at different levels of their asylum seeking process. For example, Chenai, who filed her asylum claim on arrival, was detained for almost two months after her asylum story had failed to convince immigration officials. However, she was later released after engaging a solicitor. From detention Chenai was allocated a room in shared accommodation and was entitled to receive about £35 per week as welfare support.

However, the complexity of the UK asylum processes lies in that once an asylum claim has been lodged, claimants are expected to wait for their claims to be settled, which depending on individual cases, can take a short or long time as this entirely depends on the Home Office. During this time, claimants are not entitled to work (Clayton, 2010). It is therefore the absence of any guarantee that asylum claims would be accepted which many mothers in the study cited as a potential source of anxiety coupled by the inability to financially support the children left behind. In Chenai’s case her claim took almost two years to be settled. Although she was able to phone and text her husband and children, she was certainly not in the position to remit any money to them:

I waited … my mind was always at home … in particular the children … I could phone and text … but the messages I was getting were not very good … the reports were ‘children did not have enough to eat, problems with school fees …, this and that’. … I could not split the money I was getting between myself and the children. … I was getting anxious by the day because when I left I had not made any plans for the children … but things got even worse when my application was rejected …

Rudo, a 39-year-old mother, also related similar complications:

I was waiting … after about six months serious problems started … I received a call, … that my husband was not feeling very well … as time progressed he was in and out of hospital … he needed money for his medication … my daughter needed fees and the like … before long my husband could not go to work … things were getting tight at home … the Home Office was just quiet for almost a year … I could not work. … Then my application was rejected. … I cried because it meant I could not be with my husband and daughter soon …

Experiences of being refused asylum formed one of the recurring themes in the study. Indeed, mothers increasingly expressed a strong sense of moral failure in relation to both not being in a position to fulfil their migration goal of quickly being reunited with the children and to provide for them from a distance. Routinely, mothers described their being too aware of time passing for their children.

For example, Tendai, a 45-year-old mother who had had eight years of leading life as an asylum seeker, explained that her initial asylum claim was rejected at almost the same time as she received the news that her husband was in hospital:

… my husband had just been caught up in a petrol bomb … when I phoned him he confessed that he did not think he would survive. … I asked whether he thought I should go back … but he said I did not need to sacrifice my own life for his … ‘I am dying anyway’ … he told me … ‘but do anything you can for the sake of the children’. … These were his last words to me. … I started looking for a job so I could support the children. … I made my second application [appeal] immediately after my husband had just died. … Although I indicated that there was now no one to look after my children … I was told ‘you left your children willingly’ and was asked to produce more evidence regarding my husband’s death. Although I submitted this a long time ago … I am still waiting for a decision to be made …

Asylum seeking mothers routinely spoke of the humiliation they were experiencing as a result of their inability to secure legal rights to remain. Indeed, the mothers had failed to keep many promises: due to restrictions imposed by immigration law, those who were married failed to bring their husbands over. Not only that, but others could not even go back to bury their spouses who died while they were trying to get their asylum claims settled. All had failed to bring their children to the UK, yet this was a promise they had made to their children at the time they left home. In most cases mothers expressed how they were finding themselves unable even to provide for the children and their carers and that this was often perceived as a great failure or betrayal by those who remained at home. For many, the only option left was that of working illegally in order to support the children left behind.

Women’s work in the UK and connections with ‘home’

All of the 14 mothers interviewed took up paid work at some point either while waiting for their claims to be settled or following refusal of asylum claims. The mothers worked predominately in the domestic and care industries. Chenai recalled:

I managed to secure a fake work permit which I used to get a job at a nursing home. … I worked at this place for almost three years … at least I could pay for my own accommodation … send money home monthly, … I also could afford to send children’s clothes, toys and other presents … which normalized life a little bit. … I was fired when the home was placed under new management … the new manager got to know that I was an asylum seeker … am now living with friends and working towards submitting a fresh asylum claim …

For Tendai the death of her husband in Zimbabwe meant that she was now the family’s sole breadwinner. In the absence of other choices, Tendai had to acquire a fake work permit which subsequently allowed her to get a job in care. Meanwhile in Zimbabwe, Tendai’s children experienced repeated bereavements which forced them to move from one carer to another as described below:

… when my husband died … my children stayed in the family house with a maid who was a close relative. … She also died six months later. My children then moved to my mother’s place … but my mother died after six months. My father continued to live with them … but he also died a year later. One of my sisters took them, but after four months she also died. … My two boys [15 and 17 years old by then] started living on their own. My daughter went to live with one of my sisters and her family …

While transnational mothers in other studies (e.g. Horton, 2009) could recite the long lists of the goods and luxuries they were able to send to their children, Tendai recounted that her salary could only allow her to manage the lives of her children:

At first my arrangement was to pay for the boys’ school fees, utility bills. I also would give them pocket money each month. … Also I have been sending money to my sister and her husband for food as they were the ones who were taking care of my daughter …

When Tendai discovered that her two boys were now into drugs and that they had dropped out of school, she was forced to alter the way she was sending money home:

I stopped giving [my sons] money directly. … I would send money to my brother-in-law who would pay for their bills … and give them cash little by little. … But the boys also started phoning me, complaining that my brother-in-law was using the money for his own purposes … and even made claims that he had started a business … I reversed the order of things again. I started dealing with the boys privately … this did not please my brother-in-law either …

As a refused asylum seeker who was working illegally, Tendai was raided, detained and sentenced in the UK. This happened at a time when she needed to work more than ever, given the many financial commitments she had entered into in her endeavour to successfully mother from a distance. Indeed, this had adverse financial consequences for the children, and also for the carers, who as her daughter’s case suggests, felt they could no longer continue to support her children without any financial assistance:

… my daughter was chased away by my brother-in-law the time I was in detention. When I later asked [by phone] why, my brother-in-law said she was misbehaving. … I then asked my sister if they would treat their own daughter in the same way …

As Horton (2009: 23) has noted, the transnational space that undocumented mothers inhibit is one of ‘an intimately shared space of loss and grief’, arguing that the mothers’ illegality in societies of immigration does not only produce their own ‘embodied distress, but also produces a continuous feedback loop between their children’s grief and their own’. Undocumented migrants and asylum seekers are not the same in principle; however, in the UK context Zimbabweans are increasingly experiencing degrees of illegalization. As we have seen, they are not allowed to work, have no right to family unification and, while not being deported, are not granted a refugee status. Thus, by situating the experiences of the Zimbabwean mothers within the particular UK asylum policy contexts in which their illegality is constructed one can easily observe that migrant illegality is merely a product of receiving nations’ immigration regimes (De Genova, 2002; Duvell, 2006). In particular, the Zimbabwean case clearly demonstrates the exclusionary conceptions of the UK asylum system, which, on the one hand, and in theory, recognizes the predicaments of Zimbabwean asylum seekers by allowing them to physically remain in the UK while, on the other hand, and in practice, denying them the legal rights to family life in the UK and to work in order to provide for their children from a distance.

Family resilience?

Most of the mothers’ narratives demonstrate a general lack of support from substitute carers during the period of separation from their children. One such example was the case of Sukai, a 39-year-old mother who was diagnosed with cancer during the period she was waiting for her asylum claim to be settled. Her asylum claim was subsequently refused, which saw her being evicted from government accommodation and losing entitlement to financial support. Moreover Sukai’s health situation also prevented her from taking any form of paid work, yet this situation could not be understood by substitute carers at home:

I explained my health and financial situation to my son and his carer. … Friends I was living with were also helping me to pay for my son’s school fees and I could only afford to send at least £40 per month. … I used to text my carer and son bible verses to encourage them. … But my friend said … we don’t eat verses here. … Not only that, but she went to visit her children for three weeks and left my son on his own …

Sukai’s situation deteriorated even further:

My son passed away in 2007. … It was a sudden death … I received a message that my son was vomiting and two days later I got the message that he was dead. The world just crumbled on me … I felt as if I was in a dream, a very deep bad dream and was expecting someone to just say to me ‘wake up! It is only a dream …’.

Sukai recalled that because she had refused to leave her son under the care of either her brother or late husband’s brother, the extended family felt justified in withdrawing their love, support, involvement and commitment from all affairs pertaining to her son, so much so that when her son died, no relative attended the funeral:

I suffered the rod of punishment as the mother when he [son] died … after receiving the bad news … the first person I called was my husband’s brother notifying him of the death … but he told me … he was out of it. … Also my brother … said he had nothing to do with my son’s funeral. In fact he said ‘why do you want me to take responsibility now. … You did not think that I was good enough to look after him when he was still alive, so what makes you think I am good enough now that he is dead?’

Sukai felt deeply hurt and let down by the people who had abandoned her and her son, but she also felt guilt at the thought that she had refused to comply with what was expected of her. Sukai dwelt greatly on what she saw as some of the inhumane practices of the Home Office stressing the point that if she had been granted asylum she would have been long reunited with her son in the UK and perhaps her son would not have died. Expressing her frustration and helplessness Sukai said:

If the Home Office was a person, I could have demanded to see him/her. I would have wanted to go to where he/she lives and cry out all my anger. I would have demanded to see how ugly and inhumane this creature is. Unfortunately, they always say the Home Office is a ‘system’. … You cannot get to sit down with this thing called the ‘system’ and have a one on one talk explaining exactly what you are going through, asking him/her ‘can you please do something about it?’

In summary, what emerges from the above narratives is not only a clear picture of the mothers’ distress and suffering as produced by immigration policies but also a clear demonstration of how the ‘weight’ of the mothers’ illegality is frequently shared among family members that are stretched across national spaces (see Horton, 2009).

Conclusions

Through this case study, we have highlighted some of the differences between labour migrants’ and asylum seekers’ experiences of transnationalism. We have shown how the context of departure is crucial to the mothers’ ability to plan their migration. Unlike labour migrants, the Zimbabwean situation clearly demonstrates that asylum seekers often leave their children behind in a hurry without having put in place the kind of alternative care arrangements that characterize other migration flows. Following from this point, is the role that immigration regimes play in protracting family separations, initially imagined as temporary, particularly through asylum legislations that confine parents in the limbo of illegality (sometimes indefinitely), a phenomenon that has so far received remarkably little attention in the transnationalism literature. Although all migrants have to struggle with ever more stringent immigration controls and illegality, our analysis of the UK immigration policy and the way it had been experienced by the Zimbabwean asylum seekers draws attention to the fact that asylum policies that refuse parents the rights to work and to family reunification equally deny them the right to successful transnational parenthood.

Whereas many female labour migrants manage to accomplish the two crucial elements of successful transnational mothering – the ability to provide for her children and her resilience in maintaining ‘emotional intimacy from a distance’ (Dreby, 2009: 34) – our case study shows how Zimbabwean mothers found it almost impossible to satisfy these key mothering roles due to the rigidity of the UK immigration policies. Our analysis further underscores the importance of family resilience, especially in relation to surrogate caregivers’ capacity to continue protecting, caring and providing for children left behind. What differentiates labour migrants’ sending contexts from those where refugees and asylum seekers originate is that the political and economic climate of the latter seem to be more unstable. Zimbabwe, for instance, seems to have generated a situation that allows for the survival of the fittest, as evidenced by the mothers’ narratives of kin and other caregivers’ preoccupation with their own children’s protection and survival.

In our view, the experiences presented and analysed through our analytical framework represent an important contribution to the refinement of current understandings of transnational families, especially in relation to parenting. By focusing on what could be seen as an extreme situation we provide examples of when transnationalism becomes unsustainable. In so doing, we shed light on what seem to be the necessary features of transnational parenting. Our case study shows that it is not sufficient for mothers to want to stay emotionally connected to their children and families left behind. They must also be in the position of staying engaged with the social practices (such as sending remittances, ‘money gifts’ and maintaining ongoing communications) that underscore their commitment in the eyes of others such as their children and substitute carers. As we have shown, distance in itself is not what makes family life impossible (Asis et al., 2004; Baldassar et al., 2007; Goulbourne et al., 2010); it seems that it is the lack of social and political rights – and in particular the possibility to work and make plans for the future – that has direct consequences in relation to the migrants’ family commitments and their ability to conduct a transnational life.