The image of Australia as the ‘land of milk and honey’ draws thousands of migrants to our shores, but as Murdoch sociologist Professor Cora Baldock has discovered, settling far away does not mean that people choose to escape their family responsibilities back in their home country.

Teaming up with Dr Loretta Baldassar from the Anthropology Department at The University of WA who was researching return visits of Italian migrants, Professor Baldock has recently been awarded an ARC large grant to investigate the social and financial implications of transnational care-giving.

Professor Baldock’s interest in this research area began in 1996, when she conducted a small study based on her own experience as a migrant with elderly parents in the Netherlands and the personal experiences of some of her colleagues at Murdoch University.

She found that these migrants maintained close caring relations with family and kin in their home country, with letter writing, regular telephone contact and frequent return visits.

“When young people leave home, their parents still tend to be healthy enough so that there are no real problems. However as their parents grow older, people become increasingly concerned about caring for them,” said Professor Baldock.

“Time on the telephone and return visits become an increasingly intense preoccupation and in some cases can cause migrants to change their sense of national identity back to their home country.”

Professor Baldock explained that approximately 11% of Western Australians are carers of family members or friends who are unable to care for themselves through illness, disability or old age. The stress of caring for local elderly people is understood in our community, with people having to take time off work or even leave their jobs permanently.

However Baldock and Baldassar’s research has so far demonstrated that migrants face similar but less visible stress, which is not recognised by our society.

In June 1999, the collaborative team conducted a series of group interviews with people from a number of ethnic backgrounds including Chinese, Hong Kong Chinese, Vietnamese, Italian, Croatian, Bosnian, Dutch and Irish.

Results showed that many migrants felt a strong moral obligation to provide significant financial support for their family back home regardless of their own financial situation, and this support increased when the parents required nursing care.

This lead to enormous sacrifices in many cases, and caused significant stress and sometimes conflict in marriages.

Also, migrants felt the cost of telephoning their parents weekly or even daily, as it was often the most reliable and immediate form of contact, particularly for refugees.

“Migrants felt that it was unfair that calls to Western countries were so heavily discounted while few concessions existed for places like Vietnam,” said Professor Baldock.

People used most of the annual holidays to fly home to see their parents, often spending their time providing some respite for a local carer, rather than having a relaxing holiday.

Return visits were further complicated by visa difficulties to some countries, and the threat of having the migrant’s right to Australian citizenship delayed because of travel.

Many families also faced restrictions on the freedom of their parents to come to Australia.

“Transnational care should be a factor taken into account in the debate about dual citizenship, as dual citizenship allows people greater freedom to travel home to see their families,” said Professor Baldock.

“A migrant’s ability to care is affected by government migration policies that hinder free access to parents and by inflexible employers.

“Recognition and understanding by policy makers, employers and other agencies of the financial and emotion impact of long distance care-giving will help to overcome some of these constraints.

“Research so far has shown that there was tremendous cultural variability in the groups, with some cultures placing much more emphasis on care giving,” said Professor Baldock.

The ARC grant received by Baldock and Baldassar for 2000-2002 allows them to expand this research over the next three years to include interviews with parents in the migrants’ home countries, and also to explore the cultural and social differences in the moral obligation to care between a number of migrant groups.