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Casi Como Madres: Examining the Role of Grandmothers in Global Care Chains

Abstract

In this article, Yarris provides a necessarily brief overview of grandmother’s experiences of “mothering again” for another generation of (grand)children in Nicaraguan families of migrant mothers. Despite the fact that grandmothers assume caregiving for children over often prolonged periods of mothers’ absence (the mean duration of migration for families in my study was 2.5 years, with a range of 6 months to 12 years), grandmothers’ roles as surrogate mothers are tenuous and precarious. In what follows, Yarris illustrates this point using the example of Aurora, a grandmother who cared for two granddaughters “como si fueran su madre” (as if I were their mother) after their mother migrated to Spain.

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