Polish male migrants in London : the circulation of fatherly care

This chapter examines the experiences of migrant men through a fathering lens.1 Utilising the framework of circulation as articulated by Baldassar and Merla (Part A, this volume), and in particular the ability of that concept to capture multiple care relationships, it off ers a corrective to the tendency within research exploring the nexus between migration and caregiving within families-principally, global care chain research and research on transnational families-to do so predominantly through the experiences of women, and especially mothers. By focusing on the practices, meanings and projects of fathering in the context of men’s migration, this chapter aims to examine whether and how fathering is reconfi gured through migration. More specifi cally, it is concerned with establishing how fathering norms around breadwinning and active/involved fathering are reworked in the context of father migration and transnational fathering. Informing the discussion is an empirical study, which included semi-structured interviews with migrant men who worked for pay in private households in and around London, undertaking a range of male domestic chores-termed in the wider study ‘handyman services’.2 Data were gathered on a range of topics including those relating to the migrants’ migration paths and ties with their homeland, their family biographies, their experiences of being a migrant in terms of work and family life and their understandings, projects and practices of fathering. The study centred on migrants from the Central and Eastern European countries that had joined the European Union (EU) in 2004 and predominantly on migrants from Poland.