When women migrate for work, life in their home regions often changes profoundly. Social
anthropologist Ilona Grabmaier studied how families, neighbors, and local authorities in a Ukrainian
village cope with the absence of caregiving women. Who takes over care responsibilities? What does
this mean for children, men, and the elderly and what roles do neighborhood, family, and state play
in redistributing care?
While the experiences of migrant women abroad have been widely studied, the impact of their
absence on their home communities remains less understood. This is where Grabmaiers book offers
new insights. Based on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork, she shows how care relationships shift
amid family, neighborhood, state, and societal changes. The book also explores moral questions:
Who is seen as a legitimate recipient of care, and who is considered fit to provide it?
With detailed ethnographic descriptions and analytical depth, the author connects care, migration,
state, and morality in a compelling way. She reveals how individual life paths and local experiences
are closely intertwined with broader social and political transformations. Key factors such as gender,
generation, and social background shape care, responsibility, and belonging. Through concrete case
studies, the book illustrates how personal experiences relate to political, economic, and social
processes and how global developments shape peoples lives and their responses.
Grabmaier not only examines how care is organized but also who is excluded and how moral
judgments justify these exclusions. Using an innovative methodological and theoretical approach, she
opens new perspectives for analyzing complex processes of responsibility, social order, and
inequality more precisely.
This book makes it clear: Care is not just about closeness and attention, but also a political field
where moral ideas, state regulations, and belonging are negotiated. Grabmaiers analysis offers fresh
views on social transformations in Eastern Europe and on the relationship between state and family in
a globalized world.
A valuable book for anyone interested in care, migration, morality, and social justice in Ukraine,
Europe, and beyond.