Stayed at home. (Re)Configurations of Care in Rural Ukraine.

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.