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E-book
Author Solari, Cinzia D., author

Title On the Shoulders of Grandmothers : Gender, Migration, and Post-Soviet Nation-State Building / Cinzia D. Solari
Edition First edition
Published London : Taylor and Francis, 2017

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Description 1 online resource : text file, PDF
Contents Cover ; Half Title ; Title Page ; Copyright Page ; Table of Contents ; List of Illustrations; Acknowledgments; Notes on Transliteration and Participants; Introduction: "Gulag" versus "Promised Land": Metaphors of Destination and Transnational Social Fields; PART I: Genesis: Ukraine; 1. Markets, Moralities, and Motherhood in Transition; PART II: Exile: Italy; 2. Italy's Context of Reception and Connections to Ukraine; 3. Narratives from the "Gulag"; Inna: Becoming Capitalist in Europe; Tatiana: Sacrificing for Motherhood; Oksana: Talent Shows Performing Family, Nation, and Ethnicity
Yuriy: Negotiating Post-Soviet MasculinitiesLydmyla: A Family Aspiring to be European; Social Patterns in Exile; PART III: Exodus: The United States; 4. California's Context of Reception and State-based Integration; 5. Narratives from the "Promised Land"; Viktoria: Married to the U.S. State; Dariya: Discovering my Capitalist "I" in the United States; Kateryna: Defining Children's Success in the Promised Land; Zhanna: Reinventing Babushka across Migration Waves; Halyna: Undocumented but Playing the Green Card Lottery; Social Patterns in Exodus; Conclusion; Appendix; Notes; Bibliography; Index
Summary "On the Shoulders of Grandmothers, is a global ethnography of Ukrainian transnational migration. Gendered migrant subjectivities are a key site for understanding the production of neoliberal capitalism and Ukrainian nation-state building, a fraught process that places Ukraine precariously between Europe and Russia with dramatic implications for the political economy of the region. However, processes of gender and migration that undergird transnational nation-state building require further attention. Solari compares two patterns of Ukrainian migration: the "forced" exile of middle-aged women, most grandmothers, to Italy and the "voluntary" exodus of families, led by the same cohort of middle-aged women, to the United States. In both receiving sites these migrants are caregivers to the elderly. Using in-depth interviews and ethnographic data collected in three countries, Solari shows that Ukrainian nation-state building occurs transnationally. She examines the collective practices of migrants who are building the "new" Ukraine from the outside in and shaping both Italy and the United States as well. The Ukrainian state, in order to fulfil its First World aspirations of joining Europe and distancing itself from all things Soviet, is pursuing a gendered reorganization of family and work structures to achieve a transition from socialism to capitalism. This has created a labor force of migrant grandmothers who carry the new Ukraine on their shoulders. Solari shows that this post-Soviet economic transformation requires a change in the moral order as migrant women struggle to understand how to be "good" mothers and grandmothers and men join women in attempts to teach their children to be successful and honorable people, now that the social rules have drastically changed. Looking at individual migrant women and men and their families in Ukraine allows us to see the production of neoliberal capitalism and new nationalism from the ground up and the outside in for a region that promises to be a flashpoint in our century."--Provided by publisher
Subject Foreign workers, Ukranian -- Italy
Foreign workers, Ukrainian -- California
Foreign workers, Ukrainian
California
Italy
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9781315201528
1315201526
9781351782258
1351782258