Tineke Fokkema and Alistair Hunter

When was the new SC launched?

The Standing Committee on Families, Welfare, Care and the Life Course was approved by IMISCOE's Board of Directors in April 2024, and officially launched at the IMISCOE Annual Conference in July. The SC builds on earlier programmes of work developed in recent years by SC Older Migrants and SC Families, Children and Youth, with many of our founding members coming from those two groups. However, we are delighted that since July we have attracted many new members, with over 80 new colleagues on our mailing list now (and we hope this introduction in the IMISCOE bulletin will inspire others to join!). As SC coordinators, the enthusiastic response so far energises us and reinforces our belief that we are adding a valuable new forum within IMISCOE's constellation of Standing Committees. 

What are the new objectives of the SC?

The new SC objectives are to:

• Draw wider attention in migration studies to the inter-connections between families, welfare and care, and their changing contexts. 
• Advance a life-course perspective in migration studies, by facilitating dialogue between scholars working on different life-course phases and transitions. 
• Contribute to local, national and international policy debates on welfare and care as they relate to migrants and their families, advocating for interventions to mitigate social risks across the migratory life-course.
• Facilitate the career development of the next generation of researchers working in these fields.
• Promote the inclusion of researchers from under-represented regions (Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, the Global South) and create more synergies between scholars based in different regions of the world.
• Develop joint publications, collaborative projects and applications for funding. 

Can you give a general description of the scope of research of the SC?

Families, welfare and care are inter-connected themes. Migration research has long shown that the family unit often plays a central role in migration decision-making, as a means to mitigate social and financial risks and ensure the family’s collective welfare over time. Support for welfare and care can come from both formal and informal sources, which are not geographically fixed but can be exchanged transnationally. These sources can also be accumulated (or eroded) over time, making a life-course perspective essential. A life-course approach also foregrounds the notion of ‘linked lives’, and how intergenerational relationships can be leveraged to boost collective welfare within families.

We believe these dynamics are increasingly relevant for two reasons, one of which is connected to changes in the political relationship between states and their citizens/residents, and the other of which is connected to changes in families. Politically, states around the world are increasingly showing tendencies to down-size (e.g., via welfare state retrenchment) and super-size (e.g., via diaspora policies). Likewise, family structures are changing in many parts of the world, prompting the SC to adopt a broad understanding of 'family' that includes extended families and kinship networks. Migration can add further complexity to family dynamics, with evolving gender norms altering labour division within families. In addition, while health inequalities for migrants and ethnic minorities in Europe have been recognized for at least two decades, it is only after the Covid-19 pandemic that calls for more equitable healthcare access are gaining attention.

What are the next steps for your newly revised SC?

In terms of our next steps, we are in the process of building a team who will establish and develop several thematic working groups bringing together researchers interested in key topics. These working groups will cover:  financial welfare and welfare regimes; healthcare and social services; informal care and social support; and migration and life-course transitions. We eagerly anticipate forming new dialogues and initiatives on these themes with scholars whose focus is childhood, young adulthood, middle-age, later life or intergenerational relations. Among our planned activities are a regular webinar series, and an online book club. Another privileged vector to grow our SC is to engage the next generation of researchers in our SC’s themes. As our PhD/ECR community grows, we will consult with them regularly so that any initiatives which we facilitate are developed for and by PhDs/ECRs and respond to their needs. We are also eager to connect with other SCs, through ‘co-badged' activities. While we have taken care to avoid thematic overlap between our SC and other SCs’ designations, we envisage some interesting potential to collaborate with other SCs on some of our topics, e.g., SC Transnationalism in relation to portability of social security benefits; SC Gender and Sexuality in relation to gender gaps in pension coverage; SC Race, Racism and Discrimination in relation to racialisation and racism in healthcare settings. We look forward to working with colleagues across the IMISCOE Network, and beyond, to explore these promising synergies.

For more information, and to join the SC mailing list, visit: https://www.imiscoe.org/research/standing-committees/families-welfare-care-and-the-life-course