Continuities and change in transnational Italian families: the caring practices of second-generation women

This article deals with continuity and change in immigrant families, focusing on the caring practices of the adult children of Italian migrants in the UK. Looking at motherhood, care for the elderly and the management of kin relations at a distance, the paper explores how values and norms get transmitted and transformed across the generations. The article shows both continuity and change in norms and values about care, and argues that change occurring in immigrant families is not necessarily a move from ‘tradition’ to ‘modernity’ or from ‘ethnic’ to ‘mainstream’.