The separation that children and their primary caregivers may experience as a consequence of parental migration is a phenomenon which has been experienced by families globally. A continuous struggle for better opportunities and livelihoods may encourage economic providers to look beyond the local in the hope of their entire families migrating over time and reunifying abroad (in the case of international migration) or in urban areas (in the case of internal migration). While the phenomenon appears to be the same in terms of the nature and length of separation prior to reunification, it seems that there are different ways in which the practice is locally conceptualized and evaluated. For purposes of this study, in order to explore the social constructs of children left behind as a consequence of migration, reference is made to Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Grenada, Africa, China and India.

Using a comparative approach, a cross-cultural analysis of migrant families reveals that there seems to be a distinct culture of parental migration in the case of the Caribbean and the term “barrel children” is quite commonly used among Caribbean migrant families to refer to children awaiting their migrant parents. In the case of China, the term “liushou” for the left behind has made it into public discourse and even policy making to describe the plight of the rural children who grow up separated from one or both parents while these migrate long-term and long-distance to cities for work. However, for migrant households interviewed in India, there seems to be no conceptualization whatever of children or wives being “left behind” in rural areas while male migrants move to cities for work, and consequently no term as such has emerged.

By exploring the macro contexts of the case study countries and through the study of the social, economic and historical backgrounds of selected micro contexts, variations in parent-child separation are explored. As a result, the paper argues that these variations indicate the social construct of the concept “children left behind”. The data reveals that the national, demographic, cultural and socio-economic contexts that characterize migrant families play a major role in formulating understanding of variations in how children separated from their parent(s) as a result of migration are described and perceived.

Keywords: social constructs, children left behind, cross-cultural analysis, migrant families