Heat amid absence: lifetime of Romanian kids whose mother and father work overseas – photograph essay

A misty silence hangs heavy over the winter backyard. It’s day break, early March. From a distance, there are determined cries of the grandmother, struggling to herd the sheep and chickens into the coop. The home silence is damaged by the ticking clock within the kitchen and the worn washer, struggling for water that by no means comes.

I sit alone on the couch in the lounge, because the darkness slowly swallows the afternoon. Within the subsequent room, Larisa is doing her math homework. Each of us wait for five.30, the time when her mom finishes work and calls her when she will get residence.

Larisa’s mother and father have been dwelling in a village close to Valencia, Spain, the place they’ve been working for a number of years due to restricted financial alternatives in Romania. They left behind two daughters, Larisa, now 18, and Monica, 21.

The sisters’ house is in Vătava, a village in northern Romania, the place they’ve been of their grandmother’s care.

Conversation between Larisa and her mother

Larisa talks to her parents at least three times a day. First, with her father on his lunch break at 3pm. Then with her mother when she gets off work at 5.30pm. In the evenings, she checks WhatsApp with both of them. For a few years, Larisa’s parents have only come home for Christmas, Easter, and important family events. Her father works at a construction firm with his brother-in-law, and her mother is employed at a cable factory.

Larisa and Monica’s parents are preparing to come to Romania for a short visit to take care of some household chores: sewing, taking hay out of the hayloft, and cutting a pig. Larisa cannot wait to see them.

The snippet of conversation reflects a painful and common reality for many families in Romania. How does the absence of family members working abroad shape the daily lives of those left behind? Romania ranks 17th among the world’s top countries of origin of migration, according to the Global Migration Report 2022 from the International Organization for Migration.Almost a quarter of children in Romania have a parent who has worked abroad in the past year, Save the Children data for 2023 shows. There is a lot of focus on those who leave rather than those who stay, with little thought about what it’s like to be left behind by family, especially early in life.

Larisa and Monica have lived with their grandmother for several years and are managing as best they can. Larisa is in grade 12 at a high school in Reghin. From October – when we first asked her – until now, her plans for the future have evolved from a nail course to driving a truck with Alex, and then to university, a word she pronounces with great distrust.

Larisa is shy, a possible defence mechanism in the face of decisions she feels she should not have to make alone. She pays close attention to the needs of everyone around her. When she cooks, she puts a portion aside for her grandmother, “Mama Uca”, then washes her plates, and when she leaves for school before I wake up, she makes sure Mama Uca leaves milk for my cereal.

Monica has been a mother for a year and a few months. She moved to Bistrița about 30 miles away with her boyfriend Andrei, who works for a construction company.

Monica is the more sociable sister who wants to be a mother and seems much more mature than her 21 years. During the week, she lives in Bistrița, and on weekends she is in Vătava with Larisa, where she looks after the cottage Andrei and his parents own.

This project is about the psychological, sociological, and economic factors of the young people that share the trauma of being left behind as a teenager or younger. I want to challenge the perception that migration only affects those who leave, highlighting the effects on the children and the future society of abandoned adults.

Since their parents left the country, Larisa and Monica have had to find emotional anchors in other people: grandmother, boyfriends, uncles, and aunts. “Their [her parents’] bodily absence is past me, however I’m mature sufficient to grasp that for me and the remainder of the household, they left to make us higher,” says Larisa. “This pressured maturation was good as a result of it taught me what the world is like, however for a 15-year-old, it was, and nonetheless is, very painful.”