Filling in the empty spaces: understanding Moldovan transnational family lives by unpacking the meanings and the makings of a popular sending practice

This paper uses the phenomenon of parcel sending as a lens onto Moldovan transnationalism, unravelling how transnationalism is done, experienced and remembered by and from different subject positions. Parcel-sending practice emerged some 20 years ago in the context of women’s increased involvement in emigration and limited communication possibilities. The practice of parcel sending became an essential means of keeping in touch and staying close between migrants and their family members who stayed behind, especially migrant mothers and their children, expressing transnational care and mothering. Despite the significant transformations in the governance of EU-bound Moldovan migration and technological advances in the communication field (i.e., internet, money transfers), this practice did not disappear; instead, it remains an essential feature of Moldovan transnational life. By applying a historically informed ethnographic approach, I tease out how the meaning of parcel sending and its role in Moldovan transnational migration has changed over time. By ‘unpacking the parcel’ methodologically, theoretically and empirically, I argue that parcels and items from the inside are not mere commodities. The content of a parcel and how it is put together, wrapped, and sent matters and varies for sending and receiving sites. It conveys multiple meanings, such as expectations, obligations, keeping promises and connections. It has its social life, emotions and memories. In transnational and family studies, parcels represent affection – wrapped and sent. This research has also shown that despite having diverse ways of staying connected and providing material and emotional support, contemporary migrants continue practising parcel sending attributing to it new meanings in this technologically, geopolitically and legally reconfigured transnational field. In addition, by shifting the analysis from the visible to the invisible of parcel sending, I discuss the role of sensory dimensions, such as taste and smell, in understanding how migrants live and remember their transnational experiences.