Lines of Differentiation and Connection in Translocal Lithuanian Lives: Stories about the Norwegian Child Welfare Service

Abstract

Lithuanians have quite recently, and increasingly, started to emigrate to Norway. Thus, knowledge of Lithuanians in Norway is limited. This chapter asks specifically how Lithuanian labour migrants’ translocal lives in Norway play out and are linked to life in Lithuania. In a study consisting of 26 semi-structured interviews with Lithuanians in Norway, 19 interviewees brought up a “fear of the Norwegian Child Welfare Service (NCWS)”, a much-discussed theme in Lithuania’s media, when describing their lives in Norway. The chapter uses discussion of this fear, as well as a translocal framework and pluri-local migrant frames of reference, to explore the wide variety of Lithuanian translocal lives in Norway. We study the multistranded relationship between “here” and “there”, finding that lives in Norway follow several intersecting lines of differentiation related to media communication and child-rearing. We show how these lines relate to class, education level, urban/rural upbringing, and age, showing the diversities of translocal lives among Lithuanians, between Lithuanians and Norwegians, and between Norway and Lithuania.