In this paper I explore the emotions of “missing” and “longing” as integral (though not essential) features of the kin-work (di Leonardo) and emotional labour (Hochschild) needed to maintain transnational family relationships. I argue that these emotions manifest in at least four key ways: discursively (through words), physically (through the body) as well as through actions (practice) and imagination (ideas). Hence, I consider emotions through both of the dominant perspectives in theories of emotion – constructionism (with its emphasis on discourse) and embodiment (with its emphasis on sensory experience). Drawing on a sample of Italian migrants living in Australia and their ageing parents living in Italy, I argue that the emotions of missing and longing motivate kin to construct four types of shared (co)presence – virtual, proxy, physical and imagined – which reinforce the sense of family closeness that characterises Italian conceptions of health and well-being.

This paper is an ethnographic exploration of a seldom-discussed ‘micro’ dimension of transnational studies, the practices of long-distance family relations and aged care. The importance of time as a key variable in transnational research is demonstrated through comparisons of the care exchanges of three cohorts of Italian migrants in Australia and their kin in Italy. A focus on ‘transnationalism from below’, the more quotidian and domestic features of transmigrant experience, highlights the importance of considering the role of homeland kin and communities in discussions of migration. The analysis of transnational care-giving practices illustrates that migrancy is sometimes triggered by the need to give or receive care rather than the more commonly assumed ‘rational’ economic motivations. Transnational lives are thus shaped by the ‘economies of kinship’, which develop across changing state (‘macro’), community (‘meso’) and family migration (‘micro’) histories, including, in particular, culturally constructed notions of ‘ideal’ family relations and obligations, as well as notions of ‘successful’ migration and ‘licence to leave’.

This article is an ethnographic analysis of transnational family links between adult migrant children living in Australia and their kin in Italy, from the 1950s to the present. A key focus of the article is the persistence of bonds of emotion across distance. Drawing on Finch and Mason's research on caregiving relationships and Hochschild's work on emotional labour, it explores both the positive experiences as well as the tensions associated with the transnational exchange of moral and emotional support. The findings confirm the perseverance of bonds of emotion across distance and thus challenge arguments about the declining bonds within translocal families as a result of globalising processes. The role that new communication technologies play in sustaining these bonds is offered as a possible explanation to account for the apparent increase in the frequency of transnational emotional interaction over time. The article also calls for further work on the influence of physical co-presence or absence on emotional interaction over distance.