The Swedish team of the project has produced three short movies documenting some of the issues transnational families face in Sweden, based on research with families. Together with project partner, the Swedish Church (Lund Diocese) and the peer researchers, Brigitte Suter and Katarina Mozetič, based at Malmö University, Sweden, have produced three short movies. Each depicts the story of a transnational family with specific caring arrangements, addressing various aspects of their realities:

  • Together in Difficult Times discusses the importance of proximate family relations for those with care needs and responsibilities. It recounts a story of a family with a heavily sick child that came to Sweden from Iraq. The movie shows how the family support the sick child and the parents, and how they experience their encounters with the Swedish healthcare system.
  • Caring across Distance delves into how family members provide care for one another across borders. It depicts the story of a Syrian family scattered across two continents and three countries. It shows the care that ageing and ill parents in Sweden receive from their children both near and afar.
  • A Patient is a Patient follows the story of a family with irregular legal status in Sweden where a brother takes care of his sister with physical and mental impairments and his aging, ill mother. The movie revolves around the topic of how legal status – or the lack thereof – shapes formal healthcare provision and informal care responsibilities.
Making of the movie ‘A Patient is a Patient’

The family stories are based on project interviews conducted by peer researchers, which have been adapted to ensure that the family remains anonymous. The stories were recounted and acted by the project peer researchers, who, in collaboration with the university researchers, chose the family stories, wrote the manuscripts and acted in the movies.

In ‘Together in difficult times’, peer researchers, Batul J. Haj Ali and Eman Shikh Alghanama, discuss the importance of proximate family relations for those with care needs and obligations

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Watch the short movies on YouTube (accessible with English and Swedish subtitles):

For more films from the research project, check out our YouTube channel and subscribe: @CarewellTransnationalFamilies