Labor Mobility, Gender Order and Family: Illustrated by the Example of the Karakachans in Bulgaria

Abstract

The political changes in Bulgaria of November 1989 related to the fall of the totalitarian regime and the democratization of the country were accompanied by a severe economic crisis, a high level of unemployment and the rise of strong social inequality, which led to intensive migratory processes. The opening of the borders was followed by various forms of cross-border and transnational mobility affecting a significant part of the Bulgarian population. Since the very beginning of the 1990s, the Karakachans, due to the protectionist Greek policy with regards to them, as opposed to that regarding other Bulgarian citizens, acquired easy access to Greece visas. This enabled labor mobility which in only a few years spread across a significant number of the members of this community. For most of them, labor mobility turned out to be more than just a supplementary opportunity; it became a main strategy for realization in life. A direct result of the Karakachani’s labor mobility is periodic family separation for a certain time, which causes particular transformations in their social structures, and hence in the family life of labor migrants. It is this relationship between labor mobility and their life as lived, and its direct consequences on the family, that is the focus of the present study.

1. Introduction

In Southeast Europe, labor mobility has been well known since the time of the Ottoman Empire. Various forms of temporary and/or seasonal wage labor were known in all countries of the Balkan Peninsula under the common name “gurbet/kurbet/kurbėti” (Hristov 2003, p. 163; Hristov 2012b, p. 73) or “profiteering” (Hristov 2012a, p. 186). In Bulgaria, the democratization of the country after 1989 was accompanied by socio-economic changes that led to intensive migration processes. This was due to the unfolding of a series of severe economic crises, high unemployment and acute social inequalities. Indicative of the scale and speed of these negative trends are the statistical data for the 1990s. At the beginning of the 21st century, compared to the late 1980s, Bulgaria reported: unemployment growth by 25–30%; decline in industrial production by 40–50%; decline in real wages by 70–75%; a drop in summer holidaymakers every year from 40% to 10%; and decline in consumption by 70% (Raichev and Stoychev 2008, pp. 97–109). In 1992, about 50% of the population in Bulgaria lived below the social minimum wage1, and in 1994, 80% of Bulgarians were below this limit. In 1993–1994, 30% of people lived below the subsistence level, and suffered malnutrition (Minev 1999). The purchasing power declined at such a rate that in 1994 it amounted to 50% of the purchasing power in 1990. In 1995, almost half of the household income was spent on food (Knaus 1997, p. 113), and by 1996 real household income decreased by 65% (Stoyanova 1997, p. 17). This is the context in which the opening of borders, followed by various forms of cross-border mobility involving a significant part of the population, should be considered. Cross-border labor migration from Bulgaria in its various forms, emigration and various types of temporary migration, has remained very high since 1990. The main directions of these movements are to Greece, the countries of Western Europe, the United States and Canada.

Very soon after the beginning of the changes, the members of one of the fifteen ethnic and religious communities in Bulgaria, the Karakachans, unlike other Bulgarian citizens, obtained easy access to visas to enter the Hellenic Republic. Greece’s policy towards the community has been protectionist since the early 1990s (Kertikov 1993, p. 169). This is the policy of a protector- state, which has accepted the role of a national homeland external to the Karakachans (according to Brubaker 1996), defining the Karakachans in Bulgaria as members of the Greek nation. This led to the emergence of labor mobility, involving a significant number of community members in just a few years. For most of them, cross-border labor mobility was not just an additional opportunity, but a basic strategy for life realization. Here, it is worth noting that a distinction should be made between the popular push–pull factors in migration research for the emergence and development of the migration process, on the one hand, and the factors favoring migration on the other (see, for example, Dimitrov 2015, pp. 55–56, 111–16). In this context, the thesis of “migration attitudes specific to entire social groups” and the question of whether the decision to migrate is a priority for individuals or for families and complex households (see, for example, Hristov 2010, p. 20) would be debatable if the migration-favoring factors were not taken into account. The protectionist Greek policy towards the Karakachans in Bulgaria after 1989 is undoubtedly such a factor of decisive importance both for the manifestation of migration and for migration attitudes.

There are no statistics on the level of labor mobility, but based on data from my own field research (2012–2013), conducted in connection with my dissertation (2011–2014), I can state with certainty that there are almost no Karakachan families (including mixed marriages)2 that are not affected by migration. This observation was confirmed in an interview for Continent newspaper by the chairman of the Karakachan Cultural and Educational Society in Bulgaria in September 1994, where he claimed that “at least 80 percent” of the Karakachans went to work in Greece (Miloev 1994).3

2. Post-Socialist Labor Migrations in Bulgarian Anthropology

The term “migration“ is used to describe a type of human behavior with immediate social, cultural, economic and political consequences.

The forms of migration depend on such a multitude of factors and are so diverse that their consequences at the micro-, meso- and macro-level are practically incalculable. In accordance with this fact, Bulgarian anthropology has already accumulated an impressive array of research on post-socialist labor migrations. The state of research by Bulgarian and non-Bulgarian authors on migration issues in Bulgaria until 2010 is very well presented in a publication from 2011 by Mancheva and Troeva (2011), where detailed bibliographic information can be found (over 230 titles in the references).

In order not to duplicate the work of Mancheva and Troeva, only those research problems will be noted with references to the relevant texts (with no claim to exhaustiveness), which remained outside the scope of Mancheva and Troeva, but at the same time concern important problems of Bulgarian post-socialist labor migrations. First of all, the publications in the same collection from 2011 are noted (Hajdinjak 2011), where many problems were addressed by different authors: the importance of gender for Bulgarian migration policy; the relationship between migration, religion and gender among Muslim immigrant women in Bulgaria; gender order and family relations in mixed marriages between Bulgarian women and Lebanese men; periodization of the Bulgarian post-socialist migration based on the profile and motivation of migrants; changes in migration attitudes after the eastern enlargement of the EU (2004–2007).

Another series of topics were examined by a team of authors in a collection from 2013 (Maeva and Zahova 2013): Bulgarian post-socialist labor migration to Spain and various aspects of the everyday culture of Bulgarian immigrants there; the transnational identities of Bulgarian labor migrants in Greece; the functions of social networks in relation to material situation, free time and identity for Bulgarian labor migrants in Italy; the transnational labor mobility of different Roma subgroups from Bulgaria and Romania; the importance of the church for the community of Bulgarian immigrants in Great Britain.

In 2014, the next collection was published (Dimitrova and Kahl 2014), with migration studies on various topics: social typology of Bulgarian migration to Germany after 1989; personal networks and transnational practices of Bulgarian immigrants in Barcelona; similar problems of Bulgarian labor migrants in Portugal; the development of Bulgarian post-socialist labor migration in Greece; Bulgarian students in Germany.

The above collections do not exhaust the thematic diversity of Bulgarian post-socialist labor migrations. Here are just a few more examples: changes in the family with a focus on child rearing as a result of labor mobility (Guencheva 2010); similar processes among Bulgarian labor migrants in Cyprus (Antova 2013); Bulgarian family creation (marriage migration) and transnational networks in mixed marriages (Erolova 2013); numerous aspects of the historical and contemporary development of various forms of labor and non-labor migration in a global, European, Balkan and Bulgarian context, as well as the changes in European migration policy after the 1950s (Krasteva 2014); the importance of the media for migration attitudes in Bulgarian emigration in North-East England (Pavlova-Hannam 2015); the role of ideas about “Western Europe” for the development of Bulgarian labor migrations in England (Manolova 2015); the short-term labor migrations of Bulgarian students in the USA within the framework of the “Work and Travel USA” program (Bogdanova 2015).

Other studies by Bulgarian scholars deal with non-Bulgarian manifestations of post-socialist labor mobility: Maeva examines the transnational features of the labor migration of Muslims from northern Macedonia (Maeva 2010); Markov’s monograph presents an in-depth anthropological study of the labor migration of Albanians from North Macedonia (Markov 2015).

A specific form of post-socialist labor mobility from or to Bulgaria is represented by the movements of representatives of such communities, whose identity has the potential to be instrumentalized and used as a resource for the implementation of labor migration. The studies of the Bessarabian Bulgarians from Ukraine and Moldova, as well as the Karakachans in Bulgaria, should be mentioned here: Bilga’s article on Bulgaria’s immigration policy regarding the Bessarabian Bulgarians after 1991 (Bilga 2012); the studies of Luleva (2012) and Sredkova (2012), which clearly show that, in the migration of Bessarabian Bulgarians, the transnational prevails over the diasporic, and the rational over the emotional; Hristov’s study of the migration attitudes of students from the community of Bessarabian Bulgarians in Odessa and Bolgrad (Hristov 2015); Dimitrov’s monograph on the labor mobility of Karakachans in Bulgaria after 1989.

3. Object, Subject and Purpose of the Study

Regarding the question of the place of the present text in the indicated body of research, it can be said that various aspects of the everyday culture and the transnational connections and practices of labor migrants and their families are touched upon in many of the above-mentioned scholarly studies, but ‘life world’ of migrants remains on the fringes of research interest. In addition, for the first time, and based on personally collected ethnographic material, the object of research is the Karakachans in Bulgaria in their role as labor migrants after 1989.

The subject of the present consideration is the transformation and even the damage caused by labor mobility to the structures of the life world of migrants and their relatives and the resulting changes and upheavals in their family life. Labor mobility, in a specific way, provokes, activates and reactivates family roles and causes interactions and tensions between them. The analysis of these processes focuses on two main questions: to what extent and in what way labor mobility affects the basic positions in family relations and the status of family members and how the family in turn determines the experience and assessment of labor mobility. In order to understand the mutual influence between labor mobility and family in the daily life of Karakachan men working abroad, the ideas of Alfred Schütz about the structures of the lifeworld and the nature of the daily round are not only an appropriate tool, but also an indispensable one. This text aims at illustrating the possibilities that this theoretical framework presents when analyzing the ‘family—labor migration’ relationship.

4. The Karakachans in Bulgaria—A Brief Reference

The Karakachans are one of the last representatives of nomadic sheep breeding in Europe. In the first half of the 20th century, due to their mobile way of life, they could be found on the territory of today’s Greece, Bulgaria, Turkey, Serbia and Northern Macedonia. In the context of their nomadic lifestyle, we should take notice that the living space of the Karakachans until the moment of their settlement included summer pastures in the middle and high mountain belt of the Balkan mountains, Sredna Gora, Vitosha, Rila, Pirin, the Rhodopes, Pindus, etc., winter pastures in the regions of the southern Black Sea coast, Asia Minor, the Edirne Province of Thrace and Aegean Thrace and, in particular, the regions around Kırklareli (Lozengrad), Edirne, Uzunköprü, Lüleburgaz, Kıyıköy (formerly Midye), Enez, Tekirdağ, Çorlu, Istanbul, Alexandroupolis, Xanthi, Paralia Katerinis, Asprovalta, Drama, Sérres, Thessaloniki and Mount Athos, as well as the roads between them (see Marinov 1964). With their settlement and the closure of the interstate borders in the 1940s, most of the community remained in Greece.4 The beginning of the gradual settlement of the Karakachans in Bulgaria and the related transformation of their traditional culture began in the late 19th century, but this process lasted more than 50 years (see more in Pimpireva 1998, pp. 27–28, 131–45) and was finalized by the direct intervention of the socialist state through a Decree of the Council of Ministers of 15 March 1954 (Notices of the Presidium of the National Assembly 1954, No. 25, Year V. March 26). This normative act obliged all Karakachan families in the country to settle permanently by submitting an application stating the number of family members, the quantity and type of livestock owned and the settlement in which they wished to settle. For individual families, this was the area whose pastures were usually used by their herds. They focused mainly on cities, where they could find better opportunities for education and work.

Today the Karakachans live as compact groups in various settlements in the region of the Balkan mountains, Rila and Northwestern Bulgaria. Their number varies between 2500 and 15,000 people according to various sources (see Dimitrov 2015, p. 14). The religion they practice is Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and their language belongs to the northern dialects of modern Greek. Mixed marriages with Bulgarian Orthodox Christians are common and are a natural consequence of the integration processes that developed after the Karakachans lost their socio-economic specificity and spatial isolation after their final settlement and confiscation of their sheep during the collectivization. During the socialist period, the Karakachans managed to preserve the consciousness of an ethnic community with their own language, customs and ideas of common origin and historical past.

5. Field Site and Research Method

The present study is based on empirical material collected during field research in Bulgaria and Greece, conducted in the period 2012–2013. In the following sequence, these towns were visited: Samokov, Berkovitsa, Dupnitsa, Sliven, the village of Golyamo Chochoveni and the town of Kotel. This choice was not accidental, but was dictated by the ambition to cover settlements in the above mentioned three main areas where compact groups of Karakachans live. The choice of direction for the field research in Greece was determined by the material collected in Bulgaria, which indicated the region of Thessaloniki as one of the main preferred destinations for labor mobility of the respondents. One of them called the Thessaloniki suburb of Termi the “second Samokov”. Therefore, the city of Thessaloniki and its satellite villages Termi, Panorama and Kalamaria were visited, but also the areas around Alexandroupolis, Komotini, Xanthi, Kavala, Drama and Sérres.5 Opportunities provided by the method of the multi-sited ethnography developed by the American anthropologist George Marcus as an attempt to overcome the local commitment in anthropological research (Marcus 1995, pp. 13–17) were employed. It can be said that following the people and the networks of their connections, the research field moved from Samokov and Berkovitsa to Thessaloniki and Kalamaria. Details can be seen from the following Figure 1.

In total, 45 interviews were conducted with a total of 70 respondents. The number of interviewed men is twice as high as that of women. This is largely due to random interviews carried out in cafes—places visited almost exclusively by men. It should be noted that, for the purposes of the survey, the age of the respondents is very important, not during the field research, but during their first labor migration, regardless of whether it was in the early 1990s or 10 years later. Information about the age and gender of the respondents is noted after the excerpts from the ethnographic interviews cited in the text. In this sense, the sample representing the age groups at the time of the first migration is as follows: 4.6% are under the age of 18; 42.1% are aged 18 to 30; 36.1% are aged 30 to 50; 17.2% are over 50 years old. More than half of the respondents have a secondary education. The number of those with primary and higher education is almost equal, 11 and 10 people, respectively. At the time of the field study, only two people (men) were not married.

For the most part, the conducted interviews are free and semi-structured and are based on a pre-prepared questionnaire, which covers thematic fields related to respondents’ attitudes to changes in their lives after the start of the socio-economic and political processes in Bulgaria at the end of 1989. Some of the interviews, mostly with people from the last age group, are autobiographical stories of the respondents. Randomly and on the spot, six informal interviews were conducted with one respondent each and two more informal conversations with four and five informants, respectively—a total of approximately 21% of the respondents. The remaining 36 interviews are semi-structured, pre-planned and conducted after an appointment with the interlocutors.

6. Interpretation of Empirical Material

The analysis and interpretation of the content of the collected material proceeded from the understanding that the results of an interview are determined by the interaction between the respondent and the researcher (Genchev 1989, p. 52). In this sense, it must be said that attempts to distance oneself from one’s own life experience and from one’s own behavioral and thought patterns during the collection of field material and later in the analysis of the information represent, as it were, the greatest difficulty in methodological terms (Mruck and Breuer 2003).

Apart from well-known ideas such as Bourdieu’s ‘series of mental photographs’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, p. 221) related to the personality of the researcher, which are relevant to the construction and presentation of the narrative regarding gender, age, personality characteristics, qualifications, professional and life experience, ethnicity, etc., it must always be borne in mind that our ideas, our values, our actions and even our feelings are a cultural product (Geertz 2006, p. 62). In this sense, in this science, the pursuit of professional integrity seems to be more meaningful than the pursuit of objectivity.

7. Theoretical Parameters

Here, ideas and assumptions used in the theorizing of migrations in the study of the origin and development of the labor mobility of Karakachans in Bulgaria are pointed out. First of all, the conceptual framework states that both the structure of the country of origin and that of the receiving country contribute to the emergence of migration. On the basis of the asymmetry between two territorial units (two countries, city–village, two cities, mountain–plain, etc.), we speak of “pushing” and “pulling factors” (push–pull).6 However, the caveat must be made that the idea of push/pull factors is used at both the macro- and micro-level.

Therefore, a combination of the advantages of the classical theories of Ernst Georg Ravenstein and Everett S. Lee are used. Already, by 1885, the founder of classical migration theory Ernst Georg Ravenstein formulated the “Laws of Migration”. For example, the more distant two countries are from each other, the more migration decreases; the directions of migration flows are determined by gravitational centers, such as the more densely populated places, therefore the inhabitants of the village are more inclined to migration than the inhabitants of the city; each migration flow causes a compensatory one; predominantly, women migrate over short distances; technological progress, respecting the development of transportation, leads to an increase in migration (cited in Düvell 2006, p. 79).

Equally deterministic (albeit paradoxically on a micro-level) and very similar to Ravenstein’s theory is Everett S. Lee’s theory from 1966, which is based on the division of migration factors into positive—those that favor it, and negative—those that hinder it. The preponderance of positive factors is a necessary but not sufficient condition for migration to occur, if personal factors and individual decisions are not taken into account. Lee arrives at conclusions that are logically not very different from Ravenstein’s Laws: the greater the differences between two countries, the wider the social stratum covered by migration; the greater the feeling of inequality in a society, the more migrants it will send out; economic growth in the sending country means less emigration from the same, etc. (cited in Düvell 2006, p. 80).

That is, push/pull factors are considered as the necessary condition for migration to occur. They represent, so to speak, the potential for a situation to develop as a migratory one. The following push-pull factors7 should be noted here, which are important both for the emergence and development of labor mobility, and for the choice of a specific destination: the high unemployment that occurred in Bulgaria very soon after the changes in 1989 and the easy access to work in Greece; the difference in pay in Bulgaria and Greece in the early and mid-1990s, about 10 times in favor of Greece; the easy access to visas, the close distance between the two countries and the linguistic proximity of the Karakachans to the Greeks.

Secondly, and especially in connection with the family, Thomas’s theorem is used, which states that “if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences” (Thomas and Thomas 1928, p. 572, cited in Merton 1995, p. 380). These words belong to the founder of the Chicago School of Sociology, William Isaak Thomas and his wife Dorothy Swaine Thomas, but became popular through the work of Robert K. Merton and his theory of self-fulfilling prophecy. Thomas’s theorem brilliantly represents the operation of a universal social regularity, namely that social actors respond less to objective reality and much more to the individual meaning they attach to it.

This means that a crucial role in people’s behavioral motivation is played by their perception of a given situation rather than objective reality, i.e., when people believe something, they act accordingly. All cases of labor migration are ultimately the result of a decision of the migrants, which is why the regularity described by the Thomas theorem can be seen everywhere. This enables the understanding of the way social actors make choices by demonstrating in fact that an action/behavior (past or future) cannot be evaluated only by its results without taking into account the cost of alternatives and helps us understand why this particular behavior was chosen over another.

The example given by Liliana Deyanova is very appropriate here: “If I had not emigrated, the communists would have liquidated me” (Deyanova 1994, p. 29). There is no doubt that the subjective truth is part of reality because there are real consequences, which are expressed in the fact that the narrator is not here, but has emigrated. This decision-making mechanism is also clearly visible in the studied case of the Karakachans. Often they present the choice of temporary migration over the alternative of emigrant life in the following way: “We had the opportunity to go to Greece to live. But you still think that something good will happen here, that things will get better. And I was also afraid to leave with the two children. If we lose our jobs? And if there is no one to look after them for me, and I am unemployed. He (my husband, An) should work alone, how we will get by there?” (♀, 50—IEFSEM-AEIM 980-III, p. 149).8

There is no case of labor migration in the development of which the role of social capital and the operation of networks is not observed. The beginning of network analysis as a method for considering sets (sets of individual elements and the connections between them) was established in the first half of the 18th century by the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler. In 1736, he laid the foundations of the theory of graphs, the concepts of which were later borrowed by the social sciences, where the graph is actually a social network, and its constituent elements are social actors (individuals or groups of people) connected in a system of relationships (social connections). In anthropology, the network approach entered with the development of Alfred Radcliffe-Brown’s structural functionalism, which defined people as connected through a complex web of social relationships (Radcliffe-Brown 1940, p. 3, cited in Gamper and Reschke 2010, p. 23).

Key concepts in network analysis are “information”, “mutual help”, “trust”, “networks of interaction” and “social capital”. The network approach greatly increases its analytical value when used in conjunction with Bourdieu’s concept of the four types of capital—economic, cultural, social and symbolic. Viewing capital as the foundational principle of the regularities of the social world (Bourdieu 1983, p. 183; see also Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, pp. 70–71), through its transformation from one form to another, Bourdieu actually explains the way in which the regularities of changing social statuses function and substantiates the idea of the lack of equal chances in the social world. In the context of migration theories, the role of social capital could be expressed as follows: if someone needs a visa but has contact with ten people who have job information, his contact with only one person who can give him visa access would be much more valuable to him. Of course, in this case we are talking about belonging to a given ethnic group. In this sense, it is enough to recall that, since the beginning of the 1990s, Karakachans and members of mixed marriages, unlike all other Bulgarian citizens, have been given easy access to visas for their stay in Greece.

As for theoretical approaches to the analysis of the questions posed in the introductory part, tension in the relationship “life world-work world” is employed. It is shown how, in the case of the Karakachans, migrant workers make a clear distinction between their work and life worlds and, respectively, between their migrant daily lives and their life world. Jürgen Habermas’s definition is relied on of the “work world” as a specific social reality that acquires clear contours, with industrialization, modernization and demise of traditional culture, when the family increasingly loses production functions at the expense of consumption and the home is unloaded from immediate economic functions when the family becomes more private and work more and more public (Habermas 1990, pp. 238–47).

An indispensable tool for understanding the relationship “life world-work world” is Alfred Schütz’s concept of the structures of the life world. Schütz identifies time, space and its social essence as the most important characteristics of the life world. Time in the life world is characterized by being finite, inevitable and historical. Each current experience necessarily has one past and one future horizon, the latter being filled with expected experiences. A person motivated by the fact that the time he has is finite, makes some effort, overcomes some obstacles, in short, makes some plans. This is a particularly important moment in Schütz’s theory for the present study: the life world is observable and one can imagine a future moment in one’s life world based on past life experience. In a synthesized form, the spatial conditioning of the life world is evident from the following judgment: the current reality is as it is, because I am here and not there (for a real situation), and the future situation would look a certain way if I were there and not here (for a hypothetical situation) (Schütz and Luckmann 1979, pp. 78–80). In addition, the human life world has been socialized from the very beginning—a world common to all (Schutz 1959, p. 75). Central to its social nature are the people with whom one interacts (Schütz and Luckmann 1979, p. 79). It seems logical to assume that the most important among them are the closest—the family.

With the help of this theoretical statement, I will try to defend the thesis that, if for a certain period of time a person is not in the same place at the same time in a real situation with the people with whom he interacts most intimately and most intensely—family and loved ones—there is a violation of the integrity of the life world. This violation of the integrity of the life world is in fact a dramatic shift in its structures, which can be overcome by self-presentation and self-imagination of the social actor and his relatives in the same place in a future situation (desire, expectation and plan) or in a past situation (memory). All this happens in a self-explanatory and unquestionable intersubjective world—daily life. Therefore, the human life world builds the semantic horizon of a daily life. Disturbances in the structures of the life world, caused by some phenomenon of daily life, inevitably affect the way in which this phenomenon is perceived, experienced and narrated by social actors. The phenomenon in question in the present study is labor mobility, and the displacement of the structures of the life world of migrant workers is most pronounce, to the extent of morbidity, in its social nature, i.e., in the family domain.

8. Labor Mobility and Daily Life (Housing, Food, Leisure, Holidays)

From the very beginning of the 1990s, the Karakachans in Bulgaria have been the subject of mass and intensive, but unequal, labor mobility in neighboring Greece. A significant number of the migrants were employed in Bulgaria when they started working in Greece in 1990, but soon after that they terminated their previous employment in Bulgaria. Others joined the Greek labor market a little later, for example in the mid-1990s. There are people who work in Greece only during vacations and have never left their job in Bulgaria. Some used their leave for the same purpose, but this lasted only a few years, after which they continued working only in Greece. This is not the end of the options. Expatriates find work mainly in the construction sector, agriculture, household services and in the field of tourism and restaurants.

In the first years, accommodation in Greece for many Karakachans was free. However, that was the only benefit. Most of the expatriates slept in tents or in their cars: “There is no accommodation, we slept in the car, in tents” (♂, 71—IEFSEM-AEIM 980-III, p. 68). Gradually, finding long-term employment for many of those employed in agriculture (and not only in that field), employers provided premises that were modest in terms of living conditions, but free or at symbolic prices. A common practice was renting accommodation (house, floor of a house or part of a floor) by more people (relatives, friends and neighbors) in order to minimize costs. It is clear that in this situation the space for the individual could not be very wide and comfortable: “We pushed ourselves in basements. I was especially in an attic room. Our bathroom was shared. We were six–seven people there, divided into rooms. Misery, how can I tell you” (♂, 61—ibid., p. 28).

The main factors that determine the nutrition of migrants are the short period of stay in Greece combined with the desire to minimize costs. They took with them from Bulgaria as much food as possible, and the goal was to buy as little as possible in Greece: “Well, we brought food because we had no money” (♀, 59—ibid., p. 273). The food and nutrition of migrants were conditioned by their striving for optimal compliance with the “price–quality” relation in Bulgaria and in Greece. For almost the entire period of the 1990s, this relation was in Bulgaria’s favor. However, the situation changed in the next decade, when food products in Bulgaria became significantly more expensive and their quality deteriorated: “In the first years, everyone took various salamis and yellow cheeses from here. However, as early as the end of the 1990s, it happened that we used to return from Greece with food. Then the prices were a bit higher than here (Bulgaria, AN), but the quality was better” (♂, 33—ibid., p. 38).

Migrants’ attitudes towards leisure often depend on their sense of lost income. The time not used as working time is definitely assessed by the respondents not as “free” but as “wasted”. In part, the same also applies to regulated weekends: “We do not want weekends. If it rains, then we do not work, but the weekends are a loss.” (♀, 33—ibid., p. 76). In general, there is a tendency that the shorter the time a migrant stays in Greece for work (followed by longer intervals of time out of work), the greater his desire to fill his daily life with as many working hours as possible. For example, the goal of a woman who works in Greece once a year for one month during her vacation in Bulgaria is to work without a day off and when possible (including physically) to earn two wages in one day: “We tried to work every day. We didn’t pay attention to Sunday or anything. Even if we found additional work, we went extra.” (♂, 65—ibid., p. 43). A different attitude to free time is expressed by an expatriate who works in Greece 6–7 months a year: “If there was no work, on Saturdays and Sundays we gathered together friends and relatives. In summer we also went to the beach, to fish, went out for coffee, for a walk” (♂, 52—ibid., p. 106).

Two main ways of experiencing holidays by migrants can be distinguished, as there are very small differences between the calendar holidays (most often Christmas, New Year, Easter, St. George’s Day, celebration of Virgin Mary) and personal / family holidays and customs (most often birthday, name day, prom), or those related to the life cycle (birth, wedding, funeral, various anniversaries). In short, the main factor here is whether or not the holidays are on a working day for migrants. This is evident from the following example: “When you are there in Greece, for example, 60 days—non-stop. No holiday, no weekday, no birthday, no name day. There have been cases, my husband, Jordan, on Jordan’s Day at home in Bulgaria, a big banquet, and he is at work in Greece.” (♀, 45—ibid., p. 187). The nature of work is also of great importance as to whether holidays are a non-/working day for migrants. Agricultural work does not comply with holidays: “Easter we were there most of the time because the work we did there did not allow. There is no day off for asparagus. You pick it in the morning and you pick it in the evening. If you leave it, it rots.” (♀, 40—ibid., p. 214). Work activities, not so much dependent on the season, allow the Karakachans to return to Bulgaria for a short time and they most often take advantage of this: “We come for sure. We are coming for Virgin Mary, for Easter, for Christmas. We gather the whole family.” (♂, 52—ibid., p. 109).

The impacts of labor mobility on the structures of the life world (time, space, social environment) of social actors are obvious: migrants are not at home (space) and most often they are not with their relatives or some of them (social environment) for a certain period (time). With all of the briefly presented main segments of everyday culture in the conditions of labor mobility, the two-way tension in the relationship “labor mobility–life world” is observed.

On the one hand, there are visible consequences in everyday culture of the indicated impacts of labor mobility on the structures of the life world, and on the other hand we see the influence of the life world on the appearance of labor mobility, realized thanks to the key role of the ideas and expectations of migrants regarding the time factor (the idea that this situation is temporary): as a consequence of labor mobility, migrants are not at home and sleep in tents and basements, which is possible because they expect that this situation is temporary; by virtue of the same causality, migrants do not eat homemade food because they are not at home and their eating is conditioned by the desire to minimize costs; the shorter time they are abroad, the less free time they have; they celebrate together with relatives, only if the work allows it, etc.

9. The Karakachan Family in the Conditions of Labor Mobility

9.1. Contacts with the Family in the Daily Life of the Migrants

A direct result of labor mobility is the separation of the family for and over a period of time. Different options can be listed, but three are the most common, and with all of these children remain in Bulgaria: the married couple is together in Greece at certain times of the year; the married couple is together in Greece for some time, after which the man stays, and the woman returns to Bulgaria; only the man is in Greece.

In all cases registered in the field, the contacts of the emigrants with their relatives in Bulgaria occupy a significant part of the migrant’s daily life. The nature of these contacts is different in different periods of labor mobility and depends mainly on the development of the means of communication and their accessibility. Until the mid-1990s, migrants used only landlines to contact relatives in Bulgaria, but these contacts were usually, so to speak, one-way, because the phones used by migrants were either public or “borrowed” and therefore there was no way to call them back: “There are telephone cards on the street. And there are some kiosks on almost every corner, they sell cigarettes, candies, they also have a telephone, take accounts there, you pay and you leave.” (♂, 61—ibid., p. 38). A factor influencing the frequency and duration of calls is the financial dimension: “We talked with phono-cards—1000 drachmas card, it means 6 levs. 1000 drachmas were 6 levs; they were expensive. A small child picks up the phone and the card expires. We tended to talk less.” (♂, 55; ♀, 50—ibid., p. 259).

Communication between members of separated families changed in quantity and quality with the advent of mobile phones and the Internet in people’s daily lives. By the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, access to new means of information and communication was already very wide. Mobile phones and the Internet are becoming a natural part of daily life. They become, in the language of Alfred Schütz, part of the “self-explanatory and unquestionable” daily life (Schuetz 1944, pp. 501–2). This is clear from the words of a young woman who talks about communicating with her parents when they were on a business trip to Greece: “Before it was on the home phone and less often, they called every 2–3 days. Now every day on mobile phones and Skype” (♀, 25—IEFSEM-AEIM 980-III, p. 57).

9.2. Children

The direct and indirect impact of labor mobility on the upbringing and socialization of children is manifested on several levels. First of all, it must be said that they very often grow up in the absence of one parent, usually the father. Although these absences are of a certain periodicity and their duration is relatively comprehensible, they are not easily tolerated by children, especially during the holidays: “When my father left, I was a child, and when he returned I was already a grown-up. It was not very pleasant, especially the first years. He had been missing for months. He was only returning for a short time to renew his visa. Or for going to our seaside for the summer, a vacation and then again back to Greece. He came especially for my prom. There are missed birthdays—both mine and my sister’s.” (♂, 33—ibid., p. 41). These are negative experiences, which is evident from the desire of the respondents to compensate for the story with a positive statement: “On the other hand, we have grown a little more independent. I decided to go to high school myself (ibid.). This independence is hardly exaggerated, given that the older children share with the mother the responsibility for caring for the younger ones: “Usually 5–6 months a year, my husband was in Greece. He used to stay in Greece for two months, he came to Bulgaria for 10–15 days and again back there. It was very hard. The children were small. My 7-year-old son grew up to be 17 years old. He had no childhood. He also had to deal with the little one at.” (♀, 40—ibid., p. 203).

In the absence of both parents, the care of the children is taken over by the grandparents: “So, when the children are younger—the grandmothers, there is no one else.” (♀, 55—ibid., p. 8). If parents cannot rely on the older generation for such a commitment and after the children reach a certain age, it is considered that they can take care of themselves. These cases are rarer, there is usually someone close by, and the children are not completely left alone: “My children were small then. In 1992 the little one was 12 years old. I left them alone, can you imagine? At 12 and 14 years. Well, my brother-in-law was close by us, our houses were next to each other and there was supervision. The daughter was 13 years old; she was cooking, they were looking after each other. In the evening only a man went to sleep with them.” (♀, 55—ibid., p. 298). In this context, the practice of hiring a babysitter, which was rare in Bulgaria in the 1990s, should also be considered: “We also hired a babysitter. We paid a woman to take care of them, they cried.” (♀, 50—ibid., p. 258).

The influence of children on labor mobility is manifested in the preferred family strategy for one parent (almost always the mother) not to go abroad precisely because of the children. This does not mean that she does not realize any labor mobility, but her stays in Greece are very rare and short compared to those of the father: “We decided that one parent should be here with the children, we should not leave them.” (♀, 45—ibid., p. 119); The children grew up with their mother: “I was in Greece, she stayed with the children. In 1988 my daughter was born in 1991—my son. And this is one of the reasons why my wife did not come to emigrate together—the children, the upbringing and education of the children. We tried to maneuver between budget and money, and the upbringing and education of the children.” (♂, 52—ibid., p. 104). Many cases have been registered in the field which show that the role of children is really decisive for whether the married couple would seek a livelihood in Greece together. Almost all women who had young children in the 1990s made an attempt at labor mobility. After this experience, most of them sharply reduced the length of their stay in Greece and, for others, the time that passed between this experience and the next was several years—until the children/child grew up: “When I first went to Greece my child was one year and 6 months old as I left him. I left him to my mother and it was very difficult for me. As soon as I went down, there was a child his age there, and I seemed to calm down and hug him, and I kept thinking about my child. And I came back after 54 days, I counted them—54 days, and he called me “auntie”. I say, another time I will not leave my child.” (♀, 50—ibid., pp. 145–46); “And I left him at 8 months. I wasn’t even present on his first birthday. It was very difficult. I cried all day. And when I came back, I didn’t recognize my child. He was 8 months old when I left him. He was with my mother-in-law for two months, and then my mother took him. We went and I saw, the mother-in-law holds a child in her arms—a big child with long hair, curly. I approached and saw that he was my son. One week I slept in mother’s home so that the child could get used to me. And then I went to Greece for two months. I did not allow myself to stay for more than two months.” (♀, 45—ibid., p. 185).

There were also cases when parents took their children with them to Greece. This was usually for not very long periods when they were doing seasonal agricultural work. Two variants are registered here. The first is when the children had reached an age that allowed them a certain minimum of independence: “Me with my wife and another cousin with his wife. And the children were there. My son was then 7–8 years old, we had taken him. He didn’t work. And their daughter was there. There were a lot of people with children. The children played during the day, we took them with us. While we were working, they rode around with the Greeks in trucks and tractors.” (♂, 57—ibid., p. 239). In the second variant, the parents go to Greece with the child, not because there is no one who could take care of him in Bulgaria, but because they want to be together. However, this is possible only when the living conditions allow it, i.e., when the migrants have better accommodation: “We went with the child. He was not a year old; with him we rented a place. Only I worked and could afford to pay 250 Euros for accommodation, electricity, water, food, not to deprive myself of anything,” (♂, 30—ibid., p. 235), says one father.

9.3. Women and Men

The impact of labor mobility on the role of women in the Karakachan family is not uniform and depends not so much on the age of the woman as on the age of the children at the time when labor mobility is part of family life. It makes a difference whether the children are already adults or they are in early school age. In the first case, the woman is usually in Greece with her husband, but not always, and not only to work for pay. Sometimes she is there to take care of the household, as evidenced by the story of a Karakachan woman, who at the time of her first business trip abroad was about 45 years old, had a job in Bulgaria, which she was happy with, and her children were already adults: “I worked in Bulgaria until 1991. I was in a training and experimental field—where children got labor training—in orchards, vegetable gardens, rabbit breeding. It was very nice, the salary was more or less good, but my husband did not have a job. He went to Greece, it turned out that he could not do it alone. And he told me “Quit your job, so we can both go”—there was no one to cook for him, no one to wash his clothes. And I filed my job resignation, and I was in Greece with him for 14 years.” (ibid., p. 266).

In the second case, the woman’s labor mobility is limited to once or twice a year for one or two months. At almost all times of the year, the woman is in Bulgaria, where she takes care of the children and the household. Conditionally speaking, labor mobility puts before a woman the choice of being a mother or a wife. Usually she chooses to be a mother: “I had a choice—to send the baby to Kotel to her grandparents and for her to grow up without parents. But I thought it was not their duty, it was my duty. When my husband first went abroad, my son was three years old. It was hard for me. Children have a harder time getting used to it because there the connection is stronger.” (♀, 45—ibid., p. 203). However, this choice is facilitated/predetermined by traditional notions of the gender distribution of responsibilities in the family, according to which the man as head of the family must provide livelihood, as shown by Luleva in her study of the gender order in Bulgarian society (Luleva 2003, p. 107). The reasoning and conclusions of these studies are relevant to the Karakachan family. The man also has practically no choice—he cannot choose to stay in Bulgaria with the children because he is obliged/he is expected to provide for his family. In this context, it can be said that if women perceive parenting more than men as a personal realization and the meaning of their lives, as Luleva claims (ibid.), this is also a function of the interdependence of stereotypes about gender roles: this part of the female identity could not be possible and show such vitality if the self-representation of the role of the man as a breadwinner was not so stable. Undoubtedly, however, motherhood and work are perceived as inseparable from women’s identity, because while performing her duties as a mother and housewife in Bulgaria, a woman almost always work at something: “It was very difficult. When my husband went to Greece from the beginning, I stayed here with my two children. I went to work, they were at school. All the housework, the whole house, the children, my work… In the morning, I sent them to school, and I went to work. At noon I ran, brought the bags with food here. In the evening I went home, in winter—to turn on the heating, washing machine, cooking and so on—all in my hands.” (♀, 50—IEFSEM-AEIM 980-III, p. 14). It is clear that in this case the power to make decisions about the upbringing and education of children is predominantly in the hands of the woman: “It was all up to me. But I was calm, because I could control my children, direct them in school and whatever. They both did very well, graduating with full honors.” (♀, 45—ibid., p. 123). As can be seen, the situation of the Karakachan woman in the 21st century does not differ significantly from that of the Bulgarian woman during late socialism, who combined in a “harmonious expression” the roles of mother, worker, public figure and housewife (Tropolova 1985, pp. 93–94; Makaveeva 1981, pp. 14–15). A comparison with other examples of labor mobility shows that preserving the basic specifics of the family model of migrant workers in the host country and within the generation is no exception for the Karakachans. For example, Albanian women from Northern Macedonia, as subjects of labor mobility in Central and Western Europe, transfer a family model (roles, statuses, obligations) from the sending country to the host country as hired workers only if the spouse does not earn enough to support the family, as Markov shows in his research (Markov 2015, pp. 285–86).

For their part, during post-socialism and in the context of labor mobility, men strengthened their economic functions. This is most evident in young families with small children. However, it is also noticeable in the older generation—often one of the grandmothers helps the mother in caring for the children and the household, and the grandfather works with the father in Greece. In any case, in these situations, the man mainly takes care of the financial situation of the family. However, the enhanced economic function of man is at the expense of his role as father and husband. The following story of a Karakachan woman who shares the experience of a divided family is very eloquent: “He was like a guest. When he finally came home, it was hard for me and it was hard for the children to get used to him not leaving on Sunday. It was difficult for us to adapt, to live together, to comply with him, he with us. And it seems that it is harder for him to adapt to us. We got used to him being here, and he got used to living alone.” (♀, 50—ibid., p. 145). The point of view of the man in question only confirms the impressions from the previous quotation: “The children communicate less with me. More with their mother. And this feeling is very heavy. It weighs a lot on me. They even tell me—“when we needed you, you were gone”. I am also sad, but…” (♂, 50—ibid., p. 150).

The presented roles in the family are somewhat reminiscent of the traditional distribution of responsibilities in the Karakachan family, where men take care of the main livelihood (in this case, the herds) and never engage in household chores, and women in housekeeping and raising children (Pimpireva 1998, p. 47; Bonina 1981b, p. 44).

9.4. Grandparents

The importance of grandparents in the modern Karakachan family for raising children was very great for the period up to the 1990s, as noted by Pimpireva (1998, pp. 160–61). This is due in part to the fact that the Karakachans settled predominantly in the cities. As a result, they were very little affected by the migration processes (rural–urban) in Bulgaria, accompanying the industrialization and urbanization of the country between the 1950s and 1970s, which preserved the predominantly extended/complex type of family. We should not forget some peculiarities of the socio-cultural and political context: for example, despite the efforts of the socialist government according to ideology (Marx and Engels 1974, p. 482) to “introduce” children in kindergartens and especially to nurseries, in general, in Bulgarian society, grandparents remain the most important helpers of the young family in caring for the children until their third year and beyond. During socialism and post-socialism, this was so common that it was experienced by grandmothers as their duty (Iliev 2001, p. 105). The Karakachans are no exception—no case of the use of crèches has been registered in field materials from the 1970s (Bonina 1981a, p. 47).

Among the Karakachans, the role of grandparents in raising children has intensified since 1989 due to labor mobility. As one respondent summarizes, “the children grew up with grandparents.” (IEFSEM-AEIM 980-III, p. 212). There are three most common options for support from grandparents. In the first case, they take care of the children when both parents are in Greece. This most often happens when the children are over preschool age: “The son was 12–13, the daughter was 10. We left them with the grandparents and went to work. I came once every two months. Now my son and daughter-in-law are in Greece, and their children are here” (♀, 55—ibid., pp. 86–88). In the second option, grandparents help the mother when the father is in Greece, and in the third they themselves are in Greece for this purpose—to help—because both parents work there and the child is with them. In this context, labor mobility can be seen as a factor that contributes to the sustainability of the extended family type. This dependence has been observed since the time of the traditional labor migration of carpenters, bricklayers and other master tradesmen as seasonal labor migrants in the Balkans in the 19th century (see, for example, Hristov 2012a).

9.5. Extraordinary Moments in the Daily Life of the Migrants’ Family

The extraordinary moments in the daily life of the relatives of the migrants are related to the welcoming and sending off of the migrants. The welcoming, of course, is associated with positive experiences and looks like a holiday: “The preparations were special. The favorite food had to be baked, the favorite dessert, the children jumped.” (♀, 45—ibid., p. 123); “When Friday came, the big son sat in front of the window and waited for him—is Dad calling? And they knew he would be back on Friday. If not—on Saturday, if not—next Saturday. Well, dinners for guests.” (♀, 50—ibid., p. 145). Sending relatives away, on the other hand, is a cause for negative emotions: “It was difficult for us. Especially for him, (the husband-migrant, AN) when you see him. On Friday he enjoys it the most, on Saturday anyway, but on Sunday he starts to get nervous because he has to separate, but there is no other way.” (♀, 45—ibid., p. 124).

Over time, these events acquire a certain routine, but against the background of the rest of daily life, they still remain special for the expatriate and his family: “Then he gets used to it. He comes—he leaves, did he come—did he leave? It is as if he is not coming home, but a guest has come”. (♀, 50—ibid., p. 15).

9.6. The Role of the Family in the Experience of Labor Mobility

The labor mobility of the Karakachans after 1989 is ambivalently assessed by themselves. Regarding its economic effects, there is no unanimity among the respondents—most are positive, but some believe that working in Greece has not brought them any benefits. On one issue, however, all the stories collected in the field site represent a remarkable consensus. All respondents have a negative assessment of labor mobility when discussing it in the context of the family. Most of them have experienced migration dramatically and they point to the separation of the family as bad, very difficult, nightmarish, etc. This applies to the Karakachans on both sides of the border, the emigrants in Greece and their relatives in Bulgaria, because they are all subjects of such an experience, regardless of their role (mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, children, grandchildren, grandparents). I will quote only four respondents (two women and two men): “Well, my best years were spent abroad. Separate from my children, separate from my grandchildren. The children have grown up and I haven’t felt it at all. I came back and they don’t know me. They forget me in two months. It is difficult to be separate from children. These are your best moments—when you have to enjoy it, go for a walk with him, back and forth. And you stay in Greece.” (♀, 55—ibid., pp. 85–86); “And the hardest part is parting with your loved ones, even though you know you’re leaving for two months. I counted the days. We went to bed and got up with the photos. There were no mobile phones then, we bought cards. You go to the phone, you call, you cry. Very difficult moments.” (♀, 45—ibid., p. 184); “This is the hardest thing in life. Abroad is bad. I do not wish it on anyone.” (♂, 61—ibid., p. 38); “The worst was the divided family. But I had no other choice.” (♂, 55—ibid., p. 295).

It is the described experiences related to family separation that do not allow some respondents to positively assess the economic effects of labor mobility: “If I were in Bulgaria, the salary would be lower, but I would be better. True, I made money here, but you are without your family and that breaks you.” (ibid., p. 294). Most of the respondents even regret the choice they made: “Very difficult moments and it seems to me that if it happens to me today, I will not do it.” (♀, 45—ibid., p. 184); “If I had to choose again now, I would not come (in Greece, AN).” (♀, 50—ibid., p. 296).

10. Conclusions

Since during socialism there were intensive processes integrating the Karakachans into the Bulgarian ethnic group, there are no drastic socio-economic and cultural differences between the Karakachans and the Bulgarians. In this sense, it is suggested that the main characteristics of the roles in the modern Karakachan family do not differ significantly from those in the modern Bulgarian family. It can be seen that in the context of labor mobility the family model of the Karakachans was “transferred” from Bulgaria to Greece and, one might say, from socialism to post-socialism. Moreover, the characteristics of gender-specific roles and responsibilities and their resilience over time can be traced not only to the modern family in the socialist period, but even to the traditional family model characteristic of the late 19th century. The traditional multi-layered workload of the Karakachan woman fits into what Todorova describes as “relative freedom” compared to Muslim women imprisoned at home. These are duties typical of Bulgarian women in the second half of the 19th century: active participation in economic life (in this case wage labor), in the household and in combination with the burdens connected to the birth and upbringing of children (Todorova 2002, p. 31). The impression of the mixed nature of family roles (between traditional and modern) is due to the fact that, in cases where a woman works in Bulgaria, the amount of money she earns is incomparably small in relation to the amount of money a man working in Greece contributes to the family budget. Hence, the economic power of the man increased, but at the expense of his role as a father. Conversely, it increases a woman’s power in the field of parenthood at the expense of her economic power. The role of grandparents in raising small children remains important.

In this line of thinking and in accordance with the stated objectives of the present text, we observe here the two-way tension in the “labor mobility–life world” relation. The first direction represents the impacts of labor mobility on the structures of the life world (time, space, social environment) of social actors: communication between family members is disrupted because they are spatially separated for a certain period of time; children suffer from the periodic absence of one or both parents; the economic power of the man is strengthened at the expense of his role as a father (we observe the opposite with the woman); the role of grandparents in raising children is strengthened; in the everyday culture of the families of labor migrants, special moments appear and are established—the welcoming and sending off of migrants.

The second direction represents the influence of the life world on the appearance of labor mobility and on the way it is experienced by social actors. This influence is visible in the effort of social actors to limit as much as possible the damages caused by labor mobility to the structures of the life world: despite the difficult access to telephones and the high cost of telephone calls, regular remote communication within the family is maintained; children are a major factor in deciding how often, and for how long, one or both parents plan to be subject to labor mobility; the impact of labor mobility on the status of family members is a function of the interdependence of stereotypical notions of gender roles and therefore depends on the social segment in the life world structures of migrants and their families; the fact that the extended family type (the social segment in the Karakachan life world structure) is traditional for the Karakachan is a condition for the possibility of strengthening the role of grandparents in raising children; welcoming and sending off of migrants become special and emotionally charged moments in the daily life of migrant families precisely because of the special place of the family in the social segment in the structures of the life world of migrants and their relatives; all respondents experience dramatically, and negatively evaluate, labor mobility in the context of the family.

The latter is of particular importance to our analysis and deserves further attention. Reiterating, the role of the family in the experience and the negative assessment of labor mobility stands out significantly. The reason is the disruption of the structures of the life world—time, space and its social essence: for a certain period of time, the migrant worker is not in the same place as the most important people for him—the family. Given the understanding that the life world is the field to which a person’s plans and intentions are connected, and they usually include his family and relatives, it is easier to understand why Karakachans make a clear distinction between the world of work and the world of life. This is because their plans are not related to migrant daily life, the main part of which is the work world, in which their relatives are not present at all or are present very little, but to daily life in Bulgaria, which can be defined as real daily life. This is how it is perceived by expatriates—as real, part of their life world, as opposed to the migrant daily life perceived as temporary, unwanted and nothing to do with their life world. This way of living can be easily traced in migrants’ stories about food and housing: food in daily life is above all the usual and favorite types of foodstuff, and food in the migrant’s daily life is a biological necessity and preferably cheap; the accommodation in the migrant’s daily life is just a place to spend the night; the dwelling in the real daily life is home, at home. According to Schütz, it is a question of “a specific way of life: the father’s house and mother tongue, family, beloved, friends, food prepared in a special way, everyday things, traditions and personal habits” (Schuetz 1945, p. 370). Or, as one respondent puts it, “the hardest part was being apart from home. This was the hardest thing for me because I was not at home.” (♂, 59—IEFSEM-AEIM 980-III, p. 67).

In other words, what connects the migrant’s daily life with the life world of the Karakachans are mainly plans, ideas and expectations, and what separates them is the spatial and temporal boundary—the migrant is not here and now with his family, but he intends to be at a certain moment and in a certain periodicity: “I count the days and I can hardly wait to come and see my family” (♂, 64—ibid., pp. 52–53). For all migrants, there is a parallel existence of a real daily life and a temporary, migrant daily life, as in the real daily life the life plans and the family are projected, and the migrant daily life is filled by the work world above all. This is because the world of work and the world of life do not coincide spatially: a person works in one place, but his plans/family are connected to another place. That is why migrants make a very strict distinction between their life and work worlds and experience their participation in the host society only at the level of the work world, which can be expressed through the formula ‘we live here, we work there’. There is no doubt that this formula is based on the family and the desire of migrants to preserve as much as possible the integrity of the structures of their life world and to limit the damages caused by labor mobility.