Historically migrants have been constructed as units of labour and their social reproductive needs have received scant attention in policy and in academic literature. The growth in ‘feminist‐inflected’ migration research in recent decades, has provoked a body of work on transnational care‐giving that poses a challenge to such a construction, at least as it relates to female migrants in general and mothers in particular. Researchers, however, have demonstrated less interest in how migrant men give meaning to and perform their fathering roles. Such neglect is increasingly problematic in the context of rising social, political and academic interest in the significance of fathering in European (and other) societies. With the purpose of making a preliminary contribution to knowledge on migrant men's fathering narratives, practices and projects, this article draws on findings from interviews conducted with recent migrants from Poland to the UK. By focusing on migrant fatherhood, we add to the understanding of transnational care‐giving by illuminating the many parallels between migrant mothering and fathering. Our findings are consistent with much of the literature on transnational mothering, highlighting tensions between breadwinning and parenting and the various strategies fathers deploy to reconcile these tensions. Nevertheless, we find that migrant men's fathering narratives, practices, and projects, while challenging the construction of male migrants as independent and non‐relational, remain embedded within the dominant framework of the gendered division of labour. More uniquely, the article also demonstrates the importance of situated transnational analyses, in this case the institutional arrangements between the UK and European Union new Member States, which gave the Polish migrants privileged labour market access and social rights within the UK's highly differentiated migration regime. This access allowed mobility, settlement and or family reunion according to the migrant's specific circumstances and preferences with respect to the labour market and parenting.

Drawing mainly on qualitative evidence gathered from interviews with migrant handymen and with labour-using households in the UK, this paper analyses how this migration typifies economic and social divisions within Europe and embodies conflicting tensions between economic and social policies at an interpersonal level. By supplying household services, migrant handymen enable labour-using households to alleviate time pressures and conflicts in time priorities arising from tensions between economic expectations regarding working hours and work commitment, and social expectations regarding contemporary ideas of active parenting. Similarly to the outsourcing of feminized domestic labour and care, these tensions are in part resolved for labour-using households by extending class divisions across national boundaries while leaving gender divisions changed but not transformed and in some instances exacerbating work/ life tensions among the migrants. These broad findings are complicated by differential desires and capabilities around fathering practices among fathers in labour-using households and among the migrants, and economic differentiation among the migrant population. Although we cannot tell from our study whether such movement reinforces or redresses uneven development, what we can say is that existing cohesion policies are insufficient to redress uneven development, and individual responses including migration can reinforce existing social divisions. Further, existing social policies for promoting gender equality fail to recognize or redress the deeply embedded gendered norms.European Urban and Regional Studies 17(2) 197-215

In the context of welfare state change and European Union and national debates on activation, this article engages in a systematic analysis of the reconciliation of work and family policies in Poland, and their implications regarding the gendered division of labour. Examination of three areas of reconciliation, that is, childcare services, maternity and parental leaves, and parent-friendly organization of work, reveals strong tensions between the unpaid labour of care and paid market labour. Reconciliation of work and family appears challenging for mothers and fathers alike, but the nature of the problem differs -women face greater obstacles to paid employment and men to involvement in family and care. Assessed against EU prescriptions in this area, Poland's performance is mixed. Based on policy developments and practice, Poland is far from achieving Barcelona targets for the provision of childcare services, it complies with EU regulations on maternity and parental leave arrangements but also compares unfavourably with the member states which provide special arrangements for fathers, and, finally, lags behind employment goals and parent-friendly organization of work. Although participation in the Lisbon Strategy has proved important for raising the visibility of the reconciliation of work and family policies on the national political agenda, recent policy reforms have been either inconsistent or too modest in light of EU policy goals. Therefore, it is too soon to argue that parents' ability to reconcile work and care has improved or that greater equality in the gendered division of labour has been attained.

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