 Welcome once again. Let's talk about social inclusion. As Lithuanian families spread across borders, their relationships are being reshaped, especially among siblings. My guest today, Ima Budkinaite Machikine, explores how sibling dynamics are changing in the context of migration, highlighting the gendered expectations of support and the impact of multi-local interactions. So this conversation today with Ima, uncovers the unique type of solidarity that emerges from these cross-border family practices. Ima, welcome to our episode. Hello everyone. Ima, tell us about the overall importance of studying sibling relationships in your article. So researching sibling relationships is important because these types of relationships are fewer over time. So generally we see verticalization of families all across in Europe at least. A number of us have only one sibling or no siblings at all. So that's why these relationships are more precious, so to say. And at the same time, we witness the increasing longevity. So we have more elderly people and more mobile people. So how these few familial ties between the siblings can be maintained across the distance and how they can be activated in terms of support for an elderly parent, which can be not so straightforward if you are alone or if your sister or brother is very far away from you. I read your article and you wrote that sibling relationships were rarely the center of attention of scholars that research family lives that they usually are overlooked, understudied. So was this the void in research that you wanted to address? Indeed, and that's a void, not particular to Lithuania. In population scholarship or translational families, we usually see children-parent relationships. So it's either a young child remaining in the country of origin and their parent living abroad, or is it the adult child living abroad and the elderly parent back in the country of origin? But then this horizontal ties are kind of invisible, taken for granted, they are just there. And as our siblings are with us for entire life or very long time, together, these relationships really matter and how they evolve over time has to be looked into individually but also in research. A promising background. So let us know the most important findings, the insights of your study. One of the things that the study looked into was what are the support expectations towards siblings, depending on the distance between them. And what we can see that siblings are way more important than other kin relations and also non-kin relations. Yes, if one would need support, parent, father, mother are very important as well for everyone. But then the next come siblings, particularly if we look in the situations where support is needed when the parents are getting older and their health is not so strong. So they emerge as very important in terms of from whom people would expect support and regardless of the distance, even when siblings live apart far away, they are still seen as potentially people who could help. What other important finding is looking at returnees to Lithuania and a number of them reported in the quantitative study that they had no siblings themselves. So returning to the country of origin was partly related to their parents' care needs. And if you are alone living abroad, that's kind of a question that more and more Lithuanians will have to ask themselves either to return or elderly parent to move abroad because the population is aging in terms of migration patterns. What we also saw that there is some detached relationships among siblings. However, altogether, regardless of the distance, relationships remain emotionally close. And this new type of solidarity that was discovered when we were doing the topologies of different solidarity dimensions. So support, emotional closeness, similarity of opinions, communication patterns emerge that people who have migration experience start to feel different from their siblings, but that does not prevent them to still feel close and still live nearby and still choose to return to live with their family of origin. However, we have to recognize that these relationships are already different. They are shaped by migration experiences and a gap in life choices and what people saw that they cannot reconcile. They feel very different in terms of their opinions and possibly choices in life. And what are some practical implications and consequences of this findings? The fact that Lithuanians see their siblings as a very important support source has policy implications in the long-term. So as we have fewer and fewer siblings and families will continue unless there are big demographic changes, families will become smaller. So the pressures on those who remain or those who were brought to return to the country will be greater and that may require additional support for them and specific schemes allowing the flexible movement between the countries, particularly in contexts where we end up in immobility regime like we had the COVID pandemic and all the borders are closed. So what do you do if you are this sole child living abroad and your father or mother needs support? So there has to be some specific paths for seeing for these emergency situations as well recognizing that this type of care is maintained sometimes across the borders. And for individuals on the individual level, it may also affect the choices of people in Lithuania whether to move abroad altogether if they are the only person in their family or maybe to move together with their parents and so on. So this might result in different migration strategies in the future having in mind family composition changes. Of course. Coming back to the academic realm of the conversation. So what do we need? What's ahead of us now? More case studies of horizontal relationships as you mentioned, more art of geography. So what's next? So indeed more focus on horizontal ties is the next step. And there are studies of the last few years that are paying more attention to this relationship type. And while our study looked at it from quantitative perspective, so we can see what are the patterns of these relationships but we cannot talk about actual experiences. So next step for us is also to dive into the qualitative data, the life stories that we have. So how actually these things are shaped out. What happens in those complex situations? And the other research need would be to make sure that we have more longitudinal research because we have to recognize that and every study that's taken once, it takes just a picture of that family situation, that particular moment of time and our relationships evolve over the life course. So we might have very good sibling relationships now but we may fall out in the future and then that actual need comes much later in life. So if you don't trace these relationships over time, we keep having just a picture but not a complete movie. So that type of research is really needed and then not very popular due to financial and timely constraints. Some tips for academic research. If you had to, this has been a straight on point episode, but if you had to sum your conversation in one or two sentences, the punchline of this conversation, what would it be? So increasing global mobility will affect our lives, our life choices and will make our relationships between our siblings different. But the strongest bond, emotional closeness and interest in each other lives will remain. So despite the differences, we can still expect family relationships and relationships to remain strong. Great episode Irma, thank you very much. Thank you, sorry for getting stuck a bit. No worries. For those who are watching us on YouTube, you can find all the resources, all the materials of this conversation on the Let's Talk About Social Inclusion website including the study that Irma just shared with us. You can also listen to this episode alternatively wherever you get your podcast and you can subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Twitter at Koji Tatu LTA.