'It is normal, that is, difficult': Care obligation and solidarity in Balkan-Swiss families during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This article examines care obligations and family solidarity within Balkan-Swiss families, focusing on adult children living in Switzerland whose ageing parents reside in Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Serbia, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. It highlights how pandemic-related border closures and restrictive Swiss migration laws complicated physical caregiving, emphasizing the role of family solidarity—defined through six dimensions including structural, associative, affective, consensual, functional, and normative solidarity—in sustaining support across distances. The study contextualizes these dynamics within the migration history between the Balkans and Switzerland and reveals that care strategies during the pandemic relied heavily on virtual contact and financial support, while physical visits were limited and emotionally challenging. The authors argue that understanding these cross-border caregiving experiences through the lens of solidarity offers valuable insights for social science discourses and points to the need for structural support addressing migration-related barriers in transnational family care.