As two of the major countries that received Syrians during the exodus led by the civil war, Turkey and Germany have responded to this wave of migration with different asylum and migration management schemes. These responses have created a significant disparity between the family constellations of Syrian refugees in these countries and have produced different outcomes at the intersections of familial care arrangements and citizenship statuses. This article foregrounds kinship as a system of relatedness founded on gendered care practices, and the ‘kin-contract’ as the patriarchal scaffolding of familial entitlements and obligations in the lives of Syrian migrants. Based on ethnographic research in Istanbul and narrative research in Berlin and Leipzig, it compares the effects of the migration and citizenship regimes of Turkey and Germany on the experience and consequences of this ‘kin-contract’ in refugees’ lives.