Loretta Baldassar

Transnational Families and Aged Care: The Mobility of Care and the Migrancy of Ageing

This paper is an ethnographic exploration of a seldom-discussed ‘micro’ dimension of transnational studies, the practices of long-distance family relations and aged care. The importance of time as a key variable in transnational research is demonstrated through comparisons of the care exchanges of three cohorts of Italian migrants in Australia and their kin in Italy. A focus on ‘transnationalism from below’, the more quotidian and domestic features of transmigrant experience, highlights the importance of considering the role of homeland kin and communities in discussions of migration. The analysis of transnational care-giving practices illustrates that migrancy is sometimes triggered by the need to give or receive care rather than the more commonly assumed ‘rational’ economic motivations. Transnational lives are thus shaped by the ‘economies of kinship’, which develop across changing state (‘macro’), community (‘meso’) and family migration (‘micro’) histories, including, in particular, culturally constructed notions of ‘ideal’ family relations and obligations, as well as notions of ‘successful’ migration and ‘licence to leave’.

TRANSNATIONAL FAMILIES AND THE PROVISION OF MORAL AND EMOTIONAL SUPPORT: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TRUTH AND DISTANCE

This article is an ethnographic analysis of transnational family links between adult migrant children living in Australia and their kin in Italy, from the 1950s to the present. A key focus of the article is the persistence of bonds of emotion across distance. Drawing on Finch and Masons research on caregiving relationships and Hochschilds work on emotional labour, it explores both the positive experiences as well as the tensions associated with the transnational exchange of moral and emotional support. The findings confirm the perseverance of bonds of emotion across distance and thus challenge arguments about the declining bonds within translocal families as a result of globalising processes. The role that new communication technologies play in sustaining these bonds is offered as a possible explanation to account for the apparent increase in the frequency of transnational emotional interaction over time. The article also calls for further work on the influence of physical co-presence or absence on emotional interaction over distance.

Transnational Family-work Balance: Experiences of Australian Migrants Caring for Ageing Parents and Young Children across Distance and Borders

Abstract How are work and family balanced across national borders and distances? Are there unique features to these transnational balancing acts, or are they simply the same stories being reproduced on a global scale? We use qualitative interview data from migrants who live with their dependent children in Australia, and who simultaneously care for their ageing parents in Italy and Ireland, to explore points of similarity and difference in the balance of family and work at the local and transnational levels. We argue that, while the gendered dimensions are largely reproduced, there are some important points of dissimilarity in both the strategies adopted and the meanings attached to the negotiation of family-work balance in transnational contexts. These stories provide interesting new insights into the broader literature on the balance of family and work, highlighting the important role of culturally-specific models of family and care.

Tracking Transnationalism: Migrancy and its Futures

In this introduction to the special issue we argue that a reconsideration of the notion of ‘migrancy’ can add greater emphasis to a particular methodological terrain within the burgeoning literature on transnationalism. The legacy of anthropological work on migrancy in southern Africa and the more recent use of the term as a trope in the ‘postmodern’ world by academics in cultural studies raise three intertwined features of a migrancy perspective that we feel should be central to interpreting contemporary transnational practices. First, we suggest that migrancy privileges movement and, as such, that greater attention be paid to the interconnection between movement in both space and time in transnational practices. Second, a focus on migrancy requires that we decentre the nation and consider the agency of migrants. Third, migrancy forces us to consider power inequalities, both those articulated through the state, and more subtle forms, such as the unequal power of discourses or knowledges in the confrontation of difference and the construction of otherness. Each of the articles in this special issue seeks to track transnational practices with these considerations in mind.

Too sick to move: distant ‘crisis’ care in transnational families

This paper examines the crisis of acute and chronic illness, death, and dying in transnational families. These are the stages in the family life-course when physical co-presence is required to deliver hands-on care and intimate emotional support for the sick family member. It is a time when distant kin feel they need ‘to be there’, including for their own sense of well-being. This period of ‘crisis’ (in the anthropological sense) makes visible all of the impediments to transnational family caregiving that often remain hidden during those periods when ‘routine’ forms of distant care are adequate. Of particular relevance are the macro-level factors generated by national borders and the policies that define them, including those that govern employment, travel, visa, health, and aged care provisions. It is in these family life phases of crisis that nation-state structures can work to constrain individual agency and rights, making compellingly evident the growing need for transnational structures and policy. At issue are the largely invisible (in a policy sense) but increasingly common micro-level responses of family and individuals that characterize ‘crisis distant care’, which are characterized by the urgent need to visit and to intensify use of ICTs. The paper examines the experiences of migrants living in Australia who are trying to care for acutely unwell family members abroad.

Aging in place in a mobile world: New media and older people’s support networks

This Focus Topic brings together an analysis of cross-cutting fields of critical importance for the future: aging, migrant transnationalism, and new media. While each of these fields has prompted vast literatures, their intersections remain surprisingly under-acknowledged. Yet, it is at these intersections that a significant social transformation is currently underway that requires attention from researchers, policy makers, and service providers engaging with older populations. It is now common knowledge that population aging is a significant and growing issue for many developed nations around the world, raising important questions about how to best accommodate the needs and opportunities of large numbers of older people, comprising a larger proportion of the population (Ezeh, Bongaarts, & Mberu, 2012; Lutz, Sanderson, & Scherbov, 2008). One common response to this issue by policy makers has been to explore strategies to promote and support “aging in place,” by improving the ability of older people to remain living independently in their own homes and local communities, regardless of age, income, or ability level (Hillcoat-Nalletamby & Ogg, 2014; Vasunilashorn et al., 2012). Studies of aging in place have demonstrated the benefits that can be gained from facilitating people’s engagement in their local neighborhoods and communities, including the prevention of social isolation that might result from reduced physical mobility. This has the advantage of reducing the costs of aged care and fulfilling the goals and aims of many older people to remain in their own homes, especially those living in western countries. However, the emphasis on what services and facilities are required in local neighborhoods or communities to support healthy aging in place tends to overlook the increasing role of migration, mobility, and new media in the lives of older people. It is now clear that more and more people are living “mobile lives” (Elliott & Urry, 2010) as a result of international and intra-national, permanent and temporary forms of migration and movement. Indeed, many of the developed nations that are experiencing population aging also have large – and aging – migrant populations. Aged migrants include both people who arrived in countries of settlement as young adults in the twentieth century as well as those relocating to establish new lives in their retirement in the twenty-first century. For these populations, “aging in place” is not a simple formula. It is not always clear in which “place” older migrants are willing or able to live as they age. While many elderly migrants

Mobilities and Communication Technologies: Transforming Care in Family Life

In this chapter, I argue that any discussion of migration and mobilities in contemporary family life leads directly to an analysis of the role of new media and communication technologies in sustaining relationships across distance. Using ethnographic case studies that highlight different types of care exchange in diverse families, I examine a series of propositions about how a migration, mobilities and communication technologies lens helps us to re-examine and revalue care in migrant and ‘mobile’ family life. A care circulation framework is presented as a methodological tool that helps to avoid the implicit normative valuing of certain types of care, and caregiving relationships, over others. The chapter concludes with some reflections on the limits of distant care and policy implications.

Beyond "Just Being There": Teaching Internationalization at Home in Two Qualitative Methods Units.

Study-abroad and international-student programs are commonly understood to transform their participants into “global citizens” possessing “cross-cultural competencies.” Similar benefits are anticipated from “internationalization at home”—defined as any on-campus, internationally related activity—whereby international students engage with and thus enrich the lives of domestic students. In this article, we reflect on a research project tied to two coursework units, in which largely domestic undergraduate students undertake qualitative research with or about international students. When developing the project, we postulated that the researcher–informant engagement that characterizes qualitative research mirrors that required for effective domestic–international student engagement. In describing engagement, we utilize research on experiential learning, which suggests that experiences can become knowledge only through reflection, analysis, and synthesis. We examine the ways that cross-cultural engagement and experiential learning gained through students’ qualitative research might lead to the realization of the anticipated benefits of internationalization at home.

Chinese immigrant youth identities and belonging in Prato, Italy: exploring the intersections between migration and youth studies

This article explores the experiences of young people of Chinese background in Prato (Italy). Despite significant social exclusion, young Chinese develop a sense of belonging to Prato by creating local, translocal and transnational affiliations and interconnections. These relationships contribute to making an often overtly hostile local reality, liveable and meaningful. A central aim of this article is to examine the intersection between migration studies and youth studies. The former tend to focus on the processes of identity formation featuring ethnic background, hence the label ‘second generation’. In contrast, the latter tend to foreground age- and generation-specific practices of belonging that may extend beyond ethnic identification, hence the focus on ‘youth’. We argue that bringing migration and youth studies together – by complicating notions of home and host, migrant and local identity and belonging – helps us to better understand how young people are managing multiplicity and mobility (and situatedness and stasis/fixity).

Ageing in transnational contexts: transforming everyday practices and identities in later life

ABSTRACT This Special Issue on ‘Ageing in Transnational Contexts: Transforming Everyday Practices and Identities in Later Life’ extends our understanding of how ageing is experienced in transnational contexts. It focuses on how everyday lives and identities in older age are being negotiated by individuals who have migration histories or who are affected by the mobilities of others in their lives. In the introduction, we situate our approach within an emerging strand of research investigating the inter-related processes of ageing and transnational migration. We also present the seven empirical case studies that constitute the issue and discuss their collective contribution for the research field.