Til death do us part? End-of-life care for ageing Western husbands in Thailand

Abstract

After a few decades of large-scale transnational marriages and migration of Thai women to countries in the Global North, the phenomenon has matured and Western-Thai married couples have aged, particularly the men who tend to be older than their Thai wives. This article examines the understudied topic of Western man – Thai woman couples in their old age, focusing on those who decide to spend their late life in Thailand. Ageing in Thailand as non-citizens, many Western husbands fall through the net of social protection and rely on their Thai spouses as the only source of care. This study examines the implications of caring for frail Western husbands on Thai wives, drawing on biographical narrations of three Thai women. Located at the intersection of local and global care configurations, Thai wives are expected to perform the gendered role of spousal care givers with little support from either sending or receiving states. With different life trajectories and resources, the women do not engage with this gendered expectation in the same way, leading to different decisions on end-of-life care for their Western husbands. Their stories speak to the complexity of ageing, care arrangement and social protection in the context of global mobility.