Transnational migration, local specificities and reconfiguring eldercare through ‘market transfer’ in Kerala, India

Abstract

ABSTRACT Select research has indicated that widespread migration is catalysing the novel reimagining of eldercare and transformative changes in the local eldercare economy in the Global South. Yet research on ageing and migration from the South has largely focused on transnational care practices of providing emotional support and economic remittances. Drawing on ethnographic research among the privileged and affluent community of Syrian Christians of Kerala, India, I argue for a diverse and complex Southern reconfiguration of eldercare at the intersection of migration, which also includes ‘market transfer’ of proximate care services as reciprocal filial care. Further, the paper illuminates how specificities of migration, ageing and care are locally nuanced and shape diverse transnational care practices. In turn, transnational care strategies employed by the migrants to overcome distances transform the local eldercare economy and (re)produce class-stratified eldercare spaces. Through the study of a privileged community, the paper highlights the increasing marketisation of the eldercare landscape in the sending countries of the South and contributes to furthering diversified understandings of the ageing-migration nexus.