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Paper short abstract:

Among transnational Papua New Guineans, caring tasks are valued as a matter of private relational kinship. This paper brings the state into analytical focus by examining the 'soft' regulation of the 'private' production and circulation of care between Australia and PNG.

Paper long abstract:

A common argument found among Papua New Guineans in Australia regarding transnational care for the elderly is that the domain of kinship is the appropriate realm for such care. According to this vision, it is in the domestic moral economy that value is created through virtuous care work. Thus, transnational Papua New Guineans often seek to avoid state funded services, preferring to look after their own aged kin and friends.

In the light of this vision of caring as involving private relational kinship, this paper brings the state and the public sphere back into analytical focus as 'soft' regulators of this predominantly 'private' transnational production and circulation of care between Australia and PNG.

We argue that an overly exclusive distinction between the state and private caring oversimplifies the moral economy of caring in transnational communities and replicates unproductive dualisms of cultural and nation state difference. We look at how carers have encountered the regulatory regimes (concerning carers' visas, transfers of the dead and sick etc) of both Australia and PNG and how state agents contribute to the creation of value in this moral economy.

Transnational Papua New Guinean carers engage in complex work to traverse the regulatory regimes of both states. In turn, state officials, work to respond to the demands for them to care about the carers' concerns. This work by carers and state officials is part of transnational care relations and creates opportunities both for more unified, and at times more fragmented, fields of caring to emerge.