Paper short abstract:

This paper elaborates on the rising necessity to replace informal practices of elderly care by state run structures in Cape Verde. While Cape Verdean families are obliged to search for alternative ways of filling the “care slot”, most families and the elderly in particular are reluctant to make use of this offer.

Paper long abstract:

On Fogo, one of the southern Cape Verdean islands, the fist 'home for the elderly' opened in 2007. This paper elaborates on the rising necessity to replace informal practices of elderly care by formal institutions. On the one hand, Cape Verdean families are obliged to search for alternative ways of filling the "care slot" (Leinaweaver) due to the increasing absence of female members of the middle generation, who work in the care sector of European countries in order to support their families left behind. On the other hand however, the employees of the elderly home report a strong reluctance of families and the elderly in particular to make use of this official offer. This attitude will be explained in two steps:

First, different from the children of absent mothers, who are expected to circulate between different households, an elderly person is understood to belong to the social and physical space of the family's house (kasa). In this sense, an elderly person deserves an adequate form of "acompanhamento", which can only be carried in physical proximity and which sheds light on the functioning of a transnational family. Second, the elderly exercise a strong pressure on their daughters to organize ad adequate form of 'home care', because they fear to be left ("ser abandonado") by their migrant kin. By claiming a particular form and aesthetic of bodily care these elderly struggle against the outcome of the current global crisis, which, in some cases, aggravated the vulnerability of migrants and hence, kept them from articulating elderly care at a distance properly.