Paper short abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic examples of migrating Indian families of nurses and their aging parents, this paper proposes the concept of “transnational care collectives” to make explicit the technological relationality through which transnational families enact elder care across boarders.

Paper long abstract:

Everyday digital technologies play a crucial role for sustaining care for families which are spread across multiple countries. Beyond facilitating care, how do these devices shape it? I propose the concept of “transnational care collectives” to describe how digital technologies participate in enacting elder care at a distance. This notion arises from long-term ethnographic fieldwork among transnational families of migrating nurses from Kerala, South India. In India, good elder care is associated with practices that demand physical proximity, such as intergenerational co-residence and food sharing. I argue that migrating children do not care less because they are physically far away from their parents, but that the meanings and practices of good elder care become transformed, a process which is importantly shaped by digital technologies. Frequent calling transpires as a key practice of such care, not only to alleviate loneliness, but also to manage life-limiting health conditions such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). This became particularly transparent during the Covid19 pandemic when travelling was restricted and the children’s involvement with their parents’ healthcare through smartphones could be a matter of life and death. Additionally, digital technologies not only afforded older adults to stay connected with their family members, but also to enact care for their children and grandchildren living far away. Thorough time and external circumstances, the dynamic within transnational care collectives may therefore shift in surprising ways: while older adults were considered the most vulnerable and in need of care, digital devices afforded them to be carers too.