Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the shifting contours of ageing experiences and intergenerational care circulation in transnational Indian families. It explores the increased usage of ICTs and rising digital market, as other-than-human agents in shaping and re-shaping ageing and care practices.

Paper long abstract:

The proposed paper examines the shifting contours and experience of ageing in the light of increased usage of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) and rising digital market for old age care in India. The paper is contextualized within the framework of the intergenerational care circulation in transnational Indian families. On the one hand increased life longevity and decreasing fertility rates are resulting in a rising proportion of aging populations (Census of India 2011; LASI 2020). On the other hand, post liberalization and globalization of the Indian economy, transnational migration for work has seen a phenomenal rise (Ugargol et al., 2016; Visaria 2001). In a country where elderly care was largely embedded in the patriarchal joint family (Jadhav. et al., 2013), these developments are complicating family based care arrangements for elderly.

In the face of state dispossession of the elderly, market and private institutions are increasingly becoming critical players in the care economy for older persons. More recently, technologically mediated gigified care platforms for elderly care have also emerged to fill the rising care demands of the elderly. Situated within this context, this paper illuminates the experiences of aging in absence of physical care for older persons living alone whose adult children have migrated transnationally. It illustrates the idea of ‘co-presence’ (Baldassar et al. 2016), powered by digital technologies like ICTs and webcams (Ahlin, 2020) and new digital platforms providing care services.

Increasingly there is growing recognition that ICTs and digital platforms are becoming key entities in shaping and re-shaping care practices (Fiast, 1998; Madianou & Miller, 2012b; Nedelcu, 2012). They have been dubbed as ‘technologies of care’ (Wilding 2006) as they generate new possibilities of caring (Hromadzic & Palmberger, 2018), providing advice, sharing stories, and sustaining cultural identities (Nedelcu & Wyss, 2016), expressing emotions across distances (Mendez, Anthony & Guerrero, 2020) and ‘co-creating’ intergenerational virtual spaces (Ahlin & Li, 2019), all in one combined as ways of ageing and care and its future.

References

Ahlin, T. (2020). Frequent callers: “Good Care” with ICTs in Indian Transnational Families. Medical Anthropology, 39(1), 69–82. Routledge publication.

Ahlin, T. & Li, F. (2019). From field sites to field events Creating the field with information and communication technologies (ICTs). Medicine Anthropology Theory, 6(2), 1-24.

Baldassar, L. Nedelcu, M. Merla, L. & Wilding, R. (2016). ICT-based co-presence in transnational families and communities: Challenging the premise of face-to-face proximity in sustaining relationships. Global Networks, 16(2), 133–144.

Census of India. (2011). Report on Post Enumeration Survey.

Faist, T. (1998). Transnational social spaces out of international migration: Evolution, significance, and future prospects. European Journal of Sociology, 39(2), 213-247. Cambridge University Press.

Hromadzic, A. & Palmberger, M. (2018). Care Across Distance: Ethnographic Explorations of Aging and

Migration. Berghahn Books.

Jadhav, A., Sathyanarayana, K. M., Kumar, S. & James, K.S. (2013). Living Arrangements of the Elderly in India: Who lives alone and what are the patterns of familial support? Session 301: Living arrangement and its effect on older people in ageing societies. IUSSP. Busan, Korea.

LASI (Longitudinal Ageing Study in India) Report. (2020). Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India.

Madianou, M. & Miller, D. (2012b). Migration and New Media: Transnational Families and Polymedia. London: Routledge.

Mendez-Luck, C.A., Anthony, K. P., Guerrero, L. R. (2020). Burden and Bad Days Among Mexican-Origin Women Caregivers. J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci, 75(8). 1719-1730.

Nedelcu, M. (2012). Migrants’ New Transnational Habitus: Rethinking Migration Through a Cosmopolitan Lens in the Digital Age. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 38(9), 1339-1356.

Nedelcu, M. & Wyss, M. (2016). ‘Doing family’ through ICT-mediated ordinary co-presence: transnational communication practices of Romanian migrants in Switzerland. Global Networks, 16(2), 202–218.

Ugargol, A. P., Hutter, I., James, K.S. & Bailey, A. (2016). Care Needs and Caregivers: Associations and Effects of Living Arrangements on Caregiving to Older Adults in India. Aging International, 41. 193-213. Springer Publication.

Visaria, P. (2001). Demographics of Aging in India. Economic and Political Weekly. 1967-1975.

Wilding, R. (2006). ‘Virtual’ intimacies? Families communicating across transnational contexts. Global Networks, 6(2), 125–142.