No abstract

Research on transnational care work has tended to focus on the migration of women for either domestic work or nursing, and the two bodies of work have remained largely separate. In developed countries such as Singapore, however, the high level of female labour force participation alongside a rapidly ageing population has led to the deployment of both groups of migrant care workers to alleviate the impending eldercare crisis. Migrant domestic workers are employed to look after the elderly in private domiciles while foreign healthcare workers provide eldercare in institutions such as nursing homes. Recognizing that the transnational labour migrations of women as domestic and healthcare workers are integrally linked in the care chain, we attempt to bring the two together in this article. We first examine how state policy differentially regulates the entry of these two groups to work in two very different spaces: the domestic space of the home, and the institutional space of nursing homes. Drawing on interviews with employers, we go on to argue that while the institutional mechanisms differ for the groups of care workers employed in these two spaces, Singapore's solution to its eldercare predicament is predicated on ‘othering’ the care worker's body along discourses of gender, nationality and notions of elderly care work as dirty, demanding and demeaning.

PurposeThis article aims to explain how a transnational “retirement industry” in Southeast Asia has emerged recently as a result of interplays between various national and transnational forces, particularly in the domain of elderly care. “Retirement industry” refers to business operations related to the relocation of foreign retirees, primarily Japanese pensioners, who seek affordable social care and alternative retirement life.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is based on extensive documentary studies and multi‐sited ethnographic research from 2004 to date. In‐depth interviews with retirees and relevant agencies were carried out in Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia.FindingsThis article delineates how demographic and economic changes in Japan create demand for the transnational retirement industry, and how Southeast Asian countries actively promote the industry as a national development strategy. As such the boundaries between nation‐state and between the market and the state are simultaneously crossed. The industry opens new transnational routes and spaces and thus further complicates the transnationalization of elderly care in Asia.Originality/valueCurrent research on social welfare remains dominated by methodological nationalism, and this article calls attention to the transnational dimension in understanding recent changes in social care. By engaging the predominant paradigm of “care diamond”, the article shows that how boundaries shift between various care providers within nation states is inextricably related to how borders are crossed between nation states.

No abstract