Ageing, migration and new media: The significance of transnational care

Abstract

The experiences of ageing for today's older people present a striking contrast to those of the past. They are entering older age in a world that is characterised by complex mobilities and flows, in which large numbers of people are ageing in countries other than those in which they were born and often at a distance from their closest family members. At the same time, new media are providing unprecedented opportunities to bring distant places and people together in new ways. These dramatic shifts are transforming the context within which older people provide and receive care. In this paper, we argue that it has become both necessary and urgent for researchers and practitioners of ageing to reconsider their emphasis on the proximate care networks of older people, by incorporating closer attention to the increasingly global, transnational and virtual contexts within which ageing and aged care now routinely takes place.

Revisiting the Importance of Distance in Transnational Family Lives: <i>How and why Danish migrant parents transmit ‘Danishness’ to their children settled in Australia</i>

“…In the past few years, a growing body of literature on ageing in transnational contexts has emerged (e.g. Horn & Schweppe 2016; Näre, Walsh & Baldassar 2017;Walsh & Näre 2016;Wilding & Baldassar 2018), proposing that various aspects of ageing, life course and certain life events restructure transnational family relationships. This study indicates that migrants' emotional hardships and efforts to transmit 'Danishness to second generations may not only have a gendered but also a temporal aspect to it.…”

Older People's Digital Lives

“…The paper builds upon a growing study on the intersections of care practices, wellbeing and digital media in the migration context (Baldassar et al, 2007;Wilding & Baldassar, 2018). It acknowledges that support networks of elderly people play a huge role in the uptake of mobile technologies among elderly people (Baldassar & Wilding, 2019;Baldassar, Wilding, Boccagni, & Merla, 2017).…”

Stories of Transnationalism: nǐ kàn wǒ, wǒ kàn nǐ (你看我, 我看你)

“…In the context of my research, this paper discusses theories of transnationalism, Wilding and Baldassar's (2018) global ageing, Duany's (2011) transnational activities and transnationalism as practice, and the transformative force of the symbolic phone call, which takes place in a polymedia environment. These factors all facilitate the emergence of the transmigrant identity and one's navigation of human connection and belonging amidst the acceleration of interconnectivity in the globalised world.…”