Family care across diverse cultures: Re-envisioning using a transnational lens

Abstract

In an increasingly globalized world, the importance of developing a more culturally complex understanding of family care has been clearly identified. This study explored family care across three different cultural groups - Chinese, South Asian, and Latin American - living in a metropolitan, Pacific-West, Canadian city. In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with 29 family members from one of the three family groups exploring how they practiced ‘care’ for their aging, often frail, relatives. The importance of conceptualizing family care as a transnational, collective undertaking emerged from the outset as critical for understanding care practices in all three cultural communities. Three themes identified contributed to this conceptualization: the need to broaden the understanding of family care; the centrality of geographic mobility, and the need to rethink the location of aging and consider its relationship to mobility; and the use of technology by extended family networks to facilitate continuity and connection. An over-riding notion of ‘flow’ or fluid movement, rather than a fixed, static arrangement, emerged as critical for understanding family care. This perspective challenges the dominant approach to studying family care in gerontology that generally conceptualizes family care practice as one local primary caregiver, often female, with some support from other family members. Understanding family care from a transnational lens builds support for the importance of a feminist Ethics of Care lens and has important implications for policy and service delivery practices.

Caregiving Across International Borders: a Systematic Review of Literature on Transnational Carer-Employees

“…This finding challenges the notion that international caregiving practices and experiences are uni-directional in which only adult children provide care to their ageing parents/grandparents in the home country. Thus, a “culturally complex” awareness of family care requires a transnational lens that integrates the dimensions of transnational caregiving simultaneously from both sides (the host country and home country) (Andruske & O’Connor, 2020 , p. 54). Yet, we know very little about the financial contribution and emotional labour of parents and grandparents in the resettlement of immigrant children.…”

Limitations in representative sampling of unpaid caregivers from minority ethnocultural backgrounds in a population-based survey

“…However, this term may not be ubiquitous across ethnocultural groups. There is growing understanding that, for some Asian, Latin American, and African diasporas, perceptions of activities that may otherwise constitute care may not be perceived as care, but an inherited familial expectation rooted in tradition and family hierarchy [18,19]. Relatedly, care recipients from minority ethnocultural backgrounds, particularly older adults, may live in multigenerational households.…”

Transnational caring in times of COVID-19: The experiences of visible minority immigrant carer-employees

“…The dual identity of being an immigrant and a carer means technology allows inter-country families to keep in touch and simultaneously fulfill emotional caregiving duties. There is an increasing reliance on technology in transnational family care ( Andruske, & O'Connor, 2020 ), especially during the pandemic as seen in Ekwonye et al’s (2021) study on the impact of COVID-19 on African immigrants in the United States. Technological access was particularly important for immigrant TCEs to provide care and maintain relationships with family since they could not visit their countries of origin due to travel restrictions ( Sethi, 2022 ).…”