Transnational ageing and “care technologies”: Chinese grandparenting migrants in Singapore and Sydney

• Published in: Population space and place Vol. 26; no. 7
• Main Authors: Ho, Elaine Lynn‐Ee, Chiu, Tuen Yi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hoboken Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01.10.2020
• Subjects: Aging; Borders; Caregivers; Governmentality; Information technology; Migrants; Migration; Social meaning; Transnationalism; Singapore
• ISSN: 1544-8444; 1544-8452
• DOI: 10.1002/psp.2365

Transnational grandparenting examines the care that grandparents provide across borders, recreating familyhood. This paper investigates how Information Communication Technologies (ICT) mediate ageing in localised and transnational contexts. We focus on grandparenting migrants from the People's Republic of China who moved temporarily to Singapore and Sydney, Australia. We introduce the concept of “care technologies” to explicate two dimensions of governmentality. The first dimension considers how governmentality underpins care relations that extend from the individual and family to wider migration, care, and welfare regimes. The second dimension considers how ICT mediates care relations that are situated in place (i.e., localised) and those that extend across borders (i.e., transnational). These two dimensions of care technologies are intertwined: while ICT is given social meaning through care relations, it is their co‐constitution—seemingly offering possibilities of/for care—that entrench the governmentality effects of regimes that position grandparenting migrants as transient older carers.