'Doing Gendered Age': older mothers and migrant daughters negotiating care work in rural Lao PDR and Thailand

• Published in: Third world quarterly Vol. 34; no. 10; pp. 1896 - 1910
• Main Author: Huijsmans, Roy
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Routledge 01.11.2013; Routledge Journals; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Age; Constructivism; Daughters; Demographic Transition Theory; Demographics; Females; Gender; Labor market; Labour market; Laos; Migrants; MIGRATION, SOCIAL REPRODUCTION AND SOCIAL PROTECTION; Mothers; Negotiation; Neoliberalism; Noncitizens; Norms; Older people; Opposite Sex Relations; Rural Areas; Social Interaction; Social security; Structural change; Thailand; Welfare State; Working Women; Thailand
• ISSN: 0143-6597; 1360-2241
• DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2013.851952

In this article I analyse the reconfiguration of the intersection of relations of gender and age manifesting between older mothers and their migrant daughters. For this I study the negotiation of care work between differently positioned women, drawing on material from Lao PDR and Thailand. Theoretically I draw on the constructivist notion of 'doing gendered age', which allows us to integrate the performance of gender-age subject positions with structural changes, most notably the generational dynamics of rural transformation, an expanding neoliberal labour market and demographic transition. I conclude that gender-age subject positions hold women accountable for 'doing gendered age' in a particular manner. This forms an important basis for informal mechanisms of social protection. However, these subject positions are neither pre-given nor voluntary but are enacted through everyday social interaction and subject to change.