Grandparenting migration: Reproduction, care circulations and care ethics across borders
In the context of the One-Child policy in Mainland China, Chinese families which had sent their only child to study abroad are now witnessing their children transition into working life and start their own families overseas. Other young Chinese adults pursued better life opportunities by seeking careers in foreign destinations independently. Singapore and Sydney are two popular destinations for young Chinese families to settle abroad, prompted partly by immigration policies that are aimed at renewing those countries’ own labour force and reproductive capacities. However, young Chinese parents struggle to balance their work and childcare duties abroad. Their parents travel between China and Singapore/Sydney to provide childcare help (i.e. grandparenting migrants). Grandparenting migrants use a range of visas and spatial strategies as the immigration countries exercise restrictive policies towards elderly persons. The transnational care circulations in which they are embedded raise concerns over their eldercare needs later in life since their children intend to remain overseas, disrupting traditional expectations of eldercare in Chinese families. The migration trends described above link population concerns in China to those of the countries where younger migrants have settled, creating multi-generational and transnational care circulations as well as new questions for care responsibilities and care ethics across national contexts.
Date:
28 January 2019, 11:00 (Monday, 3rd week, Hilary 2019)
Venue:
64 Banbury Road, 64 Banbury Road OX2 6PN
Venue Details:
wheelchair accessible
Speaker:
Elaine Lynn-Ee Ho (National University of Singapore)
Organising department:
Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS)
Organisers:
Philip Kreager (Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group, University of Oxford),
Mika Toyota (Rikkyo University),
Xiang Biao (Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Oxford)
Organiser contact email address:
communications@compas.ox.ac.uk
Topics:
Booking required?:
Not required
Cost:
Free
Audience:
Public
Editors:
Nathan Grassi,
Alexis Still
