Caring from Afar: Asian H1B Migrant Workers and Aging Parents

Abstract

With the growth in engineering/technology industries, the United States has seen an increase in the arrival of highly skilled temporary migrant workers on H1B visas from various Asian countries. Limited research exists on how these groups maintain family ties from afar including caring for aging parents. This study explores the experiences and challenges that Asian H1B workers face when providing care from a distance. A total of 21 Chinese/Taiwanese, Korean, and Indian H1B workers participated in in-depth qualitative interviews. Key findings indicate that despite distance, caring relationships still continue through regular communications, financial remittances, and return visits, at the same time creating emotional, psychological, and financial challenges for the workers. Findings highlight the need for further research in understanding how the decline of aging parent's health impacts the migrants' adjustment and health in the United States.

Support From Migrant Children and Depressive Symptoms Among Chinese Older Adults in Transnational Families

“…Emotional support from migrant children consistently plays an important role in maintaining connections with their family members in the home country ( Baldassar, 2007 ; Baldock, 2003 ; Lee, Chaudhuri, & Yoo, 2015 ; Sun, 2012 ). Advanced communication technology makes frequent contact feasible and affordable for migrant children and their parents across countries, and the information of communication technologies could create a sense of co-presence, which may facilitate reciprocities and obligations across distance ( Baldassar, 2016 ).…”

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

“…A transnational lens draws attention to a number of areas that require further exploration and development. First, consistent with the work of Baldassar, Nedflcu, Merla, and Wilding (2016) ; Wilding, 2006 ; Wilding & Baldassar, 2018 ), and others (see for example, Ahlin, 2020 ; Lee, Lee et al, 2015 ), the promises and challenges of information communication technology (ICT) for facilitating a more holistic understanding and enactment of ‘family care’ emerged as a critical aspect of family care that requires further examination. Our findings lend texture to Wilding's (2006) suggestion that technologies blur lines of imagined proximity and physical separation as families creatively incorporate diverse types of technologies into their provision of care to meet cultural, social expectations, and health needs in these contexts that tend to be particular to specific points in time.…”

“…Transnational care or ‘distant care’ has received little recognition in the area of policy development ( Baldassar & Merla, 2014 ), and yet, as identified by at least one participant, Ignacio, in our study, policies and practices, for instance around travel, may deter families from being able to care and provide culturally appropriate support in the way that they want while residency requirements may act as barriers for use of health and social care support services. Future research is needed to understand how diverse health and social policies in both the home country as well as the country of immigration impact family care ( Lee et al, 2015 ).…”

“…Findings continue to demonstrate the complexity of understanding these family processes, and Miette Sagbakken et al (2018) concluded by recognizing the importance of considering both the availability of kin members but also their understanding of obligation and reciprocity and how that might reflect their embeddedness in more than one society. Despite its promise, however, this body of literature is only rarely addressed in the broader gerontological work on family care and a ‘substantial void’ in the caregiving literature remains in relation to understanding cultural values and processes ( Lee, Chaudhuri, & Yoo, 2015 ), especially in relation to examining the experiences of non-Western immigrants ( Dhar, 2011b ; Wilding & Baldassar, 2018 ; Zhou, 2012 , Zhou, 2015 ).…”

Social Welfare and Remittances to Older Adults in Two Caribbean Cities

“…To date, much of the research examining migration and remittances to older adults in developing countries has focused on rural‐urban migrant children (King and Vulltenari, ; Kreager, ; Guo et al., ) and is therefore limited to patterns of intergenerational support among internal migrants. Nonetheless, there is increasing attention to transnational intergenerational support (Lunt, ; Vogel and Sommer, ; Zimmer et al., ; Lee et al., ). Despite the array of scholarship on the determinants and impact of remittances on households and communities within the LAC region (Conway and Cohen, ; Orozco, , ; Fajnzylber and López, ; Thomas‐Hope, ), few studies have specifically examined remittance receipt among older adults (De Vos et al., ; Gomes, ).…”