Situating masculinity, labour migration and care over the life course in Lesotho: foregrounding survivor bias in researching care

Abstract

The literature on later-life care is dominated by a focus on women as carers and older people as receivers, not providers, of care, as well as the analytical disembedding of care from wider social and economic processes. We examine the experiences of care and caring of former labour migrants who had migrated from Lesotho to work in South Africa’s mines in order to examine how these have changed over their lives. The latter demanded the tying of experience into wider social, economic and demographic processes. The research identified a methodological issue in the study of later-life care: survivor bias.

Will the SDGs and the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing Leave Older People Behind?

“…This is despite the evidence that older people care for and work to support both the current and the next generation of workers and in so doing support the national economy. They do so to enable women to work (Vera-Sanso, 2017; Vera-Sanso and Hlabana, 2023, Vullnetari, this volume), enable rural–urban migration (Mtshali, 2016), enable family-based South-North migration (Nguyen et al, 2022) and enable the generation of foreign exchange via international labour migration in global care chains (Yarris, 2017). They address the impacts of HIV/AIDs on family demographies and children’s survival (Oduaran and Oduaran, 2010; Vera-Sanso and Hlabana, 2023) and do so not only for their own families but as adopters/foster parents and community care providers (Hamunakwadi 2011).…”

“…They do so to enable women to work (Vera-Sanso, 2017; Vera-Sanso and Hlabana, 2023, Vullnetari, this volume), enable rural–urban migration (Mtshali, 2016), enable family-based South-North migration (Nguyen et al, 2022) and enable the generation of foreign exchange via international labour migration in global care chains (Yarris, 2017). They address the impacts of HIV/AIDs on family demographies and children’s survival (Oduaran and Oduaran, 2010; Vera-Sanso and Hlabana, 2023) and do so not only for their own families but as adopters/foster parents and community care providers (Hamunakwadi 2011). Yet due to ageist assumptions about what older people should be doing, rather than recognizing older people’s right to and involvement in development, older people are largely invisible in development discourse and institutionally marginalized in national statistics.…”