“The clock is ticking”: (dis)orientations to ageing and end-of-life care in advanced capitalism and care directives

Abstract

This article engages Italian migrant experiences and enactments of futurity to problematize neoliberal anticipatory approaches to ageing and care. Stepping beyond the focus on atomized and agentic individuals and a singular imagined future defined by notions of advancement and progress, sistemazione (home, future, and security) offers ways of building alternative and relational futures within times and spaces of shared precarity. We draw on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with Italian migrant families living in Adelaide, and a critical analysis of objects as “orienting devices,” to consider how a family heirloom, a 26-face handmade Italian clock made from the physical remnants of World War II, offers new ways of imagining care within spaces of ruin.