Tuning care relations between migrant caregivers and the elderly in Singapore

Abstract

The literature on care relations and eldercare has directed attention towards recognising the interdependence between ‘carer’ (familial caregiver or home support worker) and the ‘cared for’ (the older person). Such an approach gives attention to the contingencies and entanglements that shape the relationships among differently positioned members of care dyads. Drawing on in‐depth and ‘go‐along’ interviews, we examine how relations between migrant caregivers and their non‐migrant elderly charges in Singapore are spatially negotiated – formulated, sustained and reworked – on an everyday basis through Alfred Schütz's framework of intersubjective ‘tuning’. Owing to the unequal ways that migrant caregivers are positioned within Singapore society, moments of positive family‐like regard towards them are almost always preceded/superseded by forms of negativity and vice versa. The employer–employee care dyad is therefore best understood as a relational process that requires constant ‘tuning’, as the elderly employer needs care which no one else will provide, while the employee needs the job in order for the migration gamble to succeed. The paper concludes by drawing together the spatial and temporal insights that the conceptual approach of ‘tuning’ brings to analyses of care relations.

Temporariness and Post-Migration Adaptation of Older Migrants: The Case of Chinese Grandparenting Migrants in Singapore

“…We also carried out go-along interviews with a subset of respondents (n = 10), accompanying respondents as they carried out daily and caregiving activities outside their homes, to see how they performed grandparenting duties and routine activities in Singapore. Through this method, we could better observe the “hidden” cues or habits which might be omitted during in-depth interviews, as well as the interactions between respondents and their grandchildren, family, friends, and local residents (Liew et al 2020, 5). This method stimulated other topics of conversation prompted by encounters with “meanings and connections to the surrounding environment” (Evans and Jones 2011, 849), making these ethnographic data useful for discovering the activities and strategies that grandparenting migrants undertook to facilitate their adaptation to their post-migration life.…”

Untitled

“…Differences in motivation for working in elderly care depending on the origin of the migrant are also shown in a study made in Great Britain (Hussein et al, 2013). Another issue analysed is the working conditions of migrant workers in elderly care (Chau et al, 2018;Figueiredo et al, 2018;Fisher, 2021;Liew et al, 2020;van Hooren, 2012).…”