Description
Extant scholarship on ageing tends to portray older adults as care dependents of their adult children and valorises experiences of ageing in place. This presentation shifts the focus to grandparenting migrants from Mainland China who undertake regular transnational shuttles to provide care for their grandchildren and adult children who are living in Singapore. Through the care work they carry out, such grandparenting migrants contribute to the social reproduction needs of immigration countries, even though they are only given temporary visiting visas by the Singapore government. The presentation addresses two key themes: (1) the grandparenting migrants’ experiences of “ageing across borders” in a foreign land, and (2) the types of interactions and social spaces that they share with local older Singaporeans. With Singapore being a country consisting of a majority Chinese population, one might expect that cultural similarities would facilitate their adaptation. Through this discussion, the presentation shows how the Mainland Chinese grandparents engage in place-making practices as temporary migrants, but also reveals the politics of co-ethnic relations in Singapore and the variegations of the “Chinese diaspora”.| Period | 22 Feb 2024 |
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| Event title | The Global Network for Ageing Research on China/Chinese (GNARC) Seminar Series |
| Event type | Seminar |
| Organiser | University of Manchester |