Transnational Aging and Reconfigurations of Kin Work

Edited by Parin Dossa and Cati Coe

SERIES: Global Perspectives on Aging

Rutgers University Press

Transnational Aging and Reconfigurations of Kin Work documents the social and material contributions of older persons to their families in settings shaped by migration, their everyday lives in domestic and community spaces, and in the context of intergenerational relationships and diasporas. Much of this work is oriented toward supporting, connecting, and maintaining kin members and kin relationships—the work that enables a family to reproduce and regenerate itself across generations and across the globe.

These thought-provoking, poetic, critical, nuanced, heartbreaking, and diverse accounts of older people's complex roles in transnational 'kin-work' provide an important and understudied contribution to the wider field of Aging Studies.'
Annette Leibing, professor of medical anthropology at the Université de Montréal

This book is bursting with engaging ethnographic and theoretical contributions from across the world and life course. It’s indisputable: aging and kin-work are critical frames for understanding transnational connections, disruptions, and meaning-making in today’s precarious global economy.’
Caitrin Lynch, author of Retirement on the Line: Age, Work, and Value in an American Factory

An indispensable contribution to research on transnationalism, family relations and aging and a must read for anyone working on these topics. Apart from providing various ethnographic writings from different authors that describe their findings nuanced and rich in detail, the book enables the reader to gain new perspectives into the lives of aging migrants. Anthropology News

Transnational Aging and Reconfigurations of Kin Work reminds us of the importance of kinship studies in anthropology, making visible the notion of 'kin work,' that hitherto remained underexplored in transnational and aging studies....An essential and accessible book for academics in the social, human, and public policy sciences, as well as for any researcher or student who seeks to deepen their insights into the everyday processes of aging and care in transnational contexts. Anthropology & Aging

PARIN DOSSA is a professor of anthropology at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. She is the author of Afghanistan Remembers: Gendered Narrations of Violence and Culinary Practices.

CATI COE is a professor of anthropology at Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey. She is the author of The Scattered Family: Parenting, African Migrants, and Global Inequality.

Introduction: Transnational Aging and Reconfigurations of Kin Work

Parin Dossa and Cati Coe

Part One: The Kin-scription of Older People into Care

1. Flexible Kin Work, Flexible Migration: Aging Migrants Caught between Productive and Reproductive Labor in the European Union

Neda Deneva

2. The New Aging Trajectories of Chinese Grandparents in Canada

Yanqiu Rachel Zhou

3. Sacrifice or Abandonment? Nicaraguan Grandmothers’ Narratives of Migration as Kin Work

Kristin Elizabeth Yarris

Part Two: Reconfigurations of Kinship and Care in Migration Contexts

4. Fostering Change: Elderly Foster Mothers’ Intergenerational Influence in Contemporary China

Erin L. Raffety