Transnational Aging and Reconfigurations of Kin Work
Global Perspectives on Aging
Sarah Lamb, Series Editor
This series publishes books that will deepen and expand our understanding of age, aging, and late life in the United States and beyond. The series focuses on anthropology while being open to ethnographically vivid and theoretically rich scholarship in related fields, including sociology, religion, cultural studies, social medicine, medical humanities, gender and sexuality studies, human development, and cultural gerontology. Books will be aimed at students, scholars, and occasionally the general public.
Jason Danely, Aging and Loss: Mourning and Maturity in Contemporary Japan
Parin Dossa and Cati Coe, eds., Transnational Aging and Reconfigurations of Kin Work
Transnational Aging and Reconfigurations of Kin Work
Edited by Parin Dossa and Cati Coe
Rutgers University Press
New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New Jersey, and London
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Dossa, Parin Aziz, 1945 editor. | Coe, Cati, editor.
Title: Transnational aging and reconfigurations of kin work / edited by Parin Dossa and Cati Coe.
Description: New Brunswick, New Jersey : Rutgers University Press, 2017. | Series: Global perspectives on aging | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016024607 | ISBN 9780813588087 (hardback) | ISBN 9780813588070 (pbk.) | ISBN 9780813588094 (e-book (epub))
Subjects: LCSH: Older peopleEmployment. | Age and employment. | Intergenerational relations. | Older immigrants. | Kinship. | BISAC: SOCIAL SCIENCE / Emigration & Immigration. | FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / Aging. | POLITICAL SCIENCE / Globalization. | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural.
Classification: LCC HD6280 .T73 2017 | DDC 331.3/98dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016024607
A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.
This collection copyright 2017 by Rutgers, The State University
Individual chapters copyright 2017 in the names of their authors
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To
Grandmothers
Mothers and Aunts
All Our Kin
Contents
Parin Dossa and Cati Coe
Neda Deneva
Yanqiu Rachel Zhou
Kristin Elizabeth Yarris
Erin L. Raffety
Mushira Mohsin Khan and Karen Kobayashi
Loretta Baldassar
Cati Coe
Delores V. Mullings
Parin Dossa
Transnational Aging and Reconfigurations of Kin Work
Parin Dossa and Cati Coe
The living room of Parin Dossa is embellished with several pieces of embroidery given to her by study participants. One wall hanging stands out. It is from Noor, a sixty-six-year-old woman who lives with her married son and his three children in metropolitan Vancouver. Comprising a motif of flowers and abstract designs in varied shades of color, it is a product of Noors varied experiencesthrough village life, the market economy, the Iranian Revolution, and migrationwhich she recounted as follows:
I was born in the village of Masouleh [in Iran]. I only studied until grade six. There were no schools after this grade in my village. My father said, You must have some useful skill. He asked my aunt to teach me how to do embroidery. I learned different patterns for cushion coverings, tablecloths, dresses, wall hangings, and so many other things. When I got married at the age of sixteen, I moved to Shiraz. My husband had a large family. My in-laws liked that I was good at embroidery work. When the prices started going up, my in-laws made me do embroidery work for sale. I was not happy as I had to work for ten hours a day. My eyes would water. Only when factory-made embroidery became popular could I slow down. Machine-stitched embroidered work is cheaper. After the Revolution we had to move to Canada. My son worked for the Shah. It was not safe for us to stay there. Over the years, I had collected all kinds of embroidered pieces. I could bring some. I left other pieces with my sister in Iran. I have told her to give these out to our families who now live in the United States and in Australia. I have kept a few pieces for my grandchildren. This way my family can remember me.
Noors father could not have imagined that the skill that he encouraged his daughter to acquire from her aunt would be used in her old age in a faraway place. Noors narrative indicates that the fine pieces of embroidered work in Iranian homes in Canada did not merely constitute part of the dcor. They are a way older women have sustained their families over the years. They illustrate that older women have moved across geographic spaces. Noors embroidered work is not frozen in time and space; rather, it is activated in the present transnationally, across and between nation-states. It has circulated within her homeland and its peoples diaspora, providing connection among family members dispersed geographically and across generations. Using her embroidery threads, Noor stitches together strands of her lived life.
The goal of this volume is to document the social and emotional contributions of older persons in settings shaped by migration: in their everyday lives, in domestic and community spaces, and in the context of intergenerational relationships and diasporas. As with Noors embroidery, much of the work of older men and women in transnational families is oriented toward supporting, connecting, and maintaining kin members and kin relationships, which we consider to be kin work, the work that enables a family to reproduce and regenerate itself across the generations. This volume examines the variety of kin work done by older men and women as transnational migrants to sustain their families emotionally and materially over time: from childcare to paid labor. Kin work also includes more subtle forms of care such as memorializing efforts.
Examining the kin work of older adults in transnational families provides one analytic window on how families are managing the exclusions and expulsions of globalization. Kin members, labor markets, and statesthe latter particularly in their immigration policies, pension and social security regimes, and childcare supportall affect the kin work that older men and women assume and enact. Furthermore, the kin work of the aged has implications for their own aging trajectories, identities and status, networks of relationships, and migration and mobility. Social and economic inequality is visible in the intimacies of family life and the efforts of families to survive and sustain themselves.
The Significance of Aging to Studies of Transnational Migration
Most current work on transnationalismthe connections and identifications maintained across bordershas overlooked the significance of older men and women (for important exceptions, see Baldassar and Merla 2013; Cole and Durham 2007; Lamb 2009). Studies of transnationalism have emphasized its importance in fostering social and cultural ties (Georges 1990), generating economic activity (Portes 2003) and activating social and political movements in homelands and their diasporas (Fouron and Schiller 2002; Rouse 1992). However, despite their insights, the literature on transnational migration has underplayed the transformative work of older adults and the ways that they and those they care for are affected by growing global inequality and precarity.
