Description:
- Geographic scope: While the majority of other works focus on one or two regions of the world (e.g., India; Peru and Italy; Australia), this volume is uniquely ambitious in its vast geographical reach, since it includes in-depth, ethnographically collected data from five different (sub-)continents: North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.
- Thematic ambition: The book does not, like most other books on related subjects, address one theme (e.g. citizenships; agency; family; economics) or one particular form of migration (e.g. retirement migration). Rather, the edited volume sheds light on various convergences and points of confluence among numerous phenomena and experiences that produce and are generative of care(giving) in the context of transnational migration: political economy, religion, violence, community, morality, love and abandonment, and subjectivity and personhood.
- Method/ethnography: This book also differs from "competing titles" by offering an anthropological engagement with the subject grounded in a carefully-crafted and thorough ethnography.
Brief description:
Monika Palmberger is a research fellow and lecturer in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna, research fellow at the Interculturalism, Migration and Minorities Research Centre, University of Leuven, and author/editor of How Generations Remember: Conflicting Histories and Shared Memories in Post-War Bosnia and Herzegovina (2016) and Memories on the Move: Experiencing Mobility, Rethinking the Past (2016, with Jelena Tosic).
Review Quotes:
"The main strength of this volume is the authors' analysis of care, and the myriad ways in which care is constructed, and reconstructed, by migrant older adults, their families and other actors. The collective conceptualisation of care is robust, moving beyond direct and family-oriented care, to also consider virtual and long-distance care, anonymous and contingent care, material care, relational and multi-directional care, and poignant examples of failed care...Drawing on rich stories from around the globe, this volume helps the reader 'grasp' the concept of care, specifically as it relates to ageing in the era of migration, and in doing so, makes a meaningful contribution to the literature." - Ageing & Society
"The hope is that this volume will be read widely, and these questions will be taken up by practitioners and researchers across Europe. Importantly, this includes the Nordic countries, where the role of increasingly privatised and outsourced healthcare systems in distributing vulnerabilities along racialised lines calls for urgent scrutiny and struggles." - Nordic Journal of Migration Research
"This ethnographically-rich and comparative volume is of importance for scholars of migration, ageing, and care. It should be accessible for upper-division undergraduate and graduate courses in these subjects." - Anthropology & Aging
"Overall, this volume offers valuable empirical and theoretical contributions to the anthropology of care and transnational families. It is highly recommended reading for students and scholars seeking insights into novel care practices and care relations in this fast-changing field." - International Journal of Care and Caring
"With its ethnographic exploration, the volume is a strong contribution to cross-cultural studies on the role of older adults within a rapidly globalizing world...The book is a must-read for researchers analyzing the process of aging as a transnational and (im)mobile phenomenon that is heterogeneously experienced across territory." - Transfers
"This is the book's strength: it brings together a wide range of ethnographic cases, drawn from various global settings, where ageing unfolds in diverse migratory contexts and where care is differently embodied, enacted, and circulated...this ethnographically-rich and comparative volume is of importance for scholars of migration, ageing, and care. It should be accessible for upper-division undergraduate." - Journal of Anthropology and Aging
"The chapters are ethnographically rich, geographically diverse, and engaging. Collectively they offer a cutting-edge discussion of theory and method for analyzing how people care for their kin when migration has separated families." - Michele Gamburd, Portland State University
"This book convincingly demonstrates that care can be provided across distance, even as it may be transformed, and care relations re-negotiated... [it] is an important contribution to the growing literature on transnational aging, in providing detailed studies of its complex and multiple effects on individuals and families." - Cati Coe, Rutgers University