Transnational Aging and Reconfigurations of Kin Work

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 WorkParin Dossa and Cati Coe  Part One: The Kin-scription of Older People into Care1.      Flexible Kin Work, Flexible Migration: Aging Migrants Caught between Productive and Reproductive Labor in the European UnionNeda Deneva2.      The New Aging Trajectories of Chinese Grandparents in CanadaYanqiu Rachel Zhou3.      Sacrifice or Abandonment? Nicaraguan Grandmothers’ Narratives of Migration as Kin WorkKristin Elizabeth Yarris  Part Two: Reconfigurations of Kinship and Care in Migration Contexts4.      Fostering Change: Elderly Foster Mothers’ Intergenerational Influence in Contemporary ChinaErin L. Raffety5.      Negotiating Sacred Values: Dharma, Karma, and Migrant Hindu WomenMushira Mohsin Khan and Karen Kobayashi6.      Transformations in Transnational Aging: A Century of Caring among Italians in AustraliaLoretta Baldassar  Part Three: Aging, Kin Work, and Migrant Trajectories7.      Returning Home: The Retirement Strategies of Aging Ghanaian Care WorkersCati Coe8.      Balancing the Weight of Nations and Families Transnationally: The Case of Older Caribbean Canadian WomenDelores V. Mullings9.      The Recognition and Denial of Kin Work in Palliative Care: Epitomizing Narratives of Canadian Ismaili MuslimsParin Dossa  ReferencesAbout the ContributorsIndex

"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)