Capabilities, well-being and social class: a comparison of transnational exchanges between Australia, EU and Latin America

Merla, Laura;Baldassar, Loretta
(2008) Gender and well-being: the role of institutions from past to present, Cost Action A34 Third Symposium — Location: Madrid (24.June.2008)

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  • Merla, Lauraorcid-logoUCLouvain
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  • Baldassar, LorettaUniversity of Western Australia
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Abstract
The ability to maintain contact with elderly parents living in a distant country and to be involved in their caring seems to play a major role in migrants and their elderly parents sense of well-being. This ability is influenced by a wide range of elements, such as resources, time, technologies, mobility, mental and physical health. It is also influenced and constrained by cultural values and expectations about who should take care of elderly people (the family versus the State, women versus men, the eldest son or daughter versus the youngest etc.) and by perceptions about available care services in the home country. This paper will employ both Yeates (2005) concept of Global Care Chain Analysis (which focuses on the power differentials that result from state legislation, transnational agreements between states and access to resources) and the framework for analyzing Transnational family Caregiving developed by Baldassar, Baldock & Wilding (2007), (which highlights the dialectical relationship between capacity, obligation and negotiated commitments) to compare and contrast the experiences of well being (in transnational care contexts) among working class and professional migrants in Australia and their kin in Europe and South America. Data are drawn in particular from a sample of Italian professional 'lifestyle' migrants who arrived in Perth, Western Australia since 1980 and a sample of working class El Salvadorian 'political' migrants who arrived there since 1990. A key objective of the paper is to interrogate the impact of social class on transnational caregiving relationship.
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Merla, L., & Baldassar, L. (2008). Capabilities, well-being and social class: a comparison of transnational exchanges between Australia, EU and Latin America. Gender and well-being: the role of institutions from past to present, Cost Action A34 Third Symposium, Madrid. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/162766