Flying families between the UK and Nepal: compromised intergenerational care amidst a restrictive migration policy context

ABSTRACT

Studies on the global care economy rarely focus on the implications of migration policies in maintaining informal intergenerational care among transnational families of care workers in the global South to the North migration context. Our study addresses this by exploring how migration policies influence the exchange of care transnationally. We pose two research questions: how do migrant families manage intergenerational informal care in origin and destination countries, and what are the roles of migration policies in shaping these arrangements? Our study presents the perspectives of Nepali migrant care workers in the UK and their family members. We generate novel data on the care practices within Nepali families and compare Nepali Gurkha and non-Gurkha families to illustrate the role of migration policies in exacerbating or reducing care inequalities. The research reveals how these inequalities force migrants to become ‘flying families’ to maintain care in proximity through cross-border mobility. We also show grandparents as active agents in maintaining intergenerational care. We propose a policy recommendation to enable the mobility of extended families and extend welfare provisions to reduce care inequalities created through the supply and recruitment of the care workforce from the global South to the global North.

KEYWORDS:

• Intergenerational care
• global South–North migration
• migration policies
• transnational families
• global care chain
• care circulation
• regimes of (im)mobility
• displaying families

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Their care network was sometimes spread transnationally even between Nepal and the UK and USA or Australia or other countries in the cases when migrants’ siblings were dispersed across the countries. However, we focus between Nepal and the UK in this study.

Additional information

Funding

This work was partially supported by Open Society Institute.