RGS-IBG 2019: 'Intergenerational and Family Perspectives on Mobility, Migration and Care'

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Intergenerational and family perspectives on mobility, migration and care

Convenors:Matej Blazek, Newcastle University, matej.blazek@ncl.ac.uk
Ruth Cheung Judge, UCL, r.judge@ucl.ac.uk
James Esson, Loughborough University, J.Esson@lboro.ac.uk

Intergenerational care is a central aspect in numerous forms of mobility. For instance, the care needs of ageing populations drive worker movement (Anderson and Shutes 2014; Connell and Walton-Roberts 2016). Negotiations over the appropriate allocation and distribution of care for children and the elderly underpin family migration and transnational family arrangements (Baldassar 2016) and reflect the way mobility is deeply implicated in the constant renegotiation of kinship norms. Notions of care and family are central to transnational policies in areas such as child protection (Hoang et al. 2015). Thus, the politics of inequality, interdependency, exploitation or progressive change often coalesce around how intergenerational care and mobility are experienced, governed, altered and negotiated (Maksim and Bergman 2009).

This session invites further examination of connections between care, transnational mobility, and intergenerational and family relations. It asks how material and intersubjective power relations – and social and physical spaces – are maintained, produced and transformed at the intersections between these forces. The session will speak to and draw connections between these issues in both global North and South. We invite papers analysing how intergenerational and family care – understood as culturally produced rather than universal notions – shape mobility within and across national borders; and how methodological and theoretical insights on the experiences of mobility can generate fresh perspectives on the politics of family relations and care. In doing so, the session hopes to bring scholarship on care, mobility and migration, and the family into closer conversation for fresh perspectives on troubled and hopeful politics.

Specific themes to address include, but are not limited to:

• In-family and intergenerational care commitments as drivers of insecure migration
• How immigration politics challenge or are challenged by the politics of care
• Racialised, gendered and aged experiences of mobility and immobility driven by family care
• Family ideals, life-course aspirations, and intergenerational contracts as central to theorising mobility and migration
• Multi-scalar links between the intimacy of intergenerational caring relationships and global mobilities and migrations
• Political economies of family care mobilities
• How spaces and places are materially and socially (re)made through care mobilities

Please submit a 250-word outline of your contribution to the session, including a preliminary title, to Matej Blazek (matej.blazek@ncl.ac.uk), Ruth Judge (r.judge@ucl.ac.uk) and James Esson (j.esson@lboro.ac.uk) by Friday 8 February 2019.

               
Ruth Cheung Judge

Marie Sklodowska-Curie Global Fellow

UCL and Rutgers Camden