Lynn Yu Ling Ng

Topic

From Competition to Cooperation: Reworking Care Relations in Eldercare

Department of Political Science

Date & location

• Monday, June 10, 2024

• 10:00 A.M.

• Clearihue Building

• Room B007 and Virtual

Reviewers

Supervisory Committee

• Dr. Feng Xu, Department of Political Science, University of Victoria (Supervisor)

• Dr. Arthur Kroker, Department of Political Science, Uvic (Member)

• Dr. Sujin Lee, Department of Pacific and Asian Studies, UVic (Outside Member)

• Prof. Victor V. Ramraj, Faculty of Law, UVic (Outside Member) 

External Examiner

• Dr. Natalie Oswin, Department of Human Geography, University of Toronto 

Chair of Oral Examination

• Dr. Ruohong Jiao, School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, UVic

Abstract

In this dissertation, I argue for a transnational relational approach to eldercare that prioritizes its affective and emotional dimensions as resources for social transformation. I suggest that the changing and dynamic nature of what it means to age and grow ‘old’ in industrialized societies, as people encounter and make sense of the aging body in modern life, is a fruitful arena from which to reframe economic constructs of eldercare’s value. The Introduction chapter starts with the research context of eldercare policy in Singapore and Taiwan, both ‘Asian Tiger’ states that achieved rapid post-war industrial success. Here, I provide a relational account of eldercare planning in a transnational political economy of care where gendered and racialized ideologies prevail, manifest most acutely in the regional presence of foreign domestic workers (FDWs) – known as migrant care workers (MCWs) at a global scale. I then outline the central research questions, which are informed by the frameworks of feminist political economy (FPE) in care work and global racial capitalism:

1. How is eldercare treated differently from childcare? By what means do Singapore and Taiwan contrast in their eldercare regime management?
2. In what ways do FDWs in Singapore and Taiwan experience and make sense of eldercare? How do their narratives complicate popular economic justifications of care work, and what are some conundrums of ‘care’ that emerge?
3. What do my interviews indicate about the potential of resisting exploitative care relations through cooperative agendas that centre the emotional aspects of care and vulnerability?

I construct an overarching transnational relational approach to eldercare from the answers I received during the research interviews. Between May 2021 and July 2022, I conducted a total of 67 Zoom/WhatsApp interviews with the various actors implicated in eldercare provision: FDWs (live-in caregivers), domestic employers, family caregivers, nursing home managers, and NGO workers. Taken together, these conversations reveal the importance of accounting for unequal power relations in the broader imperial legacies of gendered and racialized care work. On that note, Chapters One and Two point to race and gender as structuring principles of care labour migration, but also contrasts the different experiences of colonial and state formation that result in significant variations of eldercare policy. Thereafter, Chapters Three to Five delve into some instances of lived experience in eldercare regimes, which people approach from different vantage points and positions of power (e.g. domestic employers and citizen activists vis-à-vis FDWs). From their words and my observations, I construct accounts of normalized ageism in households struggling to care adequately for their young and old, which I narrate through Chapter Three’s framework of “reproductive ageism”. Thereafter, Chapters Four and Five delve into stories of FDWs and ordinary citizens who resist the pressures of marketized care, namely the migrant-in the-family (‘foreign maid’) model. Last but not least, the Conclusion chapter revisits some interview encounters and reflects on how cooperative understandings about care, as a necessary (rather than negative per se) state of dependence in each and every human being’s life course, can be achieved.