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Abstract

Across a number of Asian societies, there is a widespread narrative that eldercare is the responsibility of kin. Yet both historically and in the present day, nonkin and paid carers have played an important, if little recognized, role in the care for older persons. In the context of rapidly ageing societies across Asia, the migration of care workers in the eldercare sector is likely to becoming an ever more salient feature in how individuals, families, and communities organize and provide care in later life, both in private households and eldercare institutions. This chapter provides an overview of the current debates in the interdisciplinary literature addressing migrant eldercare workers, drawing attention to macro questions surrounding the commodification of eldercare work and the gendered and political-economic inequalities underlying the migration of care workers; the regimes and institutions shaping migrant eldercare work in Asia; and the micro questions at the level of everyday intimate life such as the aspirations and identities of care workers; their ambivalent encounters with the people they care for; as well as novel forms of belonging and interdependence. While much of the existing literature has focused on the migration of care workers to the “West,” this chapter specifically addresses inter-Asian migration and argues that there are distinctive regional and cultural dynamics that come into play. The migration of eldercare workers within the region offers a lens onto a heterogeneous region, a wide diversity of meanings and experiences of eldercare, and complex ethical and moral reflections on how to live and care for others in an ageing world.