Care 'In' and 'Out of' place

About the work package

Led by Professor Majella Kilkey and Professor Louise Ryan (University of Sheffield).

Care 'In' and 'Out of' Place is examining migrants’ experiences of care in and out of place, focusing on three groups:

1. Ageing migrants in the UK.

2. British retirement migrants in Spain.

3. Migrant care workers in the UK.

Migration and mobility are transforming UK caring contexts. Superdiversification is challenging care arrangements as people arrive from places with differing expectations of care. This team’s work addresses the gap in knowledge about the (often neglected) needs and experiences of newer groups.

Although the UK’s paid care workforce is heavily reliant on migrants, little is known about how they reconcile their paid care work with familial care responsibilities (especially for older family members). Migration from the UK, especially international retirement migration, means more British people ageing overseas, with growing, unplanned for, care needs and dispersed networks. These care needs of those implicated in relationships between migration and ageing raise particular challenges for sustainable care and wellbeing, including in the context of Brexit.

The Care 'In' and 'Out of' Place team, led by Professor Majella Kilkey and Professor Louise Ryan, comprises Magdolna Lorinc, Dr Agnes Turnpenny, Dr Kelly Hall, Professor Shereen Hussein and PhD student Obert Tawodzera.

Its focus is on

• the growing importance of transnational caring networks and their interactions with care work and care relationships

• what technologies and ICTs contribute to these arrangements

• how diversity and intersectionality affect experiences of care

• scope for sustainable care and wellbeing outcomes

The work examines cultural and linguistic sensitivities, migration rights, portability of entitlements, networks of support and access to new technologies. It is developing this new knowledge in collaboration with a group of our programme’s international partners with relevant specialist expertise.

The team’s main research questions are:

1. How are migrants/non-migrant family members involved in transnational/multi-locational networks of care?

2. How do migrant care workers reconcile paid work with familial care responsibilities, both locally and transnationally?

3. How is distant care best mediated by new technologies?

4. How does the intersectionality of gender, class, ethnicity, linguistic ability, religion and migrant status impact access to and experiences of care?

Downloads

Care for older British migrants in Spain. Policy brief. (PDF, 1.8MB)

Care 'In' and 'Out of' place. Key facts. (PDF, 184KB)

Brexit, migration, mobility and the care crisis. Sustainable care policy perspective 2018. (PDF, 1.5MB)