Picturing Care at a Distance: Image for Intergenerational Care in Indian Transnational Families

• In Event: Caring across Borders: Materiality and Belonging in Transnational Families I

Abstract

How do different kinds images shape intergenerational care at a distance? In this presentation, I explore this question based on ethnographic fieldwork I conducted with families of nurses who migrated from Kerala, South India, to Oman and other countries worldwide. Using material semiotics as method of analysis, I approach everyday information and communication technologies (ICTs) as members of the ‘transnational care collective’ (Ahlin 2017) that work together with nurses abroad and their elderly parents in India to enable care at a distance. I analyze how different types of ICTs afford different kinds of care, based on what they allow to show. Through a comparison of webcam, smartphone and phone I examine how live, static and mental images that these technologies produce influence care in various ways. As my fieldwork data show, these images are helpful for the nurses to provide ‘telecare’ to their parents, but also for the parents to provide emotional care and support to their adult children and grand-children abroad. However, images also complicate people’s relations as they can be manipulated and even manipulative. Thus, people can use images to show certain things, but hide others, and they may prefer a certain type of image to others because of the particular emotional effects they produce.


Reference
2017 Ahlin, Tanja. Only near is dear? Doing elderly care with everyday ICTs in Indian transnational families. Medical Anthropology Quarterly. DOI: 10.1111/maq.12404

Author

• Tanja Ahlin, University of Amsterdam - AISSR