Caring by silence: How (un)documented Brazilian migrants enact silence as a care practice for aging parents

While existing work on transnational aging and care has largely focused on the substance of transnational communication and what is being said, this article examines what is being ‘silenced’ during transnational exchange. I argue that to better understand aging and intergenerational caregiving we need to pay careful attention to what is not being said during transnational contacts, suggesting that silence and ‘communication voids’ are often formulated and enacted as a care practice. Drawing on ethnographic research with Brazilian migrants in the United States whose aging parents live in Brazil, I illustrate how migrants curate their lives abroad and sieve their lived experiences as an act of care for their aging parents back home. In so doing, I reveal the significance of faith as a coping strategy in the process of silencing and concealing emotions and as a means to fight loneliness, cope with adversity, and protect family exchanges

Work as affective care: Visiting parents’ experiences of paid work abroad

This article offers the concept of ‘work as affective care’ to explore the entanglement between financial and affective in transnational life. This is discussed in relation to practices of paid work by nonmigrant older parents during visits to their adult children abroad, an understudied dimension in the visiting friends and relatives, transnational family, and ageing scholarship. Drawing on ethnographic research with Brazilian transnational families, the article makes two distinct contributions. First, it emphasizes the broader repertoire of activities performed during visits, namely paid work outside the family household. Second, it underscores a temporal dimension to visits, namely prolonged stays. The discussion reveals a financial dimension to care where paid work acts as a form of affective care across places and generations. While often described positively, the intersections between financial and affective goals are not always harmonious, and material and affective needs can prove difficult to reconcile

Vieillissement, agentivité et travail: les seniors brésiliens qui bâtissent des espaces d’opportunités aux États-Unis

This article examines an understudied dimension of transnational mobilities and ageing: namely, the experiences of ageing parents who take on short-term informal jobs during their extended visits to their migrant offspring abroad. Based on ethnographic research with ageing parents in Brazil and their accounts of short-term (visitor) transnational mobilities and paid work in the United States, where their children have emigrated, the article examines how older parents on a visitor (‘tourist’) visa take on short-term jobs and how their work and earnings abroad make them feel empow- ered. The article draws on a spatio-temporal analytical framework to discuss how migrants’ temporal and spatial journeys are shaped by their ability to mobilize resources such as trusted transnational networks and translate these into transnational spaces of opportu- nity. The article concludes that through these specific configura- tions of time and space older adults are able to make use of their own work to improve livelihoods for themselves and their families, which they recount as enabling and empowering.Este artículo examina una dimensión poco estudiada de las movilidades transnacionales y el envejecimiento: es decir, las experiencias de los padres mayores que asumen trabajos informales de corta duración durante las visitas prolongadas a sus hijos inmigrantes en el extranjero. Con base en una investigación etnográfica con padres que envejecen en Brasil y sus relatos de movilidades transnacionales a corto plazo (visitantes) y trabajo remunerado en los Estados Unidos, donde sus hijos han emigrado, el artículo examina cómo los padres mayores con una visa de visitante (‘turista’) aceptan trabajos a corto plazo y cómo su trabajo y sus ganancias en el extranjero los hacen sentir empoderados. El artículo se basa en un marco analítico espacio-temporal para discutir cómo los viajes temporales y espaciales de los migrantes están determinados por su capacidad para movilizar recursos, como redes transnacionales confiables, y traducirlos en espacios transnacionales de oportunidad. El artículo concluye que a través de estas configuraciones específicas de tiempo y espacio, los adultos mayores pueden hacer uso de su propio trabajo para mejorar los sustentos para ellos y sus familias, lo que relatan como habilitador y empoderadorCet article étudie un aspect peu recherché du vieillissement et de la mobilité transnationale: à savoir, les expériences des parents âgés qui prennent des emplois informels à courte durée pendant leurs longs séjours à l’étranger quand ils visitent leurs enfants migrants. L’article se fonde sur une recherche ethnographique avec des parents âgés au Brésil et leurs témoignages concernant leurs mobilités transnationales de visiteurs court séjour et leurs activités salariées aux États-Unis, où leurs enfants ont émigré. Il examine la manière dont les parents âgés qui voyagent sur des visas touristes prennent des emplois de courte durée et comment leur travail et leur rémunération à l’étranger leur donne plus d’assurance. L’article s’appuie sur une structure analytique spatio-temporelle pour décrire la façon dont les trajectoires temporelles et spatiales des migrants sont modelées par leur capacité à mobiliser des ressources telles que des réseaux transnationaux fiables et à les convertir en espaces transnationaux d’opportunité. Il conclut que par le biais de ces configurations particulières de temps et d’espace, les seniors peuvent se servir de leur propre travail pour améliorer leurs existences ainsi que celles de leurs familles, ce qu’ils décrivent comme des sentiments de motivation et d’autonomi

It's time to treat systemic sclerosis

20120

Editorial introduction: Southern reconfigurations of the ageing-migration nexus.

This article intervenes in the fields of migration and ageing studies by examining complex social experiences and local manifestations of ageing and mobility in regions of the world that remain at the margins of such debates. Specifically, it foregrounds groups that are less visible in existent scholarly and policy work: namely, ageing adults from low- and middle-income regions of the world moving across regions of the South, and to places in the North. In doing so, the article critically reflects and approaches ‘South’ and ‘North’ not as essentialised or discrete categories, but as shifting, relational categories that encompass much diversity and varying marginalities. The article introduces a set of contributions that qualitatively investigate translocal intersections of ageing and migration across Central Africa, South, East and Southeast Asia, and Latin America, and in some cases in connection to places in the North. The collection advances debates on the ageing- migration nexus with a southern focus by examining three key themes that display geographical unevenness and social diversity: (Im)mobilities of ageing, retirement and kinship strategies in light of restrictive mobility and citizenship regimes; multidirectionality of care across borders and generations; and the temporalities and spatialities of home, belonging, and displacement

Random-walk connectivity of Lisbon’s waterfront in the post-1755 reconstruction

Neste artigo é calculada a conectividade da cidade de Lisboa pós 1755 com o rio Tejo através de uma simulação de agentes com caminhadas aleatórias. Este procedimento tem como vantagem o aproveitamento do poder explicativo da simulação potenciado pela capacidade computacional atual. Os resultados mostram aspectos das micro-dinâmicas das cidades que são invisíveis em outras análises. Os planos desenhados para a reconstrução da cidade de Lisboa significam uma mudança em relação ao modelo de cidade medieval em termos de mobilidade urbana. A tortuosidade dos espaços de circulação da antiga cidade é reduzida nos novos planos e as ligações entre as diversas zonas é melhorada substancialmente. Os resultados da simulação do modelo de caminhada aleatória mostram que os planos que mantiveram as linhas de força das pré-existências (planos 1,2 e 3) são aqueles que apresentam menos melhorias em termos de potencial de mobilidade. Os planos em que Manuel da Maya deu mais liberdade de concepção (planos 4, 6 e escolhido) são, por contraste, de navegação mais fácil. O plano escolhido é o que apresenta um tecido urbano mais permeável e conectado com a frente ribeirinha de todas as propostas pós-1755 e também em relação à cidade tardo-medieval.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Transnational families, care and wellbeing: The role of legal status and sibling relationships across borders

With transnational mobility on the rise, care is today increasingly carried out across borders, which profoundly impacts the wellbeing of migrants and their families. Drawing on two in-depth qualitative studies with Brazilian migrants in the United States, this article extends discussions on transnational care circulation by exploring two understudied dimensions in transnational care arrangements: legal status and sibling relationships. These two dimensions highlight the importance of legal (undocumented) status and larger family networks, besides the traditional aging parent-adult child dyad, in transnational care practices, family cohesion and wellbeing. The article’s findings are two-fold. First, it shows that undocumented siblings experience long-term psychosocial stress resulting from the legal impossibility of their return visits and to make up for that, they provide emotional forms of care from a distance. Second, it reveals a gendered and sexualized component to care provision within family and sibling relationships, wherein women and gay siblings are typically expected, almost as a ‘natural- ized’ role, to take on care responsibilities. This is the case regardless of being a migrant or non-migrant, docu- mented or undocumented sibling