Ageing Migrant Labour

This Element views ageing migrant domestic workers in Asia through a life-course lens at retirement–return crossroads.

This Element examines ageing migrant domestic workers in Singapore and Hong Kong facing insecurities as temporary contracts force retirement and return migration. How do they confront questions of care, home, and livelihood, while also forming aspirations to make later life meaningful? This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.Who cares for the ageing bodies of those who have long laboured for the wellbeing of others? This Element focusses on ageing migrant domestic workers who have spent decades abroad in Singapore and Hong Kong on precarious temporary contracts, and how they imagine and prepare for their ageing futures. As temporary migration regimes deny domestic workers long-term residence, citizenship, and family reunification rights, domestic workers are required to return to their countries of origin when they reach retirement age. These two impending dislocations – retirement and return migration – generate a range of financial and emotional insecurities among migrant women who have to confront questions around care, home, and livelihoods at this critical juncture in their lives. This juncture further generates new aspirations among domestic workers who seek to make their mid-to-later life years meaningful. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.