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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Remitting 'filial co-habitation'
— 'actual' and 'virtual' co-residence between Korean professional migrant adult children couples in Singapore and their elderly parents | | Author(s) | Jeehun Kim |
| Journal title | Ageing and Society, vol 32, part 8, November 2012 |
| Pages | pp 1337-1359 |
| Source | http://www.journals.cambridge.org/aso |
| Keywords | Migration ; Immigration ; Korea ; Singapore ; Living with family ; Family care ; Children [offspring] as carers ; Married couples. |
| Annotation | Based on in-depth interviews with middle-class Korean professional sojourner migrant married couples in Singapore and their older parents, this paper examines how the cultural meaning and social practice of filial co-habitation and support have been transformed in an international migration context. Transnational co-residence and visiting among these families are examined and a differentiated and patterned organisation of support by sons versus daughters for their own older parents is demonstrated. Although the immigration regulations and co-ethnic community environments for older Koreans in Singapore pose a challenge to older parents, the family remains the most important nexus of care and support. By adopting 'virtual' and 'actual' co-residence strategies and deploying multi-purpose long-term visits by wives and children in Singapore to their older parents in Korea, and by remitting regular financial contributions, these families are able to maintain the cultural ideal of filial co-residence and support. However, the gendered traditional co-habitation ideal differentiates between actual and virtual co-residence. The actual co-residence pattern was mainly adopted by first son/daughter-in-law couples and the older parents of the first sons, whereas the virtual co-residence pattern was mainly adopted by son-in-law/daughter couples and the older parents of daughters. These results show that patterned two-way transnational mobility for providing care and support is shaped by cultural norms and the practical negotiation of family obligations. (JL). |
| Accession Number | CPA-121102004 A |
| Classmark | TN: TNP: 7DK: 7XD: KA:SJ: P6:SJ: P6:SS: SM |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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