Families Caring Across Borders

This is an ethnographic account of the transnational caregiving experiences and practices of Australian migrants and refugees, caring for their elderly parents in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and New Zealand. It describes how people respond to unprecedented mobility (both voluntary and forced), globalized job markets and an ageing population.

LORETTA BALDASSAR is Associate Professor in Anthropology/Sociology at the University of Western Australia. Her publications include Visits Home: Migration Experiences between Italy and Australia (2001), which won a 2002 NSW Premier's Literary Award and From Paesani to Global Italians: Veneto Migrants in Australia (with Ros Pesman, 2005) which is shortlisted for the prestigious NSW Premier's History Award 2006. Loretta is currently working on two co-edited volumes provisionally titled Second Generation Migrants: Contesting Definitions and Realities and Transnational Intimacies: Public, Private, and National among Italians around the World as well as a large community project called 'Italian Lives in Western Australia'.

CORA VELLEKOOP BALDOCK is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia, where she also holds an Honorary Doctorate. She has written extensively on paid and unpaid (volunteer) work of women, as well as the history of Australian and New Zealand sociology. Cora's experiences as a migrant caring for her elderly parents and also her own daughter back 'home' in the Netherlands inspired her contribution to the research in this book.

RAELENE WILDING is a Lecturer in Anthropology and Sociology, School of Social Studies at the University of Western Australia. Her research into families, transnationalism, media, communication technologies and love has, to date, been published in journalsincluding Global Networks, Journal of Sociology, Media International Australia and the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.