On October 25, 2019, UWI St Augustine’s Faculty of Social Sciences Lounge was alive with a gathering geared towards understanding the experiences of migrants who have returned to care for ageing relatives.
The workshop “Intimate Labours: Returning Migrants and Caregiving for Ageing Relatives in Trinidad and Tobago” brought together caregivers, social workers, sociologists, staff, students and working people in the field of gerontology, healthcare and national security. Participants joined in conversations of shared trans-local caregiving. These experiences were contextualised within the wider socio-economic system, acknowledging the complex relationship to society’s cultural values and structural inequalities.
Intimate Labours is an ongoing CRP-funded project with a team of Dr Shelene Gomes and Dr Maria Gomes (both lecturers in the Department of Behavioural Sciences) and Antonia Mungal, MPhil candidate in Communication Studies.
The precarity so characteristic of the 21st Century has resulted in greater instability as well as a greater demand which is experienced differently by different persons. The re-migration of family members to care for their ageing relatives represents another meaningful change which draws our attention to representations of ageing, social support systems, the institutions to which they are inextricably connected and the ideologies which seep through them.
Panellist Cynthia Carrington shared her reasons for returning home and her motivations behind opening her own seniors centre, J&C Recreational Centre. “Seniors are not given the care and respect they need although they have contributed a lot to society,” she said.
Dr Maria Gomes, Lecturer in Social Work, also spoke on caregiving and the experience of role reversal with her mother, “a role that I did not necessarily want but you transition into it.” She also drew participants’ attention to issues such as “compassion fatigue” and the economic cost for women who give up their jobs to engage in care work.
During the workshop, participants embraced the commitment to enhancing the well-being and empowerment of both their relatives and themselves with specific focus on following best practices, building relationships with respective local governing bodies and prioritising self-care.
This workshop was a step closer towards achieving the main goals of the project of engaging in the dialogue surrounding the privatisation of care work and the various experiences of inequality relating to care work, as well as the establishment of a support group for caregivers in Trinidad and Tobago.
If you are interested in this project and would like to share your experiences of caregiving, whether you are a returnee or not, you are welcome to contact the project team at: mariatdg43@gmail.com, shelene.gomes@sta.uwi.edu or antonia.mungal@gmail.com
