 
my research is at the intersection of
two global trends the first one is
increasing aging populations and the
second one is increasing labor migration
and I look at how everyday information
and communication technologies such as
mobile phones and webcams shape
eldercare at the distance I look at
India specifically because it's a very
interesting case study of global care
chains and global care chains refer to
the phenomena of migrating carers
usually women who move abroad to provide
care for somebody there and at the same
time they have family members in their
homeland who would otherwise be
dependent on them so this could be their
children or their aging parents so I had
been living abroad for several years and
I had been trying to maintain the
relationship with my own parents at the
distance so I thought that this would be
something that could be important for
other people as well in India two
important care practices that are done
in physical proximity are co-residence
with children and preparing and sharing
food so that obviously cannot be done
when the children are living in another
country so care for the elderly parents
is transformed both through the distance
and through the use of ICTs one of my
findings was that I described how the
people and the technologies work
together to enact care at the distance
in what I call transnational care
collectives care is often presented as a
relationship between the caregiver and a
care receiver but with the notion of
care collective this dependency becomes
dispersed among different members the
collective would include the parents in
India the children abroad and different
types of ICTs so it's not only about the
relationship between people but it's
also about a relationship that people
have through technology different types
of ICTs also shape care practices in
different ways on the phone it's
really awkward to be silent it means
that there's something wrong with the
connection so that's why people try to
fill up this silence by sharing the
details of their everyday life so
sharing these details is a way of
diminishing the physical distance
between people I was really surprised by
this person that I met in Oman who
called his mother 20 times a day he was
actually quite lonely this shows that my
research is actually not only about
providing elderly care to the parents in
India but the parents also provided care
to their children abroad
