Rethinking Transnational Care: The Nature of Nurture Among Indian Families in Belfast, Northern Ireland

Abstract

This chapter elucidates on the caring practices within the Indian migrant community in Northern Ireland (UK). It is based on ethnographic study of the over-50s group of the Indian Community Center in Belfast, with a particular focus on two Indian families who have resided in Northern Ireland for several decades. This study concentrates on the “sandwich generation,” aged 60–80, who are “caught in the middle”: caring for both elderly parents and adult children, while looking ahead to receiving care themselves. Using their lived experiences, the study considers the changing nature of caring and evolving cultural expectations. Moreover, I employ Bourdieu’s (Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1977) concept of habitus, in particular, of habitus transformation to understand the ways that the sandwich generation modifies their ideologies and practices to cope with the environment, without abandoning the traditional heritage which they still value.