Tuning care relations between migrant caregivers and the elderly in Singapore

The literature on care relations and eldercare has directed attention towards recognising the interdependence between ‘carer’ (familial caregiver or home support worker) and the ‘cared for’ (the older person). Such an approach gives attention to the contingencies and entanglements that shape the relationships among differently positioned members of care dyads. Drawing on in-depth and ‘go-along’ interviews, we examine how relations between migrant caregivers and their non-migrant elderly charges in Singapore are spatially negotiated – formulated, sustained and reworked – on an everyday basis through Alfred Schütz's framework of intersubjective ‘tuning’. Owing to the unequal ways that migrant caregivers are positioned within Singapore society, moments of positive family-like regard towards them are almost always preceded/superseded by forms of negativity and vice versa. The employer–employee care dyad is therefore best understood as a relational process that requires constant ‘tuning’, as the elderly employer needs care which no one else will provide, while the employee needs the job in order for the migration gamble to succeed. The paper concludes by drawing together the spatial and temporal insights that the conceptual approach of ‘tuning’ brings to analyses of care relations.