The consequences of migration for the migrants’ parents in Bolivia

Tanja Bastia, Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, Tanja.Bastia@Manchester.ac.uk

Claudia Calsina Valenzuela, University of San Simón, Cochabamba, Bolivia

Maria Esther Pozo, University of San Simón, Cochabamba, Bolivia

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Abstract

The existing literature on transnational care suggests that it is possible to care for ageing parents from afar. However, most of these studies are based on research in higher-income countries, where families have access to institutional support and where travel and communication networks are generally of high quality. Those studies that have focused on lower-income countries of origin, have found a greater likelihood of migrants’ parents being in a vulnerable situation. Here, though, there has been a preference for focusing on rural areas. This paper addresses this gap by reporting on a research project that spans rural, urban and peri-urban areas, as well as different migration streams (regional South-South as well as South-North), and asks: How do migrants’ parents fare during their adult children’s absences in a context of very weak institutional support, widespread poverty and inequality? The paper finds that parents in urban and peri-urban areas are generally better able to negotiate their adult children’s absences, while those in rural areas experience an increase in their vulnerability. However, there are also stories that are in tension with these general trends, which indicate that social networks, migrants’ destinations, and the parents’ socio-economic status also mediate the availability of transnational care.

Keywords: Migration; left-behind; transnational care; ageing; Bolivia.

Main Text

Introduction

Although things are definitely starting to change, until recently the ageing and migration literature suffered from what King et al. (2017) have termed ‘the vulnerability trope’, an underlying assumption that migrants’ parents, who are ‘left behind’ in the countries of origin by their migrant adult children, will suffer negative consequences as a result of their children’s migration. In this paper we start unpacking this assumption of vulnerability by exploring the consequences that international migration has for the migrants’ parents who remain in their countries of origin, in this case, in Bolivia.

The unpacking of the ‘vulnerability trope’ for older people in lower income countries in contexts of migration is necessary for at least three reasons. First, as Toyota et al. (2007) have already pointed out, older people have been ‘left behind’ in the literature of the ‘left behind’, since most of this literature has focused on the consequences that migration has for the migrants’ children. However, migrants are part of complex and multi-generational family structures that often include their parents (Coe, 2016; Haagsman, Mazzucato, & Dito, 2015; King, Lulle, Sampaio, & Vullnetari, 2017; King & Vullnetari, 2006). Second, much of what we know about ageing in general is also very much focused on higher income countries (Skinner et al 2015). Ageing in lower-income countries has clearly been researched, but has to date played a relatively minor role in the overall literature of ageing and how ageing is theorised (Vera-Sanso, 2006). Third, as with migration research in general, existing literature on ageing and migration has mostly focused on South-North migration, overlooking South-South migration, despite the fact that South-South migration constitutes almost half of all cross-border moves (Ratha and Shaw 2007).

To begin addressing these shortcomings, this paper explores the experiences of older people in Bolivia, one of the poorest countries in Latin America. We sourced interviewees from rural, urban and peri-urban areas to encompass different migration histories and trajectories, overcome the rural bias in the literature on the older ‘left behind’, and explore the possibility that other factors, such as social networks, socio-economic status, and migrants’ destination also play an important part in the consequences that migration has for the migrants’ parents. To counterbalance the existing literature on ageing and migration carried out in higher-income countries, we therefore include parents who have (adult) children in a variety of destinations, including both regional South-South and South-North migrations.

Findings indicate that while some parents inevitably face greater vulnerability because of their children’s migration, others benefit from their children’s migration projects, including the social mobility they experience as a result of the receipt of remittances. The interviews revealed stories of destitution and ‘orphan pensioners’ (King & Vullnetari, 2006) as well as those of ‘entrepreneurial grannies’, who work hard to invest their adult children’s remittances.

Based on these findings, we suggest that while place of origin (rural, urban and peri-urban) matters, so do the parents’ social networks and socio-economic background and the

destinations and the type of migrations that the migrants have access to. Whether migrants have access to South-South or South-North migration streams has significant implications for the older people who are ‘left behind’, for the level of transnational care the migrants’ parents can expect to receive.

Older people left behind and migration in countries of origin

Increasing attention to migration and people in later life in lower income countries is important for several reasons. First, the world population in general and the population in lower and middle income countries in particular is ageing rapidly (Shetty, 2012). By 2050, some 80 per cent of the world’s population over the age of 60 will be living in a developing country (HelpAgeInternational & UNFPA, 2012). Ageing is therefore a global issue. Yet we know relatively little about the older people in the Global South (Skinner, Cloutier, & Andrews, 2015).

Second, poverty is over-represented among older people (Barrientos, 2006; Lloyd-Sherlock, 2010). In low and middle-income countries, the state infrastructure for the provision of elderly care as well as non-kin networks are generally relatively weak (Goodman & Harper, 2006; Varley & Blasco, 2000). Most people work in the informal sector, so their lack of access to pension schemes means that they will have to work when of pensionable age (Barrientos, 2009).

Third, greater attention to older people is important, not just because their numbers are on the increase, but also because there are widespread misconceptions surrounding their lives. Older people are often portrayed as a burden – on their families, their communities or the state. However, older people are clearly not just receivers of care. Within the context of migration, many, particularly women, contribute to the social reproduction of their families and households in places of origin (Vullnetari & King, 2016). Others cross international borders to provide temporary support (Baldassar, Kilkey, Merla, & Wilding, 2014; Deneva, 2012; King & Lulle, forthcoming; Lie, 2010; Reynolds & Zontini, 2014). Their role often goes further in that some also take on active economic roles in the management of remittances, investing them on behalf of their children (Mazzucato & Schans, 2011; Vullnetari & King, 2011). Mazzucato (2011) defines these services as ‘reverse remittances’. These services clearly benefit migrants. However, one could equally see how these older people are also securing their own future and investing in their own standing within the transnational family (Mazzucato, 2011). The interviews we carried out also show that older ‘left behind’ have agency and strive to remain independent and self-sufficient for as long as possible.

Fourth, existing evidence suggests that migration usually exacerbates the vulnerability of older people who have been ‘left behind’ or, as Haagsman and Mazzucato (forthcoming) prefer to phrase it, who have ‘stayed’ in the countries of origin (Haagsman & Mazzucato, forthcoming; Kato, 1998; Kreager & Schröder-Butterfill, 2007; Vullnetari & King, 2008). Together with HIV AIDS, migration has been shown to contribute to new forms of old age poverty (Barrientos, 2009). Mass migration following the collapse of the socialist regime in Albania, for example, has led to abandonment and destitution of elderly people, whom

Vullnetari and King (2006) call ‘orphan pensioners’ (De Soto, Gordon, Gedeshi, & Sinoimeri, 2002; King & Vullnetari, 2006). Internal migration can have similar consequences, as do unfulfilled norms of filial support (Kreager & Schröder-Butterfill, 2004; Vera-Sanso, 2004).

Research on migration and transnationalism has acknowledged the importance of non-migrants, both in terms of the role that they play in migration processes but also in terms of the extent to which the migration of others influences their lives (Baldassar, 2007; Carling, 2008; King et al., 2017; Toyota, Yeoh, & Nguyen, 2007). There is now an expanding literature on ageing and migration that aims to advance our understanding of the consequences that migration has for the migrants’ parents (Ho & Chiang 2017; King et al., 2017; Kreager, 2006; Kreager & Schröder-Butterfill, 2007; Toyota et al., 2007; Vullnetari & King, 2008, 2016).

However, most research on ageing and migration has been carried out in higher income countries. Research to date has focused on (i) the migration of older people, such as retirement migration, usually to warmer climates in the South (Ackers & Dwyer, 2002; King, Warnes, & Williams, 2000) (ii) ‘ageing in place’ or the ageing of labour migrants in the countries they lived and worked (Buffel, Phillipson, & Scharf, 2013; Hunter, 2011; Karl & Torres, 2016; Kristiansen, Razum, Tezcan-Güntekin, & Krasnik, 2016) and (iii) the role of transnational workers in elderly care (Boccagni, 2017; King et al., 2017; Näre, 2013; Warnes & Williams, 2006). This body of research has focused on migration between higher-income countries, such as from the Netherland or Italy to Australia, or from the Global South to the Global North but with an overwhelming focus on receiving countries (Baldassar, Baldock, & Wilding, 2007).

However, we know that almost half of all international migration takes place between countries in the Global South (Ratha & Shaw, 2007). Although definitions by income (lower/middle/higher-income countries) set by the World Bank or the labels ‘global South’ and ‘global North’ have their own sets of problems, the point remains that the current scholarship privileges a certain type of migration, that which involves crossing international borders from the poorer South to the richer North.

This needs to change. We need to start considering how ageing and migration intersect within a development context, given the importance of developing countries for the world’s ageing population, the vulnerability experienced by older people in developing countries and the fact that almost half of all cross-border migrations take place within the Global South (Ratha and Shaw 2007). King and Lulle (forthcoming) have already begun this task. In a recent review, they argue that there are four main scenarios within which ageing, migration and development intersect: intergenerational care in a context of uneven development, international retirement migration, ageing economic migrants and ageing return migrants (King & Lulle, forthcoming). Based on our research carried out in Bolivia we would add a fifth, which expands on King and Lulle’s first point, to highlight ‘stayers’ who are also affected by processes of migration. As such, their lives are intimately related with processes of ageing and migration, given that they age as others migrate.

While the existing literature on older people in lower-income countries identifies migration

as potentially exacerbating the vulnerability of people in later life, the literature on transnational caregiving shows that it is possible to care at a distance and across national borders (Baldassar et al., 2007). Following the path-breaking work of Baldassar et al. (2007), work on transnational caregiving has shown that physical proximity is not an essential requirement for the giving and receiving of care in later life. Instead, caregiving is possible in transnational social fields, spanning physical distance and crossing national borders. This literature argues that transnational care often takes different forms. For example, personal care, which requires physical proximity, is often substituted for other forms of care, such as financial assistance to a local relative or a paid assistant, who can provide hands-on care (Baldassar et al., 2007). In their conclusion, Baldassar et al. (2007) list a number of ‘requirements’ for transnational caregiving to be possible, including active kinwork, the capacity and ability to engage in transnational caregiving, finance, access to technology, time and mobility, among others. It is clear that the degree to which these will be available will differ in lower- and higher-income countries, and different groups of migrants within these countries.

The authors themselves already found significant differences between migrant and refugee interviewees within their sample. However, their study did not include examples of left-behind parents who were abandoned or who had little contact with their migrant adult children, not because these do not exist, but because the starting point for their methodology were the migrant (adult) children. They provided contact details of their parents and as the authors acknowledge, would not have provided access if their relationship was very strained.

Research carried out in countries of origin, such as that of Vullnetari and King (2008), on the other hand, already found some differences with this general model of transnational caregiving. In their research in Albania, Vullnetari and King (2008) found that migrants’ parents were often in a more vulnerable situation than the one described by Baldassar et al. (2007), especially those who were living in remote areas with limited contact with their children abroad. Age also played a significant part in their study. They distinguished between ‘young old’ who were in their 50s and 60s and ‘old old’ who were in their 70s and older (Vullnetari & King, 2008). People in these different age groups were likely to have very different experiences of their own age as well as significantly different needs in relation to health care and support, for example. While those in their 50s and 60s are still likely to lead active and healthy lives, those in their 80s and above are more likely to be frail and needing support. They also found that while capacity and ability to care may exist, supportive families are not always the norm.

Other studies, albeit carried out within context of internal migration, found that the stayers’ vulnerability was linked to their social networks (Kreager, 2006). Better off families were better able to use migration to reinforce their position, in contrast to poorer families whose social networks were too shallow and weak to overcome their disadvantage. Kreager (2006) also found that cases where all children are away and not contributing were very rare and that they generally contributed, even if small amounts.

Migration, therefore, can provide the means for households to maintain their status but it can also be the source of vulnerability. Examples of the latter include when migrants do not

send remittances; when grandchildren are left in the care of older people; when assets are sold to raise capital; and when illness creates the need for physical hands-on care in proximity (Kreager 2006; Kraeger and Schröder-Butterfill 2006; Schröder-Butterfill 2004). However, involvement in the process of migration also changes the normative assumptions on which elderly care is built on. Ho and Chiang (2017), for example, argue that notions of filial piety prevalent in Chinese culture are now changing because of the rise of transnational families in which co-residence, a pre-requisite for caring for elderly parents, is no longer achievable.

In this paper, we seek to contribute to these debates by analysing the consequences that migration has for migrants’ parents in a low-income country of origin in the Global South, Bolivia. We include a range of urban, peri-urban and rural areas of origin where (adult) children have migrated from, as well as a range of migration types that involve regional South-South movements (e.g. to Argentina) but also South-North migrations to Europe and the USA. In the analysis that follows, we argue that geography is important in understanding the implications of such migrations, by paying attention to place of origin as well as places of destination. Urban areas are generally economically much better off than rural areas. Peri-urban areas can also have high levels of poverty but are generally better connected to the urban economy and are more entrepreneurial than rural areas. It would be expected, therefore, that consequences for the migrants’ parents would be more negative in rural areas and more positive in urban ones. Broadly speaking, this is what we found. However, there are also significant differences within these areas, which preclude a generalised finding that migration leads to greater vulnerability in rural areas and social mobility in urban areas. These areas are not homogeneous and the socio-economic differences that exist also have a bearing on the consequences that migration has for the migrants’ parents.

The conditions that migrants encounter at destination also shape the consequences that migration has in places of origin. For example, low wages and undocumented status have implications for whether and how often migrants can visit their relatives at home, or send remittances. Distance, work, gender and migration regimes will affect migrants’ ability to apply for family reunification, their own movements across borders and their ability to visit their parents (Kilkey & Merla, 2014; Merla, 2015).

In this paper, we combine the concepts of vulnerability and upward social mobility to address the multiple ways in which the migrants’ parents are affected by their children’s migrations. Vulnerability usually refers to “the risk that some future event will negatively affect the wellbeing of people in a given place” (Naude, Santos Paulino, & McGillivray, 2009) xviii). The term has been used mostly in rural areas, to address the risks that poor households are exposed to and how well they can cope with in cases of natural disasters, ill health or worsening of macroeconomic factors (Chambers, 1989; Devereux, 2001). In this paper, we use vulnerability at the level of the household as well as in relation to individual bodily well-being, such as whether interviewees are able to look after their own health and mental well-being. This concept helps explain the conditions that we found in most rural areas. It can also be used for some of our urban respondents. However, vulnerability is not as helpful when addressing the experiences of some migrants’ parents, particularly those

whose children have been able to secure more lucrative migration jobs and destinations. Here we therefore make use of a loosely defined concept of upward social mobility, as an improvement in the interviewee’s wellbeing, which may include their social and/or economic condition, as a result of their children’s migration (Cederberg, 2017; Platt, 2005). In the analysis, we therefore pay attention to material, physical and emotional consequences of migration for the migrants’ parents.

One difficulty we found in analysing the parents’ interviews was how much their stories were intrinsically linked with their children’s life trajectories. When asked how their children’s migration affected their lives, many parents referred back to their children’s successes (or failures) as a reflection on their own wellbeing (or lack of). In an effort to honour their testimonies, we maintain some of this mirroring effect and a sense of ‘losing the sense of oneself’ in their children’s migration trajectories, in the sections that follow.

Methodology

This paper draws on interviews from a research project on ageing and migration in Bolivia. It is based on twenty-two in-depth interviews with men (11) and women (11) aged sixty years and over from the department of Cochabamba, which we carried out in 2013. This paper is based on the exploratory phase of a wider project, intended to provide the basis for more systematic research and theory-building on the consequences that migration has for the migrants’ parents. We adopted a working definition of ‘old age’ as being sixty-plus, given that this is the minimum age of the receipt of the universal cash transfer Renta Dignidad (see below). The interviewees were selected on the basis of their age (over sixty), having one or more children abroad, and residence (12 in rural areas, 7 in urban and 3 in peri-urban areas). As we show below, there was a lot of variability in terms of education, livelihoods and migration experiences. Interviews in rural areas included impoverished rural hamlets in the province of Cochabamba and Arbieto, a town with long-standing links to the US, which is where we found the more diverse and entrepreneurial experiences. We found interviewees in urban areas through existing contacts across socio-economic strata. Peri-urban interviews were recorded in a neighbourhood about 9 kilometres from Cochabamba city centre, where one of the authors has been carrying out longitudinal ethnographic research on migration.

The interviews were carried out in Spanish or Quechua, which was some of the interviewees’ mother tongue. All three authors are fluent Spanish speakers (two are native). Some of the interviews in Quechua were conducted by a research assistant who provided us with transcripts translated into Spanish; others by a bilingual speaker who interpreted as we went along. Once transcribed, we coded all interview transcripts, using a mix of pre-existing and emergent themes.

The interviews followed a semi-structured format with some guiding questions. These were broadly organised around three main parts: background information on the interviewees’ life history (place of birth, childhood, education, marriage, work, history of migration); the migration of their children; and current situation.

The main author obtained ethics clearance from her university’s Research Ethics

Committee prior to commencing fieldwork and we recorded written or oral consent for each interviewee. We also organised a dissemination workshop for the municipal and departmental authorities, local researchers and grassroots organisations representing older people. Help-Age International Bolivia also participated at this event. All names used in this paper are pseudonyms.

Older age and migration in Bolivia

Despite relatively high rates of economic growth, Bolivia continues to be one of the poorest countries in Latin America. It has an average GDP per person of just over $3,548 US per annum (WorldBank, 2018). Historic trans-border migrations to neighbouring Argentina dates back to the nineteenth century, while Bolivians have also migrated for work to Chilean mines (de la Torre Avila, 2006). During the twentieth century migrations diversified to include migration to the USA (second half of the twentieth century) and more recently to Spain (post 2001), Italy, Israel, the UK and Brazil. Yet Argentina continues to represent the main destination, with about half of all Bolivians abroad living there, followed by Spain and Brazil with about 20 per cent and 10 per cent respectively (INE, 2012). It is estimated that at least 708,000 Bolivians live abroad, representing 6.8 per cent of the total population (IOM, 2011). There is broad agreement that these figures are likely to be underestimated. The last Census in 2012 also showed that 11 per cent of all households had a member living abroad (INE, 2012). Over a quarter of these households are in the department of Cochabamba, where our research took place. Despite the relatively small size of its population of almost 11 million, the incidence of migration in the country is quite high and means that migration can have a large impact on those who have been ‘left behind’.

. While Bolivia is still a youthful country, estimates indicate that 11.5 per cent of the population will be over the age of 60 by 2030 (INE, 2017). But older people are among the poorest groups in society. Pensions cover only 20 per cent of the older population in Bolivia, with a slightly higher percentage in the main cities (27 per cent). Of those who receive pensions, only one in five are women (Escóbar de Pabón, 2012). Pensions are not universal and are linked to the type of job that the pensioner carried out. Everyone over the age of sixty receive a monthly cash transfer of 200Bs for those who have a pension or 250Bs for those who do not, equivalent to about $28 US and $36 US per month, called Renta Dignidad (Dignity Payment). For many interviewees, particularly those living in rural areas whose livelihood depends on agriculture, the Renta Dignidad makes a significant contribution to their wellbeing (Vargas & Garriga, 2015).

The experiences documented in the interviews reflect the wider context of international migration outlined earlier. In Cochabamba, interviewees had adult children in Argentina, Brazil, the US, Spain and Italy. Many of the interviewees were internal migrants and some were themselves return migrants, having migration experiences particularly from Argentina and Venezuela. Widespread migration was nevertheless a recent experience, despite a long history of mobility from this department to Chile, Argentina and, to a lesser extent, the USA (Hinojosa Gordonava, 2009; Romàn, 2009). This latter destination was preferred by semi-skilled and skilled migrants but Cochabamba has also seen a migration stream

develop from rural areas, such as Arbieto, to the USA (Jones and de la Torre, 2011; de la Torre, 2006).

As is common in other lower and middle-income countries, half of our interviewees continued to be economically active well into the later stages of their lives (Barrientos, 2006; Lloyd-Sherlock, 2010). Interviewees living in rural areas generally continued to work the land. Only half of our interviewees received remittances, although some of those who received no financial help from their migrant children received clothes and shoes (especially from the US). For some, the Renta Dignidad was the only regular and reliable source of income, used to pay for basic everyday living expenses: electricity and water bills or the monthly grocery ‘basket’. The Renta Dignidad was absolutely essential for some interviewees in rural areas, where the migration of younger people had more negative economic consequences.

Among those not engaged in paid work or income-generating opportunities were women who had caring responsibilities. Over one third (36 per cent) of our interviewees were looking after grandchildren at the time of the interview. About two thirds of these (62 per cent) received remittances to help them with the additional expenses, but the remainder received no financial support from their children abroad. They, therefore, had to support grandchildren with their own income or pension. Some of these were living with other family members, but some were living on their own.

Where children migrated had significant consequences. At the time of the interviews, Argentina was facing an economic crisis so currency controls and lack of jobs negatively affected remittances. The Argentine peso was losing value vis-á-vis the Boliviano and the US dollar and to send money via official agencies, migrants had to show where they had earned the money they were sending. This posed particular difficulties for those working in the informal sector or those whose migration status was irregular. Jobs were also more difficult to find. This made it more difficult for migrants in Argentina to send remittances back to their families, which was a lesser problem for those who had gone to the US, Europe or Brazil.

Migration shaping multiple vulnerabilities

While in the literature vulnerability is defined in relation to risk, as discussed above, the interviews revealed more context-specific understandings of vulnerability. Older people whose children have migrated talked about their own vulnerability in terms of their material wellbeing, physical insecurity, their health and bodily integrity, social isolation and shame, in relation to their neighbours. There are clear overlaps with the more standard definition of vulnerability, but the interviewees’ experiences highlighted the persistent lack of state support for older people as well as more relational understandings of vulnerability.

Only a small number of interviewees from rural areas mentioned positive aspects related to their children’s migration. For most, migration contributed to increasing their vulnerability (see below). Rural areas suffer from severely unequal land distribution dating back to colonial times, which has only marginally improved since the agrarian reform of 1953. Land fragmentation continues to pose a significant challenge for small-scale farmers

(Cortés, 2004). Rural areas are also significantly poorer than urban areas. Despite decreases in poverty rates since 2000, the government estimates that 40.9 per cent of the rural population are extremely poor and 61.1 per cent moderately poor compared to 12.2 and 34.7 per cent respectively for the urban population (Vargas & Garriga, 2015). It is not surprising, therefore, that many of our rural interviewees suffered from some extreme forms of material vulnerability.

Interviewees had to continue working the land, on their own, without their children’s help, even when they felt tired from working so much, as mentioned by 67-year-old don Valentin. Most interviewees in rural areas found it difficult to maintain their agricultural production. Don David, who has four (out of seven) children in Argentina and Brazil, was 61 years old at the time of the interview. He links his emotional response to his children’s migration (sadness) with material consequences (inability to cultivate his plots):

“I am sad, I am on my own, I have land in different parts of this area, and I don’t have any support for cultivating the land. I can’t cope with the work so I only cultivate the plots that are close to my house”.

His plot was his only source of livelihood, both in terms of growing crops for daily consumption and selling at local markets. Many interviewees had to grow agricultural produce for sale so that they could afford to pay farm labourers to help them on their plots. The material reproduction of farming household became difficult, therefore, because of the absent younger generation. Most of these households were located in rural areas, had low levels of education (below 5 years of schooling) and often had caring responsibilities towards their grandchildren (of the absent migrant) but received little help from their children abroad. Their children participated in regional migrations to Argentina and Brazil, so were affected by the negative economic conditions in these countries.

Interviewees in rural Cochabamba also complained about increased insecurity, a recent phenomenon, which they linked to the absence of the younger generation. Having fewer or no children close by means that their possessions are more at risk of being stolen. In a joint interview with her husband, who is 75 years-old, doña Aleja mentioned insecurity had become an issue since their children left. She was anxious about leaving the house since $5,000 US were stolen while she and her husband were away working on their plots.

Other interviewees experienced vulnerability more at the personal level, in terms of their ability to maintain their own health or in terms of bodily integrity and freedom from violence. Interviewees in both rural and urban areas expressed difficulties in accessing health services because they did not have health insurance. They were unable to pay for health services themselves or were physically unable to get to health clinics. Don Marco, who was 65 years-old at the time of the interview, has a bed-ridden wife. He also gets ill often but he has to continue working on his plot. Their children, who are in Argentina and Spain, are unable to provide daily care. Their situation is so bad that he feels he cannot even visit his neighbours because they would think that he was there to beg:

“I only hope to be able to continue working, so that I will always have something to eat, or otherwise, where can we get money from? Even people ignore us when we don’t have an income. If I were to visit any family, they would think that I was there

to beg, to borrow something…”

While life for the elderly was generally better in urban areas, we found some extreme cases of vulnerability there too. The example of doña Carmela highlights the importance of unpacking the vulnerability into its constituent parts, as viewed from the perspective of the interviewees. While material vulnerability can be debilitating, material wellbeing does not always translate in physical, emotional or mental wellbeing. Doña Carmela is a widow who migrated from a rural area to the city of Cochabamba, where she lives with her two adolescent granddaughters, whose mother migrated to Spain. Another daughter and a son were in Argentina. Aged 83 at the time of the interview, doña Carmela had been badly hit by the recent death of her son, who was the main person looking after her in day-to-day life. With no other family members around, she relied on the goodwill of local people to cope with her everyday needs. A neighbour helped them with the weekly shop and with picking up the remittances sent by the daughter in Spain. When we visited her, her hair was matted, her clothes stained and she was eating food that had gone off. She could not move around easily. Yet she was responsible for looking after her two adolescent granddaughters. Despite being financially comfortable with the remittances received from Spain, doña Carmela was in a very vulnerable situation, although she was reluctant to admit this in the interview. In this case, her vulnerability relates to her physical wellbeing, her ill health, her additional caregiving responsibilities towards the grandchildren of the absent migrant, and her lack of social networks. Her story is in line with other emerging research, which shows that migrants are not always able or willing to care from afar and that some older ‘left behind’ encounter real difficulties in meeting their every-day needs (Schröder-Butterfill & Schonheinz, 2019).

Sometimes vulnerability extends to bodily integrity and personal safety. Doña Susana, who was interviewed in a town, and was 60 at the time of interview, is married and has a university degree in biochemistry. Her daughter is in Argentina, while her son still lives locally but does not visit them often. When asked whether anything had changed for her since her daughter left, she said her husband became aggressive towards her because her children are not around.

While in the examples at the beginning of this section, material vulnerability can be linked to lower levels of education and the migrants’ country of destination, the last two cases relate to weak social networks and gendered violence that can escalate in contexts of personal and social isolation brought about as a result of migration.

Sometimes these problems can be overcome through communication. Certainly the literature on transnational care highlights how knowledge of and access to mobile phones, internet and software such as Skype enables migrants to overcome isolation, contribute to their parents’ well-being and participation in transnational networks of care (Baldassar et al., 2007; Wilding, 2006). Communication technologies are, however, unequally distributed across the world and many migrants and their older parents lack the means to access such technologies (Merla, 2015). Our respondents in rural areas seldom had access to such technology. Their communications with their children abroad usually involved irregular conversations through their or somebody else’s mobile, with generally bad quality connections. The internet, when within reach, was only used by a handful of our

interviewees and only occasionally. Don Martin, for example, a 67-year-old retired teacher living in Cochabamba city centre, was an exception in that he used the internet to keep up to date with news but not to communicate with his two children who were in Spain, despite the fact that what he craved the most was company.

A final element of vulnerability related to mental health. Depression was mentioned explicitly by three women, which was clearly linked to their isolation and feeling lonely. 68 year –old doña Ana, has three children in the US. They had been away for 15 years and she missed them a lot. She felt sad about them being so far away, talked about depression, and having to solve all problems by herself. Doña Marta, whose daughter has an orthodontist practice in São Paulo (see next section), is financially well off but mentions that she has been depressed and feels lonely because her daughter is so far away. Doña Florencia, whose daughter had to leave for the USA 13 years ago because of her own debts, used to sit in parks and cry. Now she goes to a Pentecostal Church. She does not have health insurance and has to ask her daughter to pay for her treatments for depression and diabetes. She cannot travel because she is not solvent and her daughter has not visited her.

There is clearly a gendered dimension to how emotional pain is expressed. Women were more likely to talk about emotional pain in relation to ‘depression’ and mental health. All three women mentioned above, doña Ana, doña Marta, and doña Florencia have relatively high levels of education (between 5 and 13 years) and live in towns or the city centre.

Men, on the other hand, particularly those in rural areas, expressed sadness when they saw their children’s possibilities for education being truncated by their migration projects. In many Latin American countries, education is seen as the only way to escape poverty and manage to be ‘somebody’ in life (Crivello, 2011). In our interviews, leaving school and not going to university as a result of migration was associated with missed opportunities, which had both emotional and material connotations, as explained by don Simon, a 72 year old father from rural Cochabamba, whose four children all migrated to the US or Spain.

“I never wanted him to go, I was demoralised, my eldest son, I wanted him to be a doctor, we would have had money as well, but it didn’t happen”.

Migration is here therefore associated with missed opportunities for the interviewee’s children. However, there is also a clear connection between children’s life chances and their parents’ wellbeing. Don Simon here states ‘we’, not ‘they’, would have had more money, indicating how children’s opportunities are connected with other family members’ wellbeing. This distinction highlights the importance of understanding the local cultural context, in which well-being might be more closely related to collective well-being of the whole family, instead of individual well-being often assumed in Northern contexts (White, 2017).

Given land fragmentation and lack of irrigation, migration from rural areas was to some degree also expected, as the younger generations found it impossible to make a living from the land. Don Pedro explained: “Our farming land is not sufficient for everyone, that’s why, one by one, they started to migrate”. Don Valentin, another man in his 60s from rural Cochabamba, who had three (out of six) children in Argentina, explained further:

“Our farming lands are no good for improvement, they only give us enough to

survive. Sometimes they give, sometimes we are barely able to harvest anything […] that’s why it’s good that our children leave because that’s the only way they can improve their lives and their situation. Because we have so many children, the land isn’t enough.”

According to him, had their children not migrated, they would have been in a worse situation. However, it is also important to point out how migration is leading to greater differentiation within rural areas. Upward social mobility, however, was more common in the experiences of migration from urban and peri-urban areas.

Migration as upward social mobility

That migration can have multiple and differentiating impacts on individual migrants and their families is now well established in literature. In contrast to the multidimensional vulnerabilities discussed in the previous section, we turn our attention here to the examples where migration had a positive impact on stayers, leading to upward social mobility. Our findings show that migration opened up new opportunities for individual migrants, such as pursuing further studies or practising one’s profession. In turn, these successes often had positive consequences also for the migrants’ parents. On the one hand, parents could consolidate their financial position and help administer their children’s investment (Mazzucato’s reverse remittances). On the other hand, migrants’ success stories were mirrored in personal satisfaction and contributed to emotional wellbeing, as noted at the start of the paper.

Examples of migration leading to social mobility and benefits, particularly material ones, for our interviewees, were situated across rural, urban and peri-urban areas. Doña Marta, a 63 years old woman living in the city centre reflected on her daughter’s migration:

“For me as a mother it’s good, because I had always wanted my daughter to migrate, to get her specialism so that she realises her potential as a professional. That’s why I am satisfied, because my daughter has accomplished her mission to do her specialism”.

Her daughter, her only child, went to Brazil for postgraduate studies in dentistry and stayed there to open a private surgery together with her husband. When they bought a flat in Cochabamba, they asked doña Marta to manage the rentals. She collected rent and made sure that everything was kept in order. She also lends money, charges interest, and has savings from the restaurant business she had been running for 25 years. This is therefore a relatively well-off family, which had an established family business. The daughter engaged in a ‘safe’, highly skilled regular migration that produces positive material outcomes. She is in a comfortable financial position but, as mentioned above, is lonely and feels depressed.

In contrast to urban areas, which was where most skilled migrants came from, migrants originating in rural and peri-urban areas were mostly lower skilled. Nevertheless, even in such cases migration was linked to upward social mobility. Women in particular, were often engaged in managing their children’s assets. This entrepreneurial spirit was mostly found among grandmothers in urban and peri-urban areas, where women often display

similar characteristics (Calderon & Rivera, 1984). Some of our interviewees complained about loneliness and lack of help. However, they were the driving engine behind the migrants’ projects, and continued to support them in various ways. Doña Maria, for example, was initially sad to see her children leave but was doing well at the time of the interview. Born in the mining town of Llallagua, she was 60 years old at the time of the interview. She had given birth to nine children, three of whom had died at a young age. Her husband had also died a few years into their marriage. She did not go to school and worked in the mines for much of her life. At the time of the interview, two of her surviving children were in Argentina, one in Israel and one in Spain. Doña Maria lived with her two grandchildren and did not worry about her children abroad. When asked about her son, she said:

“He is well, he sends me money. I saved it up and bought a plot in his name”. She felt better since her children had left: “I feel better, I built the houses for my children, and […] I bought plots for my children. […] My daughter then after building her house, she left me my grandchildren and she left […] I feel better now because she left me with my grandchildren”.

Doña Maria gained a lot of satisfaction from having invested her children’s remittances by buying plots for them and managing the building of houses for them. These activities require considerable capacity for liaising with lawyers, negotiating financial transactions, from receiving remittances and keeping them safe, paying sellers, dealing with architects, builders and various professionals.

The picture that emerges from this interview and others that are similar to this one, is one where women invest their children’s remittances and take on new caring responsibilities, which are sometimes seen as a burden and at other times as a blessing, but engage in strategies to secure their children’s and their own material wellbeing. They have not had the opportunity to attend school but they live in a tightly knit community with relatively good social networks so do not suffer from social isolation. They are all widowed but are also relatively well off as they receive private pensions from their husbands’ jobs in mining. Their children have migrated for unskilled jobs but to a variety of destinations: Spain, Argentina and Israel.

Similarly, there are particular places within rural areas where migration has led to greater social mobility, particularly in the department of Cochabamba. Interviewees in Arbieto, some of whom were over 80 years old, benefitted from their own and their children’s migration to Venezuela, Argentina and the US. As others have documented, the long-standing link between Arbieto and the US has led to new investment opportunities in agricultural produce locally, in peaches in particular, which has led to greater differentiation in the rural population (Jones & De La Torre, 2011). Some households have benefitted more than others. One of our interviewees, 83-year-old don Oscar, illustrates this well, when he talks about the investments that he has carried out in his own peach production and rabbit farming innovation. He was unable to expand the business any further because he needed his son’s help to run a larger business. Both his sons have professional jobs in Argentina and the US. They send don Oscar some remittances, which he invests in the rabbit business. Their emigration continues to support his business, which

promotes his own social mobility but also leads to greater social differentiation in rural areas.

These experiences show that for some migrants’ parents, migration leads to financial capital accumulation, which in turn leads to social mobility and the securing of their financial and social position. These include those parents who have adult children who have secured their migration projects through skilled migration routes, found professional jobs in either regional South-South migrations to Argentina and Brazil or through South-North migration to the US, and are able to reap some of the benefit from their children’s migration projects; and those who move for unskilled work but to a variety of destinations and from a relatively secure financial base, as shown by the examples from peri-urban areas. Migrants who are able to access more lucrative migration streams also pass on some of these benefits to their parents but this depends on children’s migration destinations, documentation and access to travel. Some of these examples of positive material consequences are counterbalanced by negative consequences related to sadness and depression. Here, the range and quality of social networks seems paramount and those parents who fare best are also those that are able to mobilise a range of social networks to secure their emotional wellbeing.

Conclusion

This paper makes an original contribution and encourages us to think differently about migration, ageing and care. First, the paper’s focus is on a low-income country, Bolivia, thus responding to calls to elucidate everyday life for older people in some of the poorest parts of the world. Second, the paper presents examples of South-South migration, to counterbalance the strong focus on South-North movements that dominate migration studies. Remittances flowing from this type of migration are, as expected, modest, but significant for the local context. Nevertheless, migration of highly skilled individuals was still lucrative and ensured healthy financial remittances for the family members in Bolivia. This is linked to the third contribution of this paper, which underlines the importance of geography, in terms of both the migrants’ place of origin and their destination. Together, these findings indicate that transnational care is not available to everyone in equal measure but is mediated by education and socio-economic background, as well as the availability of social networks and differentiated migration streams.

As the interviews presented here indicate, place of origin matters for the consequences that migration has for those who stay. In the case of Bolivia, international migration from rural areas is leaving older people almost solely responsible for the material reproduction of their farms, in a context of severe poverty, limited state support and at times lack of remittances. In cases where older people’s health is failing, they struggle to access the better health service provision in urban areas, because the migration of family members has left them with no one to accompany them to the cities. As mentioned, state infrastructure for older people is deficient and health provision in general is precarious, selective and not free. These older parents therefore see the migration of their children as a loss, both material and emotional, as they miss out on their future vision of having their adult children live close by and become professionals. However, they also acknowledge that without migration, they

would have been in a materially worse situation. In urban and peri-urban areas, on the other hand, despite sometimes-difficult emotional consequences of their children’s migration, remittances, education and further professional opportunities give rise to greater opportunities for parents to be involved in their children’s social mobility projects. This gives them satisfaction and, over time, they are able to overcome the sadness associated with the separation.

However, within these broader patterns, there are also specificities that are related to places of destination and the type of migration involved. Those able to migrate for skilled work are better able to access upward social mobility. However, there are also cases of extreme vulnerability, in both rural and urban areas, that are related to weak social networks and social isolation. These were not found in peri-urban areas where parents (and migrants) started off from a relatively secure financial base and lived in a relatively tightly knit community with strong social networks. Social networks are therefore critical for those who are ‘left behind’ (Schröder-Butterfill, 2004; Kraeger, 2006; Kraeger and Schröder-Butterfill, 2007).

The intersection of these geographies, with migration type, migrants’ skills and education levels, resulted in differentiated impacts on migrants’ parents who stay ‘behind’ in the areas of origin. These impacts are elucidated through unpacking lived vulnerabilities, and by analysing ways in which migration can lead to upward social mobility. In both cases, local social networks were crucial in contributing to increased vulnerabilities in some cases, or mediating satisfaction and positive wellbeing in others.

The findings presented here also indicate that there is some friction as to the availability of transnational care. Most of our respondents in rural areas lacked the institutional support in the form of pensions and accessible health services available in higher income countries. They therefore had to rely on their own farm or paid work for basic sustenance, while access to the available services was clearly a challenge. They also lacked the communication technologies that would enable them to maintain more regular contact with their children abroad. Because of their children’s truncated education, they were usually only able to access less lucrative and more insecure jobs through regional migration routes (in Argentina or Brazil) and many parents were not receiving remittances, even when they were looking after their grandchildren. In urban areas and peri-urban areas, on the other hand, we find some examples that are much closer to the experiences described by Baldassar et al. (2007) of parents of migrants who live in Australia. Parents had children in a variety of destinations and sometimes in highly-skilled jobs that provided some security for their parents too, especially when they were involved in the maintenance of their children’s investments in Bolivia.

Here it is important to point out that perceptions of migrations differ. In rural areas where migration is long-standing and expected, parents complain about increased insecurity, not having help with dealing with their health problems and their difficulties of maintaining agricultural production. However, significantly, they do not complain about migration per se. In fact, some mention that migration eases the pressure on land fragmentation so those who stay can hope to make a living out of farming.

In urban areas, on the other hand, where migration is more of an individual project and has a more recent history, many parents, particularly mothers, experience the separation from their children as emotionally difficult. They struggle to reconcile their own aging with being geographically distant from their children and grandchildren. These stories therefore suggest that despite the material consequences that migration may have, the local history of migration, the regional context and expectations about family life will influence how the older ‘left behind’ experience their children’s migration.

It is worth highlighting that these findings derive from a relatively small, largely exploratory and qualitative study. Nevertheless, this paper has helped test some propositions in relation to the differentiated availability of transnational care in the hope that future studies on ageing and migration will better take into account the geographies of migration as well as differentiated socio-economic background of those who participate in transnational migrations. In a deeply unequal world, it is worth reminding ourselves that the possibilities of care across borders is also unequally distributed.

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