Ageing in networks: The unbounded geographies of non-migrant and migrant older adults

Abstract

We propose ‘ageing in networks’ as an optic that shows how the social networks of older adults extend beyond their residential neighbourhoods to extra-local and transnational settings. The paper brings together literature on ageing and social networks in mobilities and migration research to identify shared thematic framings between non-migrant and migrant older adults. Our approach broadens the analytical frame to encapsulate how ageing individually and in communities takes place through local and international mobility and via digital technologies. Ageing in networks also illuminates the importance of connecting their social protection needs with those of the people in their care assemblages.

I Introduction

Contemporary research on ageing in geography has grown to embrace the relational turn, influenced in part by cognate developments in the geographies of age (e.g. Hopkins and Pain, 2007; Tarrant, 2010; Vanderbeck, 2007) and the geographies of care (e.g. Milligan and Wiles, 2010; Raghuram, 2012). Yet particular ontologies of care – valuing proximate care over distanced care or biological kinship over communities of choice – continue to strongly influence academic research and policymaking (also see Baldassar, 2007). Research drawing on the relational turn in geography and the wider social sciences has not necessarily translated into approaches that bridge the local and global framings of ageing. Likewise, policy design across various domains (e.g. ageing, migration, urban planning and social protection) persists in treating non-migrant and migrant older adults as distinct sub-populations with differentiated rights and privileges in a country.

Conceptually and analytically, one might ask what commonalities are there between older adults who presumably ‘age in (one) place’ as non-migrants and those who age across borders as migrants? This paper turns to the literature on ageing and social networks (in relation to mobilities and migration research) to identify shared thematic framings between non-migrant and migrant older adults, while remaining attentive to differences in their experiences of ageing (e.g. arising from their positionality within nation-states). While most non-migrants are usually local-born citizens, the paper recognises that the division between citizens and migrants can be fluid: the legal status of migrants may change when they naturalise to become citizens, but their migration biographies continue to shape their ageing experiences later in the life-course. The paper also acknowledges the heterogeneity amongst older adults, including how their individual experiences of maintaining social networks will vary with individual and structural factors at different life-course stages (e.g. age and frailty status in relation to societal norms and government investments in aged care; see Cornwell et al., 2008; Wiles et al., 2012; Kilkey and Merla, 2014).

This paper contributes towards extending knowledge on ageing and geography, as well as the geographies of social networks. Our paper advocates a view of ageing in networks as one that encompasses not only the social networks which give meaning to ageing in place but also those that span a wider range of unbounded geographies that are extra-local, transnational and/or virtual. An ageing in networks perspective imbues greater agency to older adults to manage their own social networks and offers an innovative lens to analyse both non-migrant and migrant ageing populations in tandem, spanning local and transnational settings. This approach also takes seriously how digital technologies and virtual networks mediate in-person and distanced interactions for both older non-migrants and migrants. Ageing in networks further surfaces a range of social infrastructures, social actors and ontologies of care that are vital to the wellbeing of older adults. In practical terms, it is important and necessary to recognise the relational and unbounded geographies of both non-migrant and migrant older adults as such an approach signals that policymakers ought to ‘move beyond a sectorial orientation’ (Nordbakke and Schwanen, 2015:1149) when planning for the changing needs of ageing societies, such as by connecting policy domains in health and social care with transportation, urban (re)development, digital capabilities, leisure, migration and more (Wiles et al., 2012).

The next section reviews key developments in the geographical literature on ageing and care. Section III discusses how narrowly framed interpretations of ageing in place could reify a geographical imagination that limits notions of ageing well with the parameters of the residential neighbourhood and community. There exist a wider range of extra-local social networks that older adults maintain to meet their functional, emotional and social needs. Section IV extends the discussion to a transnational context, focussing on older adults who age across borders and how it impacts their social networks in the source and destination countries. Section V further deepens conceptualisation of ageing in networks, showing how its connections with the literature on social infrastructures and care assemblages compel researchers to critically question assumptions about family and kinship, ontologies of care and place-making. Section VI uses a social networks perspective to analyse the social protection of non-migrant and migrant older adults, fleshing out their interconnections as well as with those in their care assemblages. Section VII concludes by reiterating the theoretical vision of this paper and fleshing out new research directions.

II Developments in ageing, care and geography

Within studies of ageing and geography, Skinner et al. (2015:776) had observed about a decade ago that there has been an ‘empirical gap in understanding the contributions of older people and [they argued for] the potential for relational and non-representational perspectives to expand the breadth of the field’. Today researchers are starting to deploy embodied, sensory and material approaches that are strongly influenced by non-representational, and relatedly, more-than-representational approaches to study ageing (e.g. Barron, 2021; Waight and Yin, 2021). The seminal work of Milligan and Wiles (2010) on landscapes of care has also impacted the way that geographers and other social scientists approach analysing local and global care relationships. The literature on care expanded from discussions of global care chains to care diamonds, care pentagons and care assemblages, each capturing increasingly dynamic and multidirectional expressions of care (De Silva, 2017; Ho, et al., 2021b; Ho et al., 2023; Power, 2019; Razavi, 2011; Yeates, 2008). While much of the literature on ageing and care depicts older adults as care recipients, an emerging body of work also considers their role as caregivers and companions to ageing family members and friends (i.e. intra-generationally) or to aged parents, adult children and grandchildren (i.e. intergenerationally) (Da, 2003; Turner et al., 2016; Wyss and Nedulca, 2019; Ho and Chiu, 2020; Chiu and Ho, 2022; Ting and Ho, 2022). Care relationships are fundamentally about social connections and networks, underlining how the principle of linked lives (Carr, 2018) or interdependency (Zhou, 2013) shape older adults’ mundane and eventful life choices in local, extra-local, transnational and virtual spaces. Care exchanges thus reconfigure social networks relationally and spatially.

Also influential in the study of ageing are insights from transportation research. Transportation researchers have shown how factors such as the geographical context of where ageing takes place, the heterogeneity amongst older adults and the social constructs around ageing and old age, can impact the travel behaviour of older adults and their wellbeing (e.g. Schwanen and Paez, 2010; Ziegler and Schwanen, 2011). Nordbakke and Schwanen (2015) further argue that the unmet out-of-home activity needs of older adults are not merely due to frailty and decline. Rather their research draws attention to reasons such as distance to public transport stops, connectivity to destinations and the ability to drive a car in later life, alongside affordability considerations. Individual resources and strategies, contextual reasons and environmental conditions operate in interlinked ways to impact the capabilities of older adults to be mobile. Whilst earlier transportation research mostly drew on quantitative methods, the mobilities paradigm has bridged quantitative and qualitative research approaches, as well as conceptual perspectives from transportation geography and social-cultural geography.

For example, recent work by Harada et al. (2023) emphasises the concept and practice of ‘mobility justice’ for older passengers, advocating that age should be ‘conceptualised as a bodily difference (e.g. physical and sensory decline) rather than an all-encompassing policy category’ (Harada et al., 2023: 215). Lager et al. (2019) also use insights from the phenomenological approach and walking interviews to argue that older adults’ place-making practices are as important as understanding the physiological needs of the older body when designing for urban walkability in age-friendly communities. They add that walking is important for cultivating sociability, including when older adults make stops to engage with other people. These studies show that the ability to get from place-to-place matters for meeting older adults’ functional needs, maintaining social connectedness (i.e. relationality) and engaging in place-making practices (i.e. in embodied, sensory and material ways) to support their emotional and mental wellbeing (i.e. geographies of care). These developments have profound implications for studying how mobility is integral to sustaining older adults’ social networks and wellbeing in later life.

Studying ageing through focussing on older adults’ social networks triggers a perspectival shift from ageing in place within the home and community to one that is also attentive to their unbounded geographies. Intragenerational and intergenerational social networks and care exchanges develop not only in proximate spaces (e.g. ageing in place) but also across extra-local spaces, and in the case of migrant older adults, even spanning international borders to create new place-anchored social connections. In the digital age, virtual networks underpin and cut across these multiple geographies. The following sections examine each of these geographical manifestations of how older adults experience ageing.

III Ageing in place is only part of the picture

Ageing in place has become a policy goal in many countries (Zhang et al., 2022) despite considerable variation in how the term is deployed (Forsyth and Molinsky, 2021). Generally, ageing in place refers to ‘the notion of ageing in one’s home and community as long as possible and to delaying any potential relocation to a long-term care setting’ (Bigonnesse and Chaudhury, 2022: 235). Ageing in place has come to symbolise familiarity and routines that contribute to emotional attachments to and a sense of place in a neighbourhood and community. An associated literature on age-friendly cities operationalises the principle of ageing in place through design features such as age-friendly built environments, access to social support and community-based services, along with the ability to be mobile to access such facilities and services (Buffel and Philipson, 2016; Steels, 2015; Wong et al., 2021). Cho and Kim (2016) argue that ageing in place and creating an age-friendly environment should be seen as older adults’ right to the city. Inherent in the above conceptualisations of ageing in place and age-friendly communities is the belief that ‘bonding’ and ‘bridging’ social connections (Putnam, 2000) and networks are cultivated locally in the neighbourhoods where older adults reside.

However, the effectiveness of relocating care to the home and community depends on a range of social, political and environmental factors. Milligan (2000) also cautions that enabling older adults to age in place at home and in the community may inadvertently place a greater burden on spouses or female relatives who are informal carers (also see Ward-Griffin and Marshall, 2003; Yoon, 2014). These cautionary notes prompt us towards considering: could a narrow focus on ageing in place have normalised certain assumptions about ageing and rendered invisible the social networks of older adults that exceed the residential neighbourhood and their wider geographies of ageing? We elaborate on these points below.

First, despite increasing recognition towards how the physical and social needs of older adults are intertwined, there remains an overwhelming focus on spatial planning and designing the built environment rather than social wellbeing. Spatial planning and design tend to stress the physical and safety needs of older adults (Wong et al., 2021; Yung et al., 2016), which unwittingly reinforce portrayals of frailty and dependency. Second, influential theories like the ecological theory of ageing, social ecology and residential normalcy assume that with familiarity, older adults can have greater control over how they age in place. Such studies tend to treat the neighbourhood as a static container rather than embrace how urban neighbourhoods change with time and as their residents age (Andrews and Duff, 2022; Forsyth and Malinksy, 2021; Yu and Rosenberg, 2020). Through experiencing changes borne out of gentrification and new immigration, older adults who remain in situ can feel out of place even though they never left their neighbourhood (Cho and Kim, 2016; Lager et al., 2019; Meij et al., 2021; Van Melik and Pijpers, 2017; Yung et al., 2016).

Third, another source of change happens when older adults are compelled to relocate due to housing renewal policies. Yu and Rosenberg (2020) found that older adults in Beijing who were relocated from dilapidated housing expressed satisfaction with their improved housing conditions, but their neighbourly ties had been disrupted and they experienced ‘the loss of trust and sense of security in the new environment’ (Yu and Rosenberg, 2020: 173). Fourth, an unquestioning acceptance of the paradigm of ageing in place could normalise assumptions about the stability of home ownership and rental tenure amongst older adults. Shrinking government fiscal policies have put an increasing onus on individuals and families for care financing, including by repurposing housing ‘as a means of funding care and other needs in later life’ (Power and Gillon, 2021: 899). Older adults are encouraged to downsize their homes as they become empty nesters to convert their fixed assets to retirement income (Badawy et al., 2019). Vulnerable older renters and homeowners who are compelled to downsize for financial reasons can experience disruptions to their ontological security, social networks and social support bases.

Although powerful as a mantra and in practice, ageing in place needs to be questioned as an ideal that applies universally, noting inequalities in terms of who gets to age in place, alongside changing attitudes and practices towards home and housing (also see Yarker et al., 2024). While acknowledging the sustained importance of ageing in place, our paper advocates ageing in networks as an approach that captures, not only the social connections that support ageing in place, but also a wider range of social networks that exist beyond older adults’ residential neighbourhoods and proximate communities. These social networks may be associated with preferred leisure activities and facilities that cannot be found within residential neighbourhoods or when they seek to maintain connections with extended family members and long-time friends who live farther away (Badawy et al., 2019; Haugen et al., 2012). Older adults who age in networks invest time to sustain the social networks found at extra-local spaces, regardless of the additional effort and costs. Access to travel connectivity, accessibility and affordability (i.e. mobility justice as argued by Harada et al., 2023) become key factors that can enable or disable them from doing so.

An ageing in networks perspective dovetails with growing evidence that older adults desire autonomy and personal mastery (Rainie and Wellman, 2012). A study using qualitative interviews with older adults in Toronto elicited narratives that include a positive sense towards how they can stay connected and learn new skills (Quan-Haase et al., 2018). Another study in Singapore highlighted that receiving social support from kin can be negatively associated with an older adult’s perceived wellbeing, especially among women who desire their own autonomy around housework (Ang and Malhotra, 2022). A different study from the United States showed that older adults who do not reside in proximity to their close kin are not disadvantaged relative to those who are closer to their families (Patterson and Margolis, 2023). Combined, these studies illustrate a growing desire among older people to curate communities by design –emphasising the quality of one’s social networks – rather than be limited to the communities given to them based on where they reside. The next section expands our arguments on ageing in networks, albeit from the perspective of older migrants who altered their social networks while ageing across borders.

IV Ageing across borders

Recent research in migration studies has challenged a place-bound perspective of ageing (e.g. Sampaio and Amrith, 2023; Sampaio et al., 2018) through illuminating the life-worlds of different groups of older adults who are experiencing ‘ageing across borders’ (Ho et al., 2021a). Some had migrated earlier in the life-course and are now ageing in place in an adopted country, but they retain strong transnational networks with family and friends in their natal lands (e.g. Newendorp, 2008; Sun, 2021). Their transnational ties are supported through physical visits, phone calls, digital applications and exchanges and by sending remittances (Bastia et al., 2022). Another set of research has focused on retirement migration (e.g. Božić, 2006; Green, 2023; King et al., 1998), surfacing how changing ideals of or challenges to ageing in place prompted certain older adults to relocate to another country. However, language barriers and cultural differences can impede such migrants from fostering local social networks, which can present practical difficulties as ‘isolation can develop into a fragile and challenging condition as one gradually moves into the fourth age and is need of personal care’ (Iorio, 2020: 205).

The migration literature has also paid attention to a third group of older adults who move later in life, namely, grandparenting migrants who travel abroad on temporary visas to provide childcare assistance to their adult children and grandchildren (Da, 2003; Lie, 2010; Deneva, 2012; Zhou, 2013; Ho and Chiu, 2020; Chiu and Ho, 2022). They renew their temporary visit passes successively (by exiting and re-entering the country) or take rotating shifts to ensure the continuity of childcare. Despite their temporary status, these grandparents exhibit patterns of ageing in situ. While some could be at risk of experiencing social isolation, others exercise considerable initiative to develop new social networks that facilitate their adaptation and for self-empowerment (Ho and Chiu, 2020). They use digital applications in smartphones to exchange information with other grandparenting migrants to organise social outings and retain strong social ties with their friends and family in the home country. Sampaio’s (2022) research on Brazilian grandparenting migrants also found that they obtain information about short-term employment openings abroad, creating ‘transactional spaces of opportunity’ (Sampiao, 2022: 13) – through transnational and translocal networks – which made them feel self-financially empowered.

In the wider migration literature, Ryan (2018) has argued that migrants experience differentiated embedding in local or transnational social networks at different life junctures. Similarly, the literature on older migrants demonstrates that the impact of international relocation on the social networks of older adults is profoundly shaped by the extent to which they embed themselves in social networks. Shakuto’s (2018) study of Japanese retiree migrants in Malaysia shows how they form new friendship networks with one another and become ‘fictive kin’ to one another. However, Toyota’s (2022) work on Japanese low-income single male retirees provides a sombre picture of ageing and migration. The high cost of retirement in Japan prompted some low-income and socially isolated single males to move to Thailand where living costs are cheaper but they remain socially isolated while overseas, with some even dying alone overseas subsequently. Analysing these two cases of Japanese retirement migration side-by-side shows how, even if ageing in place is depicted as an ideal or norm, some older adults may opt to move internationally (i.e. age across borders) to take advantage of cheaper living costs, warmer weather or to achieve self-realisation (also see Thang et al., 2012). Their post-migration outcomes vary greatly depending on their social connectedness.

The discussion above has highlighted how older migrants who move later in life could experience precarity. Retirement migrants who are relatively wealthy (compared to the local population) may qualify for retirement visas initially, but the security of their stay abroad depends on their ability to fulfil the eligibility conditions of the immigration country in the long-term. Grandparenting migrants and visitor migrants who undertake repeated transnational shuttles disrupt their regular lives in the natal land and may delay their own healthcare needs until their next trip home so as not to incur expensive medical bills while abroad. Nonetheless, the literature also demonstrates that older migrants are agentive. They create place-based networks while on the move and their social networks at home and abroad (i.e. spanning a transnational context) provide emotional and practical support from afar. Moreover, shared nationality or ethnicity may not be the key determinants of resource exchanges; rather, cultural capital, language skills and an openness to social difference are equally important for accessing new social networks and the resources they offer (Ryan, 2011).

V Ageing in networks bridges (extra-)local, transnational and virtual spaces

Drawing together the discussions of ageing in place and ageing across borders, a common theme undergirding both is the significance of older adults’ social networks. While policies and research on ageing in place has focused predominantly on the built environment, the social networks that support individuals and communities should not be neglected too. Functional needs can be met by using proximate facilities located within one’s residential neighbourhood (i.e. associated with ageing in place), but one’s meaningful social ties may be located outside of the neighbourhood (e.g. with alumni, former colleagues, interest groups and religious groups) in extra-local spaces or abroad (e.g. to reunite with or support family members). A study by Sixsmith et al. (2017) emphasises the importance of not just ‘ageing in place’ but ‘ageing in the right place’. Right in this case includes building partnerships with service providers to serve older people better. Since not all housing developments provide such partnerships, external parties and wider social networks often have to be mobilised to enrich the ageing experiences of older adults. Shifting the analytical lens to ageing in networks reminds us that social connections within the residential neighbourhood and community can augment experiences of ageing well, but it is equally important to give attention to how older adults’ social networks stretch across extra-local and national spaces, oftentimes supported by virtual networks too.

Just as the literature on care has helpfully troubled assumptions that proximate care trumps caring from a distance (Baldassar, 2016; Milligan and Wiles, 2010), the lens of ageing in networks surfaces new spatial imaginaries for geographers and other social scientists to consider. A growing literature on social infrastructures (e.g. Latham and Layton, 2022; Yarker, 2022; Ho et al., 2023; also Power and Mee, 2020; Alam and Houston, 2020 on care infrastructures) signal that there are a range of physical facilities, services, programs, events, processes and even social groups (i.e. people) which support the ageing needs of older adults (see McQuaid et al., 2021). Social infrastructures that are anchored in place (i.e. supporting ageing in place) may meet the needs of some older adults, but as Pratt and Johnson (2022) show in their study of dementia care facilities for older migrants in Thailand, the failures of social infrastructures in one’s home country can lead older adults to relocate to another country with lower-cost and higher quality social infrastructures. Such relocation disrupts earlier expectations of ageing in place with one’s long-established social networks and necessitates cultivating new social networks and ‘intimacies of care’ (Pratt and Johnson, 2021: 534) with ‘fictive kin’ who take the place of biological kin that live elsewhere. Ageing in networks bring to the fore spatial imaginaries that are anchored in place, but which are not necessarily limited to that place.

The approach of ageing in networks also surfaces a wider range of social infrastructures, social actors and ontologies of care that are vital to the care assemblages of older adults, whether they are ageing in place or ageing across borders. Ageing in networks is attentive to how different components of care may converge or diverge in care assemblages across the life-course (Ho et al., 2021b). Green’s (2023) research on retirement migrants in Asia point to how their connections to places and communities could diverge in their care assemblages when they experience, property insecurity and financial insecurity abroad. At the same time, factors such as the life transition of family members in the home country could compel return migration and reconvergence of other components in their care assemblages, such as reuniting with family members and taking on renewed/added care responsibilities.

Ageing in networks further underscores how virtual networks mediate both in-person and distanced interactions. Non-migrant older adults now often use digital applications to arrange for meetups and social activities with friends within and outside of their neighbourhoods. COVID-19 has also demonstrated that when older adults were unable to gather in person, virtual interactions (e.g. social media or Zoom meetings) became an alternative means of maintaining their social networks, continuing with their religious activities or hobbies and learning and receiving healthcare through telemedicine (Ho et al., 2023). The intersection of virtual and in-person spaces alters how we think about ageing in place since opportunities for fostering social networks can now easily extend beyond proximate and physical spaces which are often associated with ageing in place, as well as incorporate multiple temporalities across the life-course (e.g. across different time-zones).

Research in migration studies also shows how virtual intimacies and care are nurtured in transnational families amongst non-migrant older adults whose family members live abroad or migrant adults who are ageing across borders (Andruske and O’Conner, 2020; Baldassar, 2007; Baldassar, 2016; Baldassar et al., 2022; Iorio, 2020; Wilding, 2006). Non-migrant older adults use digital applications to create forms of co-presence with family members overseas (Baldassar, 2016; Huang et al., 2022; Madianou, 2016). Ahlin and Sen’s (2020) study shows how intergenerational care practices towards stay-behind older family members are coordinated by locally based and transnational family members, such as regarding which family members would undertake physical visits or take turns to make phone calls, text messages and interact with their elderly parents through webcams (i.e. a division of labour). Older migrants themselves may use social media and geospatial technologies (Ho and Chiu, 2020) to engage in ‘digital place-making’ (e.g. Li and Alencar, 2022: 1032), ‘digital kinning’ (to access social support) and ‘digital homing’ (to create a sense of belonging) (Baldassar et al., 2022). They create virtual and in-person social networks away from home while maintaining virtual connections with family and friends living elsewhere, thereby creating more complex ageing and life-course trajectories across space and time. Nonetheless, the agency of older adults to access such digital technologies is mediated by their cognitive abilities and habits, digital literacy or access to persons who can help them and affordability considerations (e.g. to purchase digital equipment and to pay for internet access).

VI Ageing in networks, care assemblages and wider frames of social protection

Analytically the concept of ageing in networks invokes new dimensions for how we think about social protection, not merely for older adults but also the people to whom they are connected, and the social infrastructures and technologies that feature in their care assemblages. For non-migrant older adults who are ageing in place, their wellbeing is determined by access to medical and good quality long-term care that is affordable and accessible (Liu et al., 2016; Weiner, 2011), as well as emotional and symbolic care from local, extra-local and virtual social networks consisting of neighbours, family and friends (Lane et al., 2020; Van Melik and Pijpers, 2017; Wood et al., 2021). Foregrounding the practical and emotional role that social networks play in enabling older adults to age well underscores the importance of enhancing government investments in creating and supporting the formal and informal social infrastructures that foster social networks (Ho et al., 2023). These include eldercare or elder-friendly facilities that provide elder-friendly healthcare and social care services, as well as informal gathering spaces that promote social interactions amongst older adults and intergenerationally with the wider population.

Considerations of social protection (Levitt et al., 2017, 2023; Zechner, 2008) extend to migrant older adults in a transnational context too. An emerging literature on transnational social protection has called for analyses of how older migrants manage risks and uncertainties using locally based and cross-border resources (Braedley et al., 2019; Cao and Sun, 2021). The failure of social infrastructures in the home country prompts some older adults to move to another country to age abroad (Pratt and Johnston, 2021, 2022). Bastia et al. (2022) observe that three factors – health status, financial ability and visa regimes – structure older migrants’ access to and experiences of international movement, impacting how privilege and vulnerability evolve over the life-course and creating new dimensions of inequality. Retirement migrants appear to be privileged lifestyle migrants with the financial means to seek better ageing conditions abroad, but long-term stayers may experience what Green (2023) terms as ‘precarious privilege’ when visa restrictions, property insecurity and rising living costs set in alongside declining health. Moreover, retirement homes established for foreigners tend to be privately run and long-distance family members of retirement migrants may visit no more than once or twice a year. Local governmental oversight should be extended to retirement homes for foreigners to ensure the care practices in such homes adhere to regulations for assisted living or nursing homes which cater to non-migrant older adults.

An ageing in networks perspective also sensitises researchers and policymakers to the interconnected social relationships or webs of care (Ho et al., 2021b, 2023) in which older adults are embedded. Feminist and migration research on the social reproduction work done by paid migrant care workers and unpaid family members have emphasised the marketisation of care and the gendered dimensions of eldercare work (e.g. Ahlin and Sen, 2020; Coe, 2023; Schwiter et al., 2018; Yoon, 2014). Societies that face labour crunches in the care sector rely heavily on paid migrant care workers (e.g. nurses, long-term care aides and domestic workers). Such migrants support older adults’ ageing in place and are part of their social networks (Ting and Ho, 2022; Yeoh et al., 2023). To carry out their duties effectively and sustainably, migrant care workers require social protection over their working conditions and rights, healthcare and mental wellbeing, and visa or residency stability (see Schwiter et al., 2018; Yu, 2018). As migrant care workers carry out paid care work abroad, we should also ask who is caring for their elderly kin in the home country? When an elderly parent is unwell, the migrant worker may experience distress and guilt that could impede their ability to provide care for the employer’s family. Thus, the elderly parents of migrant domestic workers are part of linked care chains extending to the migrant worker and her employers (Ting and Ho, 2022). Social protection in the context of ageing should extend from locally based older adults to the wider social networks in which they are embedded, which includes migrant care workers who provide support locally as well as the global care chains connecting to their stay-behind families.

Caring for older adults with advanced care needs can be taxing on unpaid caregivers – especially if they are from the same age group (e.g. those caring for their spouses or siblings). The sustainability of eldercare depends on if caregivers feel that they are well supported (Rose et al., 2015; Ward-Griffin and Marshall, 2003). Sun and Cao’s (2022) study of eldercare in Chinese families with internal and international migrants found that, on the one hand, family tensions can transpire when the burden of care falls disproportionately on the shoulders of internal migrants who are presumed to be physically closer and thus better able to care for the elderly parent(s). On the other hand, family harmony is maintained when proximate caregivers feel that long-distance family members are participating in care work too. Social protection for unpaid caregivers should extend into economic considerations of how they would support their own ageing and long-term care needs and costs in the future when they have not been earning incomes. Intergenerational care equity ought to be incorporated into current citizenship policies. An ageing in networks perspective prompts reconsideration of the social compact across generations.

The above discussion excavates multiple dimensions of how ageing and social protection discussions extend across different scales of analyses and multiple domains (Faist et al., 2015; Levitt et al., 2023). An ageing in networks approach would be mindful not to cast older adults only as care recipients. It acknowledges that many are also caregivers for aged parents who are still around, ageing spouses and siblings, or to their adult children and grandchildren. Bringing insights from the literature on social networks into discussions of ageing in place and ageing across borders also drives home the point that aged care ‘“cuts across” social policies, services and families [and] can no longer be perceived within frameworks of methodological nationalism’ (Bastia et al., 2022: 1019).

VII Conclusion: The unbounded geographies of ageing in networks

Our paper has shown how conceptualising ageing in networks brings to view the unbounded geographies of ageing that are vital to life. We sought to decentre the prevailing optic of ageing in place, while recognising its value and sustained importance to older adults. Studying ageing with an expanded conceptualisation of how social networks are anchored in a locality – while also extending across extra-local and national spaces – expands our analytical lens to consider a range of mobilities and care exchanges that are integral to older adults’ experiences of ageing and their aspirations to age well. Cutting across local, extra-local and transnational social spaces are virtual networks that augment the mutually constitutive relationship between place-making and mobility. Our arguments on how older adults age in networks beyond their proximate locales sensitise researchers and policymakers to how the built environment (e.g. walkability, transportation connectivity and affordability) and an array of (near and far) social infrastructures, programs and subsidies should be designed with the social connectedness of ageing populations in mind.

By foregrounding ageing in networks, this paper has also fleshed out the shared experiences and needs of non-migrant and migrant older adults. In national societies, aged care tends to valorise the healthcare and social care needs of non-migrants who are citizens of the country. Migration research has shown how non-migrant older adults inhabit the same national spaces as older migrants, thereby ageing alongside one another in the formal and informal spaces of care. Between these two ends of the spectrum are migrant older adults who have naturalised to become citizens, but they may still experience language difficulties and social isolation that entrenches their dependency on younger family members. Although transnational social networks can mitigate the limited care support that migrant older adults can access abroad, they have practical ageing needs that require government intervention and support too.

Social protection for older adults should connect seemingly separate sectorial domains, such as by setting up bilateral agreements between migrant-sending and -receiving countries to facilitate portable social security (e.g. pensions and healthcare) for temporary migrants. Even if transnational social networks are key support sources for migrants, they cannot take the place of good quality and timely healthcare and eldercare. Local governmental oversight for care homes which have been set up for retirement migrants is also necessary to prevent elder abuse and exploitation. Providing multilingual and multicultural aged care services would also better support the ageing care needs of earlier settled migrant cohorts – while taking care not to create new forms of social segregation later in the life-course. For both non-migrant and migrant older adults, social networks and place-making practices within the residential neighbourhood, community and beyond are important for realising the functional and emotional needs that sustain a sense of independence and empowerment in later life. The wider care assemblages in which they are embedded further remind us that good quality care for older adults must include social protection for their paid and unpaid carers.

As future research directions, researchers might want to study how older adults’ experiences of ageing in networks differ across age cohorts, depending on their physical capacity, digital literacy capabilities and the infrastructural support enabling them to continue to be mobile and socially active. Another approach could be to consider how experiences of ageing in networks evolve across the life-course as frailty sets in (e.g. declining health) or life circumstances change (e.g. the advanced care needs of an aged spouse). Researchers should also be mindful to approach the topic of ageing, social networks and care in culturally nuanced ways. Values of independence and interdependency vary depending on government systems and societal beliefs around the role of the family, community and government in aged care. Whilst concerns over austerity and neoliberal policies towards care and social support frame eldercare debates in countries like Austria, Germany and Switzerland (Leiber et al., 2021; Schwiter et al., 2018), in countries like Singapore and Japan, government investments in eldercare are higher. Yet longstanding and assumed cultural values like filial piety and family cohesion continue to frame government interventions, creating blind spots in terms of what other kinds of social networks would future cohorts of older adults tap into in order to age well. Across various geographical contexts, governmental and societal emphases on medicalised and social care also differ and they can influence the extent to which social networks and where they are situated are incorporated into eldercare planning.

The approach of ageing in networks can also lend to methodological innovations in geographical and gerontology research by leveraging on methods deployed in social network analysis studies. For example, the name generator approach is used in large-scale surveys to collect social network data by asking participants to name people with whom they have important social ties (e.g. Cornwell et al., 2008). This method can be synergised with geographical analysis by incorporating questions on the locations, distance travelled and travel modes (also see Gao et al., 2024). Within qualitative research, sociogram methods have been used to elicit visualisations of participants’ social networks in local and transnational spaces (e.g. Ryan, 2018; also see Ryan and Dahinden, 2021). Ageing in networks also presents considerable potential for incorporating geographical information systems analyses (GIS) methods, such as by using GPS tracking or time travel diaries to generate GIS visualisations of mobility patterns, routes and space-time paths or integrating survey and qualitative data with GIS maps of urban neighbourhoods and transportation networks (Ho et al., 2021a; 2021b). Insights from these methods will deepen understanding of older adults’ different types of social networks, the roles these networks play in their lives, where these networks are located and how older adults travel to reach the places where their important social networks are found. Triangulating such analyses with methods in digital communications can further illuminate the role of technology and virtual networks in supporting older adults’ in-person and distanced social connections.

The ageing in networks perspective offered here is not anti-neighbourhood nor does it wish to undermine the rich communities already forming in the everyday lives of individuals in households and neighbourhoods. Our theoretical goal is to broaden the frame of ageing in place and an imagination of what ageing in networks mean relationally and geographically. Although many activities are tied to some spatial location, the unbounded geographies of social networks in today’s world must mean that care is increasingly deterritorialised. Digital technologies provide older adults with the capabilities to connect over distances or overcome physical constraints. As people have ties to multiple individuals and organisations, it follows correspondingly that their social networks are not tied to one group or one place but incorporates a much wider range of places and groups. Analytically, this also means that the social protection of older adults is entwined with the social protection of those in their care assemblages. An ageing in networks perspective nudges change in the direction of seeing older adults less as persons boxed within ‘havens of safety’ but as individuals exercising personal mastery to build care assemblages of connectivity, branching from the home and neighbourhood outwards to include extra-local spaces and even the farther continents where families and/or communities of choice are located, including through digital means.