‘My Family Needed Me’: Exploring Caring Dimensions and Care Circulation among Older Venezuelans on the Move in Peru

Abstract

The humanitarian, political, and socio-economic crisis in Venezuela has generated an unprecedented migration to other South American countries. In the last six years, Peru has become the second receptor of Venezuelan people after Colombia and the first regarding asylum seekers. In this article, we follow recent contributions regarding the concept of care circulation to ask: how the case of older Venezuelans on the move illustrates the multidimensionality of care circulation? How these care arrangements can be understood from an age and gender perspective? Through three life stories, we discuss how older Venezuelans on the move practice care for the benefit of the whole family based on family arrangements and negotiations and how, as a result, care circulates in multiple directions and can generate conflicts and power imbalance for the older ones.