Ethnography as a Practice of Care: Anthropological Perspectives on the Aging in Diaspora

Ethnography can function as a practice of care, offering an ethical and sensitive lens on aging migrants as precarious "forms of life." Drawing on two projects - "Transnational Aging between Italy and Africa" and "The Isolation of Aging Immigrants in Seine-Saint-Denis" - I examine transnational aging among Tunisians in Italy and elderly immigrants in the Paris banlieue. Focusing on vulnerabilities and limited access to health my ethnography reveals how older migrants navigate mobility, kinship, marginalization, and welfare barriersframing the mobile elderly body as a political and social entity, and care as an epistemological framework for understanding and improving transnational aging.