Caring for elderly parents while living away: Sri Lanka’s professional and skilled emigrants

Providing parental care within transnational families poses significant psychological costs for migrants in their migration and return migration decisions. The facilitation of transnational elderly care is complicated by associated stressors and mediated by systems that ease the emotional burden. The recently growing skilled emigration from Sri Lanka, often as a means of escapism, poses unique challenges in navigating the care needs of the left-behind elderly. Our study explored how 10 skilled migrants from Sri Lanka attempted to provide transnational care. Findings revealed that emigrants resorted to many conventional and novel coping mechanisms, which in turn, mediated their return decisions.