Ageing in Punjab: Stories of Migration, Care and Everyday Relatedness

Drawing on ethnography with older adults and migrant care workers in the northern Indian state of Punjab, this talk asks three distinct yet interconnected questions: How do older adults in Punjab experience ageing in the absence of kin members who migrate transnationally? How does migration reshape their perceptions of care, belonging, family reconfiguration, and other forms of social relatedness? And how do these experiences reflect broader socio-political shifts in Punjab, both culturally and politically?

The paper highlights how ageing and migration unfold against a backdrop of growing disenchantment with the state among older adults and their complex relationships with internal migrants from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. This disenchantment is shaped by unemployment, agrarian distress, and experiences of systemic neglect and corruption. At the same time, relationships with internal migrant labourers and care workers are marked by anxieties among older adults who perceive a demographic shift in Punjab due to the growing presence of migrants. The talk shows how migration produces layered affective, social, and political entanglements that shape the experience of growing old and of providing care within a particular socio-political and cultural setting. (Please feel free to shorten at and use it in the publicity material)