Work and Duty across Borders: Navigating the Liminal Caregiving of Millennial Filipino Migrant Professionals in Japan to Their Aging Parents

Migration studies have often overlooked the fact that millennial professionals navigate their career aspirations in the host country while providing transnational caregiving to their aging parents. This study explores millennial Filipino professionals in Japan and their filial obligations to their aging parents in the Philippines. Ten millennial Filipino migrant professionals in Japan will be employed as subjects using pakikipagkwentuhan, a Filipino indigenous method of collecting narratives through storytelling or informal conversations. Using Baldassar & Merla's (2014) notion of care circulation and van Gennep's (1909) liminality, this study explores the challenges faced by millennial Filipino professional migrants in Japan, which involve conflicting perspectives on filial obligations vs. personal aspirations, the transnational caregiving strategies millennial Filipino migrant professionals use to manage filial duties, and how cultural and intergenerational ambivalence shape the transnational caregiving relationships between millennial Filipino migrants and their aging parents. This study proposes the term "liminal caregiving" to describe the blurring of roles between Filipino millennial professionals as a child to their aging parents and the aging parents depending "like a child" to their children. I extend Baldassar and Merla's argument that care circulation is not just a "reciprocal, multidirectional and asymmetrical exchange of care" (p.25) but also a liminal experience. By exploring the ambivalent nature of intergenerational differences and cultural ambivalence among Filipinos, this study finds purchase in applying Baldassar & Merla's five dimensions of transnational care and van Gennep's liminality to understand better the transnational liminal caregiving relationships between millennial Filipino professionals in Japan and their aging parents in the Philippines.