As with other developed nations where rapid population aging has led to increasing health care and social care burdens, Singapore has searched for ways of paying for and providing long-term care for its increasing numbers of elders. The Singapore state, faced with the prospect of one-fifth of the population aged 65 or older by 2030, has reinforced its basic principle of rendering the family the "primary caregiving unit" and home-based care as the highly preferred option for eldercare. Our paper demonstrates why, despite the range of alternative care arrangements available or emerging on Singapore's eldercare landscape, the employment of live-in foreign domestic workers as care workers for the elderly has become one of the more common de facto modes of providing care for the elderly. In this context, we discuss the politics of eldercare in the privatized sphere of homespace and conclude with policy implications relating to the employment of foreign domestic workers as caregivers for the elderly. © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

migrant domestic workers Singapore Care work The elderly home

Caregivers Home Care Services home care human statistics Singapore [Southeast Asia] policy Aged domestic work Social Work migrant worker Humans male Emigrants and Immigrants female elderly population hospital service Article manpower organization and management migration Singapore politics Housekeeping welfare provision public policy employment Health Services for the Aged caregiver primary health care elderly care