Planning for later life: an ethnographic analysis of ageing among transnational Papua New Guineans

This project addresses the global problem of ageing populations by looking at how transnational Papua New Guinean families plan for old age. We explore how Papua New Guineans resident in North Queensland, Australia, make specific decisions about later life that balance the value of relations with kin, friends, neighbours while also dealing with the social services provided by the state and the market. Our project asks how the descendants of societies in PNG - once famous for their use of ‘the gift’ - now use money to reproduce and care for themselves through a transnational moral economy. By examining the moral economy of ageing in the PNG transnational family, this project fills an empirical and conceptual gap in our knowledge of how people plan for later life. We then describe the tensions that emerge in transnational decision making concerning old age. The resulting knowledge of how Papua New Guineans prepare for old age will help to critically inform policies concerning the wellbeing of people engaged with ageing.