VOICES OF THE LEFT BEHIND: PERSONAL NARRATIVES OF ELDERLY PARENTS COPING WITH MIGRATION-INDUCED SEPARATION - A QUALITATIVE STUDY

Abstract

Background: Ever since the turn of this century, a new trend has emerged in the field of information technology, resulting in a significant number of Asians migrating to Silicon Valley and Germany. The West has made great promises and scope for thousands of software personnel to move to the land of plenty. The tech hubs of the West have proved to be the preferred destination for Indian IT professionals to relocate. Earnings in dollars or Euros helped the aspiring youth to embrace the new land and choose to settle there. Though their parents also enjoyed and shared the benefits of the rising standard of their children, in the long run, it also took a toll on their emotional quotient. Financial stability was ensured for the family, but with the passage of time, aged parents experienced a sense of loneliness and insecurity. As discussed by Adhikari et al.(2011), the mental health and general well-being of the older parents of migrant children are at a toss. Today, we are witnesses to a new kind of community centres, old-age homes! Parents of children who have migrated to other countries live in such homes to get some support in their old age.               It is for us to scrutinize this issue to see if there is anything common or if there is a general pattern in the emotional state of the aged who are impacted by migration. Among the parents, the mother was most significantly affected.

Methods: Semi-structured interviews were carried out with mothers who met the specific inclusion and exclusion criteria. Each conversation lasted about 30 to 45 minutes and was recorded in high-quality audio. We then carefully analyzed the interviews using a six-step method developed by Braun and Clarke (2006). After completing these steps, the interviews were transcribed into scripts and reviewed manually to identify phrases, statements, or words that fit certain themes. We assigned initial codes to parts of the data that highlighted important aspects related to psychosocial distress, coping strategies, and personal challenges. From these codes, broader themes were developed to reflect common experiences or different variations among the participants. We continuously reviewed and refined these themes to ensure they were reliable and accurately represented the mothers’ experiences. Throughout the process, we made sure to interpret the themes in line with our research focus - exploring how migration of their children affected the mothers personally, emotionally, and socially, and how they coped with these changes.

Results: After careful and repeated analysis, we identified four main themes: ‘Living with longing,’ ‘Strength in solitude,’ ‘Caught between pride and pain,’ and ‘Finding belonging elsewhere.’ The first theme, ‘Living with longing,’ expresses the deep emptiness parents feel and their strong yearning for their children’s presence. The second, ‘Strength in solitude,’ shows how they cope by finding a quiet, inner resilience in being alone. ‘Caught between pride and pain’ captures the mixed emotions parents go through—the initial pride in their children’s success abroad, followed by the gradual heartache and sense of loss when their children decide to settle far away. Finally, ‘Finding belonging elsewhere’ reveals how the parents adapt and find new ways to accept their reality and move forward, even when left to face life on their own.

Conclusion: The four themes capture the deep and complex emotional impact that migration has on mothers. They show how a mother’s feelings and inner world change when her children move away. Instead of just one strong emotion standing out, these findings reveal a mix of feelings all working together, reflecting the true complexity of a mother’s experience. Pride, happiness, loneliness, insecurity, sorrow, resignation, acceptance, and adaptation are interwoven in the fabric of life. The themes highlight the continuous change and adjustments negotiated by mothers with the migration of their offspring.