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The scholarship on cross-border labour migration in India is characterised by the notoriety of the labour intermediaries. However, such a focus often eclipses the mutually beneficial social exchanges found among the migrants, would-be migrants, and their larger social circle. Against this backdrop, this paper focuses on the migration strategies of a leading migrant community in India-the Mappila Muslims of Kerala. Our findings suggest that, although there is a thriving migration brokerage industry in Kerala, Mappilas secure the crucial labour market information, facilitate their cross-border movement, and obtain the much-coveted Gulf job using close interpersonal connections. With their familiarity and first-hand knowledge of the market practices of the Persian Gulf, the Mappila migrants have internalised and strategically invested in the Arab cultural practice of wasta (securing favours via social connections). The paper also argues how the wasta-based connections of Mappilas help us broaden our understanding of social networks as understood in the Granovettarian tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Select research has indicated that widespread migration is catalysing the novel reimagining of eldercare and transformative changes in the local eldercare economy in the Global South. Yet research on ageing and migration from the South has largely focused on transnational care practices of providing emotional support and economic remittances. Drawing on ethnographic research among the privileged and affluent community of Syrian Christians of Kerala, India, I argue for a diverse and complex Southern reconfiguration of eldercare at the intersection of migration, which also includes 'market transfer' of proximate care services as reciprocal filial care. Further, the paper illuminates how specificities of migration, ageing and care are locally nuanced and shape diverse transnational care practices. In turn, transnational care strategies employed by the migrants to overcome distances transform the local eldercare economy and (re)produce class-stratified eldercare spaces. Through the study of a privileged community, the paper highlights the increasing marketisation of the eldercare landscape in the sending countries of the South and contributes to furthering diversified understandings of the ageing-migration nexus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]