Virtual Watch, Real Care: Transnational Surveillance and Emotional Labour in Home-Based Care in Kerala, India

Abstract (English)

As care for older people increasingly takes place across borders, information and communication technologies (ICTs) have become central to how care is delivered, supervised, and emotionally sustained at a distance. Drawing from a study of home-based caregivers and care recipients in the South Indian state of Kerala, this paper explores the experiences of live-in caregivers employed by families whose adult children reside abroad, particularly in the Middle East, North America, and Europe. In these transnational arrangements, caregivers are not only expected to provide physical assistance but often step into the role of fictive kin, forming emotionally intimate bonds in the absence of close family members. Technologies such as video calls, messaging apps, and home surveillance systems mediate these relationships, enabling remote presence while also reshaping how care is perceived, practiced, and controlled. In many households, tools like CCTV cameras and video-calling platforms are used not only to track the health of aging parents but also to monitor the behaviour and emotional performance of caregivers.

These forms of digital mediation raise complex questions about presence, trust, and corporeal absence. While remote family members attempt to maintain a sense of intimacy and control from afar, caregivers must operate within an environment where their work is continuously scrutinized and emotionally evaluated through screens. The result is a form of performed care: caregivers are expected to embody attentiveness, affection, and professionalism in ways that are legible to both the care recipient and an unseen virtual audience.

Although caregiving remains a deeply tactile and emotionally invested form of labour, much of this embodied work becomes invisible, flattened, or misinterpreted under conditions of digital surveillance. Caregivers speak of the constant strain of being “watched all the time,” and of bearing not only the responsibility for the patient’s health but also the emotional expectations of distant children, expectations often shaped through fragmented interactions such as video clips, brief updates, or occasional calls, rather than continued presence.

This paper places these caregiving practices within wider anthropological discussions on embodiment, ethical labour, and the role of technology in shaping care. It engages with themes such as the changing nature of touch and presence, the tensions between digital monitoring and bodily knowledge, and the emotional languages that emerge in transnational care relationships. The paper argues that digital surveillance in home-based eldercare does not replace physical presence but produces new forms of affective labour, surveillance, and moral responsibility that caregivers must learn to address. It contributes to understanding the digital transformation of care work in transnational contexts, where caregiving is increasingly shaped by distance, technology, and shifting expectations.