Caring across borders: ageing and digital technology in transnational families

The rise of transnational families has generated new care arrangements in which migrant children use digital technologies to support ageing parents across borders. While the functional role of digital technologies in facilitating remote care is well documented, their relational and culturally embedded dimensions remain less understood. This review synthesises recent evidence on how digital technologies shape transnational caregiving.

Eight electronic sources were systematically searched for studies on transnational families, ageing, digital technology (including artificial intelligence-AI), and care, published between 2020 and 2025. Eligible studies were extracted, coded, and analysed using thematic analysis.

Fourteen studies met the inclusion criteria and were included in the analysis. Five themes were identified: 1) adoption and challenges for transnational ICT-mediated care; 2) ambivalence towards digital intimacy; 3) emotional labour and strategic concealment in transnational family care; 4) cultural norms and moral hierarchies of digital care; 5) structural inequalities in transnational care. Digital technologies both foster connection and amplify separation, serving as symbolic markers of family devotion and tools for managing information across generations. Rather than democratising care, technologies often reinforce existing global North-South, gendered, and class-based inequalities.

Digital technologies both sustain and transform transnational care, yet digitally mediated care remains relational and structurally constrained. Stronger digital inclusion and coordinated cross-border care infrastructures are needed to support ageing transnational families, while avoiding the reproduction of existing social, gendered, and global inequalities, and enabling older adults to age with dignity, connection, and security.