“Let my hands be your hands”: Constructions of intimacy among Filipina migrants in the care of the elderly in Japan

The activities of care are often regarded as intimate and highly dependent on personal, relational and cultural contexts of care provision. In this paper, I explore how migrant care workers who do not share in the cultural logic and norms understand and mediate the expectations of intimacy in care work with their personal meanings and values in caregiving. Through multiple in‐depth interviews with 50 Filipino care workers and 1‐month of intensive fieldwork in a long‐term care facility, this paper unpacks the meanings and negotiations of intimacy in the care work of Filipino migrants in Japan. This paper analyzes intimacy in four dimensions: spatial, cultural, corporeal, and relational. It finds that Filipina care workers understand and negotiate intimacy in the care of the elderly Japanese by embodying cultural intimacy, mediating vulnerability and maintaining boundedness, attuning with the aged body, and articulating familial care. The findings offer the possibility for transformative caring relations when migrant care workers exercise intimacy in their care of the elderly residents in the institutional setting.