This thesis explores the exchange of care between older adults and their primary caregivers in emigrant households of Kerala and Goa, India. These states have witnessed rapid demographic transition as well as substantial adult child emigration over decades and where older adults are most commonly left-behind. This study focuses on eliciting the perceptions of older adults and their primary caregivers with respect to ‘exchange of care’ among them within the context that emigrant households provide. Caregiving to older adults has a cultural premise and the act and value of providing care to older adults are grounded in the culture of the society. When we understand caregiving obligations, such models result in personalized and highly idiosyncratic understandings of what is considered ‘right’ or ‘what ought to be done’. Some cultural models are enacted daily and come to be seen as ‘right’, as arising ‘naturally’ without conscious thought to examine the motivation to care for the older adults. How this influences the expectation and actual receipt of care by the older adults in their perspective is of interest here. Though the intergenerational filial contract is very much resolute even today, there seems to be a reinterpretation and renegotiation of the intergenerational living arrangement. What hitherto resulted majorly in co-residence is now increasingly depicted through other newer forms of adaptive living and care arrangements for which we coin the phrase ‘intergenerational care arrangements'.