WiSe 14/15: Research on Elderly Migrants/ Aging and Migration

Anita von Poser und Groß-Nädlitz

Comments

Notions of aging, including expectations, desires, hopes and fears concerning life and care in high age, are socially and culturally shaped, on the one hand, and embedded within particular structural settings, on the other. These notions might become tremendously reconfigured under conditions of migration and increased mobility. Still, studies of aging and studies of migration have long been separate fields of analysis and have only recently begun to merge. Multidisciplinary research on aging has for the most part concentrated on the members of so-called majority societies whereas most of migration research has not put a particular lens on the situation of elderly people. Moreover, ethnographies of aging have not been abundant in the general anthropological literature. The seminar aims at covering the various discursive, embodied, enacted and imagined dimensions of what it means to be elderly and migrant and invites participants to think about "the elderly" in novel ways. close

Suggested reading

- Baldassar, L., Baldock, C., & Wilding, R. 2007. Families Caring Across Borders: Migration, Aging and Transnational Caregiving. London: Palgrave MacMillan.
- Gardner, Katy (2002) Age, Narrative and Migration: the Life Course and Life Histories of Bengali Elders in London. Berg Publishers, London.
- Baykara-Krumme, H., A. Motel-Klingebiel & P. Schimany, Peter (eds.). (2012). Viele Welten des Alterns. Ältere Migranten im alternden Deutschland. Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.
- Bengtson, V.L., G.H. Elder & N.M. Putney 2005. The Life Course Perspective on Ageing: Linked Lives, Timing, and History. In: M.L. Johnson (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Age and Ageing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 493-501).
- Counts, D.A., & D.R. Counts 1996. Over the Next Hill: An Ethnography of Rving Seniors in North America. Petersborough: Broadview Press.
- Naldemirci, Ö. 2013. Caring (in) Diaspora. Aging and Caring Experiences of Older Turkish Migrants in a Swedish Context. Göteborg Studies in Sociology No 54. Department of Sociology and Work Science, University of Gothenburg. Internet-id: http://hdl.handle.net/2077/34304
- van Eeuwijk, P. und B. Obrist (eds.). 2006. Vulnerabilität, Migration und Altern. Medizinethnologische Ansätze im Spannungsfeld von Theorie und Praxis. Zürich: Seismo.
- Von Hülsen-Esch, A., M. Seidler & C. Tagsold (eds.) 2013. Methoden der Alter(n)sforschung. Disziplinäre Positionen und transdisziplinäre Perspektiven. Bielefeld: transcript.
close