Ageing strategically: On migration, care, and diversity in later life

Abstract

This paper discusses how different groups of older migrants originating in the Global North and Global South converge in the Portuguese islands of the Azores-a microcosm of global migration and a site of inscribed healthcare inequalities-where they strategically maximise the economic and social capital accumulated over the life course to achieve a better life (style). Drawing on the concepts of "strategic switching" and "geographic arbitrage," the paper extends these debates to the domains of ageing and care. Based on qualitative research with three groups of ageing migrants-lifestyle, return, and ageing-in-place labour migrants-the paper shows how different groups of older migrants perform their agency and employ creative strategies to attain better ageing care, in other words, to age strategically. The paper ultimately reveals the centrality of practices of geographic arbitrage and the use of a strategic lens to mobility over the life course in order to achieve a more comfortable older age.

Advancing migration and health research by examining return migration

“…Furthermore, older people and/or people with health problems experience more insecurity in the degree of preparedness, as they need to ensure that they will have access to health and social services on their return. 44…”

Securing Retirement Through Intra-European Migration: Older Romanian Women’s Transnational Struggle for Formal Social Protection

“…It was recently suggested that manoeuvring through different locations, later-life migrants consider structural opportunities from meso-and macro-levels to improve their quality of life and/or excel in vulnerabilities (Sampaio, 2020;Ciobanu et al, 2017), highlighting their agency in doing so. Concerning social protection drivers, older migrants were studied in the context of their cross-border roles as informal caregivers and care receivers in their transnational families (King et al, 2017;Zickgraf, 2017), their retirement lifestyles, including those seeking to spend their pension abroad generally with better climate conditions and where their pension would have a higher purchasing power (Olsson & O´Reilly, 2017;Croucher, 2012;Gustafson, 2008).…”

Digital media, ageing and faith: Older Sri Lankan migrants in Australia and their digital articulations of transnational religion

“…Migrant minorities often rely on religious communities to create a sense of home in a foreign land, to fill gaps in available social services, to access social networks for employment, and to provide a communal space within which cultural practices and ethnic identities can be passed on to the next generation (e.g. Ebaugh & Chafetz, 2000; Mazumdar & Mazumdar, 2009; Sampaio, 2020; Vásquez & Knott, 2014). Religion is important for the production of diasporic identities in everyday spaces, including households and communities (Vásquez, 2020; Vásquez & Knott, 2014).…”

“…In this paper, we draw on two strands of existing transnational research, transnational religion and transnational family scholarship, to examine these crossroads of faith, ageing, migration, and digital media. A growing body of research on transnational religion (Ebaugh & Chafetz, 2000; Khosravi, 2010; Mazumdar & Mazumdar, 2009; Valentine et al., 2013; Vásquez & Knott, 2014) emphasizes the role of digital tools in both connecting migrants to places of worship around the world (Habarakada & Shin, 2018; Vásquez, 2020), and also creating new opportunities to plan for the next life (Sampaio, 2020). However, given the relative exclusion of older adults from discussions on technological narratives, it is in the transnational family scholarship where the role of digital media in ageing lives has been a central thread of inquiry, examined through lenses of ageing, digital media use, migration, and mobility (Ahmed, 2014; Cabalquinto, 2022; Ho, 2014; Madianou & Miller, 2012; Merla & Baldassar, 2010; Ponzanesi, 2020; Sinanan & Hjorth, 2018 ; Wilding et al., 2022), including our previous research that focused on affect and emotions (Baldassar & Wilding, 2020; Wilding, 2018; Wilding et al, 2020).…”