„Keiner weiß, was ich durchgemacht habe in der Zeit!“

Abstract

On care dependency among migrant workers and their families For roughly 25 years between the 1950s and the 1970s young people immigrated to the Federal Republic of Germany looking for work and a little prosperity. Most of them intended and were supposed to return to their home countries after a few years. However, many stayed and have now reached retirement age. With increasing age, more and more elderly are afflicted with dementia, including many former immigrant workers, or “guest workers”, as they are called in Germany. In the scope of a study on this subject, relatives of Turkish economic migrants with dementia were asked about the changes and challenges which a dementia disease poses to families. For the elderly migrants dementia is an unknown concept since confusion in old age is not perceived as an illness in their country of origin. Nevertheless, the symptoms of dementia force the affected families to change their lives completely in order to cope with complex stressors. The search for and implementation of suitable readjustments within the family systems is hampered by the discriminatory attitude of authorities and by an inadequate nursing service, which is neither transcultural nor target-group-oriented.