Abstract
ABSTRACTThis paper focuses on older Turkish labour migrants and their spouses, who mostly came to Vienna as young adults in the 1960s and thereafter. They are now entering retirement age and constitute a significant part of Vienna’s older population. I analyse their understandings of transnational ageing, their social ties and feelings of social embeddedness. For those still mobile, active participation in one of Vienna’s Turkish cultural/religious/political associations is identified as a particular source of social embeddedness. I argue that these voluntary associations provide an important place for older migrants to strengthen social ties and are relatively easy to access, including in old age. Nevertheless, I demonstrate that older Turkish labour migrants are exposed to several forms of discrimination, some of which are felt especially strongly in old age, including a lack of adequate institutionalised late life care. In the discussion of the paper, I critically revisit the debate on ethnicity as a resource versus ethnicity as a vulnerability factor in old age. I argue that this debate is misleading since it camouflages other central social categories and relations. I conclude by suggesting closer attention be paid to the specific but multiple generational experiences of older labour migrants and their spouses.
Highlights
Austria, which has long been ignored the fact that it has become a country of immigration, has not yet fully acknowledged the diversity among its senior population
I analyse their understandings of transnational ageing, their social ties and feelings of social embeddedness
While this paper shows how greatly my informants valued the community around these associations, which were central to their sense of social embeddedness, it does not claim that all older Turkish labour migrants and their spouses are socially well-embedded
Summary
Austria, which has long been ignored the fact that it has become a country of immigration, has not yet fully acknowledged the diversity among its senior population. Anthropologists have challenged the assumption that old age is universally a time of mutual withdrawal by old people from their surrounding societies (Keith 1980, 343; see Cohen 1994; Pickard 1995; Sokolovsky 2009) and criticisms have been raised against such a pessimistic and problem-focused position on ageing and on older migrants in particular By raising this challenge, scholars have drawn attention to the fact that migrants, even if they are at risk of multiple jeopardies, are agents who can draw on specific ‘ethnic’ resources that have been widely overlooked. These routines took centre stage in the lives of the older migrants, who sincerely hoped to keep them up for as long as they were able
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