New titles on Ageing & Migration

Contributed on December 13, 2016 by Sandra Torres (Uppsala University, Sweden)

Population ageing and international migration are two of the major societal trends that European societies are facing today. These trends affect not only the ways in which we conceive aging and old age but also the manner in which elderly care is planned and provided. Despite of this, few books have addressed these issues together. One of the reasons for this is that carving a space for a book that tackles issues at the intersection of aging and migration has not been easy since scholars working on aging and old age are seldom versed on migration and the opposite is also the case for migration scholars. Aging and old age have not been in the radar of their research agendas since the quintessential migrant used to be young prior to international migration having become a globalized phenomenon. It is because of this that Ute Karl (University of Luxemburg) and I decided to bring together scholars from these two fields in an edited collection on this topic. Our joint effort resulted in an anthology – titled Ageing in Contexts of Migration - that was published as part of the Routledge Advances in Sociology Series in the beginning of this year.

This edited collection brings together not only the specific angle that migration offers to the study of aging, old age and elderly care but also the angle that the study of aging and old age brings to migration scholarship; a field whose interest on the later stages of life can best be described as lukewarm despite the fact that “there have been overlaps between migration studies and gerontology for decades” (Warnes & White, 2006, p. 1260). Because of this we decided to organize the book in three parts. The idea being that this would allow us to draw attention to some of the different angles around which separate agendas for research at the intersection between migration and ageing can be formulated. Our edited collection focuses therefore on: a) the importance that societal contexts  (conceptualized in terms of migration regimes and elderly care regimes) play for the ways in which we think about the intersection of aging and migration in different countries (as is the case in Part I); b) results from empirical studies focusing on older migrants specifically and addressing an array of angles from which their situation can be studied (as is the case in Part II) and c) the ways in which migrants are becoming more involved in elderly care provision around the world (as is the case in Part III).

Coinciding with the release of this book was also the release of another edited collection – together with Sue Lawrence (London Metropolitan University) - focusing on the challenges that international migration and population aging pose to social work practice. This book – titled Older People and Migration: Challenges for Social Work – is a book release of a special issue we guest edited for the European Journal of Social Work a few years ago. The special issue has apparently been downloaded so many times that Routledge decided to publish it in book form. Thus, in light of these developments and the fact that several special issues addressing the intersection in question have just come out (see for example the one just published by Journal of Intercultural Studies on end-of-life issues and the one on older migrants that just came out on Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies), I think that it is fair to say that the intersection of migration and aging is finally receiving the book and special issue coverage that it deserves. This intersection is after all challenging some of the very key notions that have informed research on aging and old age for decades (such as what successful aging means, how retirement is handled when the life course is transnational and how intergenerational solidarity is affected and shaped when families are dispersed around the world) as well as some of the old-age oblivious ideas that have shaped migration scholarship. Thus, with this short presentation I wish to draw to the intersection in question while also alerting this website’s readers that these two news books have just come out.

Book tips:

Lawrence, S. & Torres, S. (Eds.) (2016). Older People and Migration: Challenges for Social Work. Routledge.

Karl, U. & Torres, S. (Eds.) (2016). Ageing in Contexts of Migration. Routledge.