CALL FOR PAPERS – Deadline for abstract submission: 3rd of June, 2013
‘Ageing Migrants’ Workshop
IMISCOE Annual Conference “Crisis and Migration – Perceptions, Challenges and
Consequences”, Malmö, Sweden, 26-27 August 2013
Session 1
VULNERABILITIES AND COPING STRATEGIES OF AGEING MIGRANTS
Organisers: Dr. Ruxandra Oana Ciobanu, researcher, University of Applied Sciences of Western
Switzerland and Dr. Tineke Fokkema, researcher, NIDI
Immigrants are becoming a substantial part of the European ageing population. Their situation and role in society have increasingly caught the attention of both policy makers and academics. In this respect, one often refers to their latent vulnerability: being aged and having a migration background cause a double risk of being vulnerable, as supported by a number of empirical
studies. Compared to their native peers, on average, older labour migrants have more physical and mental health problems, are less wealthy, more often live in bad housing and deprived neighbourhoods, are less likely to participate in social activities and use less formal health care services. Their current state is a clear outcome of their life trajectories and hard working lives.
More recent studies show that also the international retirement migrants who have been so far considered as having a good economic situation, are sometimes in vulnerable situations, suffering from social exclusion and marginalisation.
However, this general picture masks variations in vulnerability across ageing migrants. They are a heterogeneous population with several categories on a continuum from the most prosperous and active citizens to precarious and socially little involved migrants who develop mainly survival strategies. This workshop welcomes papers on these variations by discussing the following issues:
· Main risk and protective factors of specific vulnerabilities (e.g., adverse physical health, social isolation, loneliness, poverty, underuse of health care services, poor living conditions) across ageing migrant groups.
· Ageing migrants’ strategies to cope with or escape from vulnerability
· Community and policy interventions to prevent or reduce ageing migrants’ vulnerability.
To submit a paper for this session, please send a Word document with the paper title and an abstract of no more than 500 words, together with your name and institutional affiliation, to Ruxandra Oana Ciobanu (oana.ciobanu@hesge.ch) or Tineke Fokkema (fokkema@nidi.nl) no later than 3rd June 2013.
Accepted participants will be notified by June 15, 2013. They are required to send full-length papers (no more than 60’000 characters) by 10 August 2013. To facilitate discussion and exchanges, these papers will be circulated in advance to workshop participants. Time for presentation will be 15 – 20 minutes. It is expected that a selection of papers will be published as an edited volume or a special issue.