Years of the research: 2010 - 2014
Country: Poland, Austria, Iceland
Language: Polish, English
Keywords:
Researchers:
Type of research: international
Target group: retired people, migrants, elderly parents
Sample:
Qualitative interviews: 120 with migrants; 50 with migrants' parents. Quantitative interviews: 500 CATI interviews (age: 55-85; with migrating child\children)
Aims/Objectives/Background:
In the project I have focused on the functioning of the transnational intergenerational care system. This is dynamic, as it is bound up with the life cycle of the transnational family, and on the one hand, denotes practices associated with any assistance parents provide to their migrant children and on the other – in the event of elderly people being faced with health and basic living problems – with the phenomenon of migrants caring for their parents in old age. However, I was more interested in the care provided by migrants to their elderly parents than any assistance given by parents to migrants. The transnational system of care also incorporates the involvement (or lack of involvement, as far as this triggers consequences that are of relevance here) of relatively immobile people, for example the siblings of migrants who provide (or not, as the case may be) domestic support for their elderly parents. In this dissertation I adopt the thesis that geographical distance is not in itself as important an influencing factor as commonly thought when it comes to the possibility of caring for elderly people. Distance limits opportunities for providing some forms of care, but the actual fact of migration and its associated benefits make it possible to take advantage of other forms of care. Applying a transnational perspective to the investigation of intergenerational relations enables us to reveal the diversity of care practices which fail to disappear even within an economic migration context.
Publication/reports: 1) 2015. Social Remittances and Modifications of Polish Intergenerational Care Cultures. Polish Migrants in Austria and Iceland and their Elderly Parents, “STUDIA SOCJOLOGICZNE” 2: 97-118. 2) 2014. Transnational caregiving in turbulent times. Polish migrants in Iceland and their old parents in Poland, “INTERNATIONAL SOCIOLOGY” 29: 22-37 (with: Janusz Mucha). 3) 2011. In the trap of intergenerational solidarity: family care in Poland’s ageing society, “POLISH SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW” 1: 55-78. 4) 2010. Ageing in Poland at the Dawn of the 21st Century, “POLISH SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW” 2: 247-260 (with: Janusz Mucha).
Financed by: EEA Financial Mechanism; Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Poland.
Contact person: Łukasz Krzyżowski, lukasz.krzyzowski@agh.edu.pl
Copyright
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