Doing old(er) age in a translocal context: Turkish-born women’s experiences of ageing, care and post-mortem care practices

Abstract

This article elaborates on how Turkish-born women in Sweden do old age in relation to gender and migrancy and aims to understand the fluid process of doing over their life course. It draws upon 20 in-depth and semi-structured interviews with Turkish-born women aged 60–78 and aims to address the tensions between agency and intersecting power positions. Theoretically, the article relies on critical feminist gerontology and doing old age to address the negotiations and performances of the interviewed women. The findings show that there are several ambivalences and dilemmas in how the women do old age in a transnational setting. Intergenerational and gendered old age care comes to fore as a significant negotiation site. The women negotiate identity categories with both imagined others and the social actors in their lives (such as their children) over their life course, which implies the situated and relational aspect of doing old age.

Keywords:

• Doing age
• translocal ageing
• Turkish-born women

Acknowlegments

I am very thankful to all the women who shared their stories with me. I also would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisors Helen Peterson and Jenny Alsarve for their unwavering support throughout the entire process of writing this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Although I refer to the same concept as Machat-From, I prefer to use the term “imagined others” rather than “virtual others,” because “virtual others” can be confusing in different settings, such as when talking about ICTs and digital settings.

2 Hence, the term Turkish-born women is used in the article instead of Turkish women.

3 “My daughter” (kızım) is an informal way of addressing younger women in the Turkish language.