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Abstract
By revisiting De Beauvoir’s feminist arguments on ageing I interrogate work-related (im)mobilities of women in two contexts: migrating in middle-age or pre-retirement, and ageing ‘in place’. The data derive from in-depth interviews with currently middle-aged Latvian labour migrants in Europe and non-migrants in Latvia. Ten life stories of migrant women are matched with ten life stories of women who never migrated, but have had similar work-life transitions and care responsibilities. Work-related mobilities are conceptualised along three interrelated dimensions: first, risk-taking in relation to career and income-generating work abroad; second, ‘waiting’ and enduring vs. enjoying employment towards retirement; and third, post-retirement for both groups of women and post-return experiences of return migrants. I demonstrate how these mobilities are similar, but also diverge in migrant and non-migrant narratives due to the capability of these women to control their own mobility. I argue that power relations arising from gender and ageing are important for a more nuanced understanding of how hopeful meanings attached to social and geographical mobilities shape a person’s sense of self during ageing.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to EEA and Norway grants and Department of Geography, University of Latvia for funding a research visit to the The Arctic University of Norway, Tromso in June 2016 and to the Academy of Finland for funding the TRANSLINES project (Inequalities of Mobility: Relatedness and Belonging of Transnational Families in the Nordic Migration Space 2015–2019). Many thanks to Marit Aure, Siiri Gerrard, Marianna Pavlovskaya, Russell King, two anonymous reviewers and editors of the journal for very insightful comments and constructive critique to the earlier drafts of this paper.