The untold stories of resilience, reworking and resistance of ageing non-European migrant women

ABSTRACT

Ageing non-European migrant women often do not have a space to share their stories in a manner that adds meaning to their lives. They are viewed as a group that embodies deficits. This article centres them and their stories to understand how resilience, reworking and resistance practices are embedded in their everyday lives by utilising Katz’s framework of disaggregated agency. The data consist of semi-structured interviews with 20 ageing women from non-European migrant backgrounds in Finland. The findings suggest the need to re-imagine ways of narrating the multifaceted stories of women in the margins and illuminate new pathways for social work by untangling questions on power and who gets to participate as knowers. Shedding light on their untold stories challenges the hegemonic framing of social realities, destabilising the normative understandings of social work, and unravelling the nuanced unconventional strategies of survival and well-being utilised by them in the form of cultivating home place, sisterhood, community, decolonial healing, various strengths, reworking and everyday acts of resistance against oppressive structures. The findings contest the negative perceptions in dominant narratives, which produce problematic construction of migrant women based on their vulnerability.

KEYWORDS:

• Ageing migrant women
• counter-narratives
• strength-based social work
• well-being

Introduction

Migrants are portrayed as a group that embodies deficits that further reproduces hierarchies, relations of discrimination and social exclusion in many dominant narratives (Campbell, 2008; Perez et al., 2009). They are constructed as an inherently problematic and vulnerable group in many political discussions and media portrayals (Keskinen & Andreassen, 2017). Many gerontologists and social workers seek to unpack old age as a site of injustice and inequality by positioning older people as structurally dependent or incapable of accessing their full rights as citizens (Higgs, 2022). Ageing research associates such perceptions, as many voices are silenced and disregarded as knowers (Quijano, 2007) and there are also gendered and racialised constructions of ageing bodies (Rydzik & Anitha, 2020). Female ageing bodies in general are depicted as unappealing (Clarke, 2011; Rajan-Rankin, 2018). Ageing migrant women are depicted as welfare recipients with the assumption that they may not be contributing economically but rather constituting an economic and care burden for the state and families (KC et al., 2023a; Collins, 2008). Racial profiling, such as policing practices based on race, ethnicity, religion, or national identity have also affected specially people in the margins (Mulinari & Keskinen, 2022). When migrant groups are only considered through the lens of difference and negative representation, it creates a sense of fear and distrust amongst both migrant and native populations, and migrants’ trust in the social and health care system is thereby compromised (KC et al., 2023a). It is essential to highlight counter-narratives from the migrant groups themselves and study multifaceted voices in research (Chaouni et al., 2021).

Women of colour often do not have a chance to share the stories that position them as subjects (hooks, 1989). Counter-narrative provides a space for alternative interpretations of unheard, neglected stories and the lived experiences of marginalised groups (Andrews, 2002; Lueg et al., 2021). As Nelson (2001) suggests: ‘counter stories allow oppressed people to refuse the identities imposed on them by their oppressors and to re-identify themselves in more respect worthy terms’. In this article, I study how ageing migrant women from non-European migrant backgrounds position themselves and make sense of their lives by drawing upon Cindi Katz’s (2004) threefold classification of agency as resilience, reworking and resistance to shift beyond the problem-focused approach in research.

This article addresses the following question: How do ageing women from non-European migrant backgrounds in Finland develop strategies in the face of everyday challenges that contribute to their well-being? Ciobanu et al. (2017) point to the need for critical gerontologists to study how older migrants’ manifest agency and develop strategies to prevent, cope with and overcome real and potential vulnerabilities. Drawing from semi-structured interviews with 20 older women from non-European migrant backgrounds, the article aims to provide a strengths-based lens to the rhetoric surrounding the negative representation of these women. Trauma and struggles are deeply damaging, but they may also be a source to bring hope and change. Contrary to an emphasis on shortcomings, adversities, deficits and pathologies in academic discussions, the focus of this article is on positive pathways such as resilience, reworking and resistance which are based on strengths (Browne et al., 2009). These perspectives are required in social work research to understand how the stories of some individuals have been systematically skipped over; often they are the ones that social work needs to work with. The term ‘untold stories’ in the title of this article is used to shed light on alternative ways of understanding the voices of people who are in the margins, as not all stories hold equal status often making it difficult to locate the silences and to assert knowledge that falls outside the dominant paradigm (McKenzie-Mohr & Lafrance, 2017; Mohanty, 2003).

The untold stories of ageing non-European migrant women elucidate a process of becoming resilient as well as resistant and finding well-being in their own ways amid the rupture brought on by migration and oppressive structures. Their conscious and unconscious roles as nurturers, sisters, storytellers, grandmothers, mothers, cultural biographers, advocates, and healers sustain decolonial knowledge, practices and beliefs held collectively within their communities and in some cases, serve as a basis to resist oppressive gendered and racialised structures (Iseke, 2013). The article is organised as follows. First, I elaborate on Katz’s concept of disaggregated agency as resilience, reworking and resistance. Then, I present the empirical findings in relation to the research question. Lastly, I discuss how to re-imagine ways of narrating stories of women ageing in the margins and its implications for social work in Finland and internationally.

Katz’s (2004) framework of ‘disaggregated agency’

Human agency is defined as a person’s capacity to influence, make choices and create meaning from their environment through purposeful consciousness, reflective and innovative action (Higgs, 2022; Houston, 2010). Emirbayer and Mische’s (1998) sociological model of agency proposes that people do not only respond out of habit, or based on past experiences, and routines but that they practice agency in relation to their present situation and future possibilities. Agency renders human action as the dynamic interplay of persons influenced by their environment (Parsell et al., 2016). Disaggregated agency, on the other hand, can be an action taken against the ideas of disorganisation, fragmentation and chaos while lacking agency (Simeoni, 1997). In this article, I employ Cindy Katz’s (2004) framework of ‘disaggregated agency’, which relies on a three-step classification of social responses or actions to perceived oppressive and unequal power relations.

Katz’s theory (2004) highlights resilience (survival), reworking (reconfiguration) and resistance (subversion). Katz defines resilience as a tenacity to survive within oppressive situations by making use of different strategies in everyday life. Resilience practices are creative ways of surviving that do not oppose social relations (Cumbers et al., 2010). A person is considered resilient when she or he makes use of internal and external resources in the face of challenges (Pooley & Cohen, 2010; Ungar, 2014). Rather than being an individual trait, resilience is a process of interplay between the individual and the environment (Canvin et al., 2009; Ungar & Liebenberg, 2009). It is anchored in the idea that older people can thrive despite facing adversities (Wild et al., 2013). A resilience perspective fosters the exploration of positive avenues, coping mechanisms, adaptive pathways, as well as the myriad resources, and interventions that create a sense of well-being (Fry & Keyes, 2010).

Some scholars have, though, criticised the concept of resilience for following a neoliberal agenda that shifts the responsibility for the risks from the state power structures to the people themselves to accept their vulnerable situations (Evans & Reid, 2013; Joseph, 2013; Sapountzaki, 2007). A focus on resilience also runs the risk of merely foregrounding adaptation strategies, which leads to people fitting into pre-existing structures, rather than influencing or challenging the structures of oppression in their everyday lives (Wild et al., 2013). Similarly, Canvin et al. (2009) argue that there is a need for more research on how social inequality hinders or enables access to resilient resources.

Reworking practices are strategies that people deploy to reconfigure the self and make changes in their lives to access resources and make their living situations more convenient despite oppressive power relations (Katz, 2004). Reworking acknowledges the turbulent conditions and provides realistic actions that re-order the barriers of everyday life (Hauge & Fold, 2016). It is a process of people accommodating themselves to a situation that offers them a safer route to power, even when power is limited (Weitz, 2001). As Ndomo and Lillie (2023) point out, a focus on resilience and reworking does run risk, though, of only noting the adaptive and tolerant side of migrants in difficult situations whereas for many of them being adaptive may only be the last resort when seeking to cope, as agency can both be an enabler and a barrier to older migrant women’ well-being.

Resistance exhibits strong oppositional patterns, with the aim being to re-imagine and reconstruct unequal power relations (Katz, 2004). It confronts and dismantles the historical injustices and oppression in situation where people’s legitimacy, voices and subjectivity are denied (Lugones, 2010). Resistance challenges the ideologies that support subordination via individual acts of everyday resistance that can bring change and shift the power dynamics (Weitz, 2001). Acts of resistance have an explicit repelling attribute, but they are less prevalent than resilience and reworking practices (Hauge & Fold, 2016). Not all older women have the means and will to resist the oppressive structures, as such actions depend on many other intersectional aspects, such as class, education, privilege, support systems and safety nets (Brah & Phoenix, 2004). Some women can mobilise available resources, whereas others remain silent and adapt with the limited options and cumulative disadvantages throughout their life-course, even when they are aware of the injustices (Riessman, 2000). Resilience practices build on a limited consciousness of oppressive structures and focus more on creating survival tactics, while reworking practices are based on an effort to create a better and comfortable everyday life. Acts of resistance, in turn, involve talking back (hooks, 1989), risking, drawing on an oppositional consciousness to the hegemonic powers and aiming to alter oppressive structures (McKenzie-Mohr & Lafrance, 2017; Rydzik & Anitha, 2020). Katz’s classification of disaggregated agency allows researchers to give more attention to the interconnected practices that ageing non-European migrant women employ in the face of everyday challenges and oppressive structures. This framework is useful for exploring how they navigate problems at various levels and provides a new perspective on viewing them as subjects central to their lives.

Methods

The data consist of semi-structured interviews with 20 older women from non-European migrant backgrounds living in the Helsinki metropolitan area. The data were collected between September 2021 and May 2022. The research participants were from West Africa, Central Africa, South Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Central America. They either had a residence permit for Finland or Finnish citizenship. On average, they had lived in Finland for 21 years and 9 months at the time of the interview. The interviews were recorded with their consent and transcribed verbatim. The research follows ethical guidelines set by the Finnish National Advisory Board on Research Ethics (TENK). Full ethical approval was not required by our institution for this research. Pseudonyms are used and countries are de-identified to protect anonymity (Table 1).

Table 1. Description of research participants.

Participant	Region	Age
Bhanudevi	South Asia	76
Rewa	South Asia	73
Gloria	Central Africa	72
Yasodha	South Asia	72
Coney	Central Africa	68
Xiang	East Asia	65
Mehar	South Asia	65
Tapasya	South Asia	65
Kaeo	Southeast Asia	62
Gurpreet	South Asia	62
Vishnu Maya	South Asia	61
Ife	West Africa	60
Julie	West Africa	60
Radha	South Asia	59
Pariza	Middle East	59
Durga	South Asia	58
Obiye	West Africa	58
Chandani	South Asia	57
Ganga	South Asia	58
Carolina	Central America	57

The data were analysed using Braun and Clarke’s six stages of thematic analysis (2006), which includes becoming familiar with the data, generating codes, searching for themes, reviewing the themes, defining the themes, and producing the article. The initial themes, based on the research question were chosen by checking their coherence and consistency and then applying them to the theoretical framework and its threefold classification.

Findings

Three main themes were identified while exploring ageing migrant women’s agency. The first theme is resilience practices, which are based on cultivating home place and social connection, a sense of sisterhood, alternative ways of healing and spirituality. The second theme is reworking practices that include serving to help other migrant women. The third theme is resistance, i.e. fighting back against oppressive structures, carving out their own spaces, and coming to voice for their rights and inclusion.

Resilience practices

Cultivating home place and social connection

Older migrant women prioritise relationships with their families. They care for their grandchildren, help their adult children in the care work at home and create their home as a nurturing and safe space. bell hooks (1990), has described home place as the creation of safe havens by Black women away from the harmful effects of racism and discrimination. They make their homes into spaces where all members are subjects, not objects, regardless of any adversities suffered elsewhere and spaces where dignity can be redeemed which is not guaranteed in public spheres (hooks, 1990). The search for a secure place and to feel at home is articulated using words such as ‘place’ and ‘space’ within feminist discourses (Mohanty, 2003).

Ife:

What makes me happy is my children and my grandchildren. I’m ready any time to take care of my grandchildren, so that my children can go to work.

Most of the women also maintained good transnational ties and reported spending time on the phone talking to their grandchildren and extended families abroad to ease their isolation.

Bhanudevi:

My family is all together in one place, so this is my joy, even though it is a complete foreign land for us. I spend time on the phone everyday talking to my daughters and grandchildren, who are back in my hometown. I also go back to my country every other year and meet my relatives.

Their social connection is not limited to home and families. They preserve and maintain good community relationships. Participants shared instances of support that they had received from their community in times of need. Even though they have been excluded from the mainstream Finnish society in many ways, they shared how they navigate their way through the city with the help of someone they know. They rely more on one another’s support before seeking any external and professional support.

Radha:

The people of my community came to check on me and visit me when I was very sick. I got good support from them in tough times. They dropped me to the hospital, took me back home, came along as translators when I needed help. Our bond is like brothers and sisters here. We don’t let each other be in problem alone. We meet and talk regularly.

For migrant older women, organising events and being a part of the community mattered since most of their families reside abroad. They expressed that they checked on each other more often. The participants repeatedly emphasised the importance of asking for help as well as being there to help one other.

Chandani:

In any kind of a problem or crisis, the community comes along with you. They are still willing to help (…) It is also getting to know from each other that whatever trouble we go through, we’re probably not the first one or the second or the last. If we share our experiences, then we can prevent many people from getting into trouble.

As migrants living in Finland, there face many common issues that arise in everyday life; they share their experiences with others so that people who come after them, can know how to handle them better.

A sense of sisterhood

Older migrant women expressed that they share time with other women which is beneficial for them to feel heard, validated and to manage stressful situations.

Mehar:

Time with my women friends give me joy because I get energy, motivation, everything from them. In any problem, or if anything bothers me, I talk to them for maybe two hours, then I sometimes even forget what the problem was. When I talk to my daughters or my sisters, my mind diverts. The most important thing is to have a chance to talk. If you do not have that, then it is terrible to not be able to express your problems. Old people like sharing stories of memories from their times. Coming from South Asia, we are connected to our place of birth somehow. Sharing gives meaning to our lives.

The sense of sisterhood was strong among older women, which gave them a feeling of belonging and being able to collectively share the same experiences. As most had similar stories and struggles as migrants and women with racialised and gendered social structures, they found each other’s company to be comforting and uplifting during troubled times and to ease loneliness. Ahmed (2000) writes about encounters between women, especially face-to-face encounters, which provides a chance for them to talk about their stories of oppression and inequalities.

Julie:

I feel there are certain avenues that I can use to reduce stress for example like going to meet my ladies (…). We are talking, laughing, and sometimes we sit for two hours. Those kinds of social relations are important, even if they are not family, but good friends.

bell hooks (1999) writes about healing among women as an act of communion. Previous research has found that women of colour gather strength through communal practices (Bannerji, 1995; Davis, 2015; Moran & Mapedzahama, 2023). Collective strength of women as a sense of sisterhood is important not only as a survival tactic; it also has the power to demonstrate collective resistance to microaggression, social exclusion and wider oppressive structures when necessary (Moran & Mapedzahama, 2023). Sisterhood among older migrant women supports their experiences in spaces that are completely new to them and formerly not meant for them (Williams & Chau, 2007).

Alternative ways of healing

Pariza:

I have suffered so much. I got sick in a serious way, but I managed. I left my country. I lost my mother, father, and sister. My life journey was full of challenges and all the time, I try to be the best version of myself. I write almost every day. One of my strengths is to be so sensitive (…) I cry because it gives me so much good feeling and, I use different kind of method to deal with pain. I talk with myself in front of the mirror; I enjoy being present. I say to myself, I am not the only one! Somebody else has the same problem, if she or he can make it, I also must. I have to survive. I have to be patient.

Pariza does not go to therapy or psychological counselling, even though she has experienced various ruptures in life. She uses different techniques to help manage pain and come out stronger, like mirror-talk with herself, allowing herself to feel all her feelings, letting herself cry, positive affirmations, and writing everything down. Yasodha uses some Eastern healing methods that are common is her country but not valued as a healing practice in Western societies.

Yasodha:

To overcome anxiety and tension, I do a little bit of yoga, breathing exercises and taking care of diet and mindful eating. Also, satsang! Satsangs are when people with similar interests come together and discuss some topics like devotion. They sing together, cook together, eat together.

Group activities like Satsangs, where people gather to sing folk songs and discuss a topic, are indigenous therapeutic and resourceful techniques to promote well-being (KC & Walker, 2023; Rybak et al., 2015; Singh et al., 2017). Durga attested that she was disappointed after being incorrectly diagnosed for her mental health, so she is reluctant to seek any help from the formal services. She instead resorts to meditation and writing which have helped her.

Durga:

I had a traumatizing experience once with the social services. I was diagnosed wrongly for my mental health, so rather than asking for psychological counseling and medicines, I try to heal myself with meditation and writing. Here they prescribe anti-depressants for everything so easily without even understanding. Instead, I practice meditation which has helped me handle difficulties even when I am lonely. I would not go to a counsellor because they were not able to understand my situation.

Euro-centric, Western practices and concepts are considered normative and transferable in social work without considering historical trauma, structural violence, or systems of oppression (Chaouni et al., 2021; Mignolo, 2011; Rajan-Rankin, 2018). Indigenous, integrative, and diverse ways of healing are often forgotten, lost or undocumented but they can be used as decolonising practices to heal traumas inflicted by oppressive structures (Clarke & Yellow Bird, 2020). Gloria, for instance, copes up with any hard-hit moments through African music and dance and by cooking authentic food with other women.

Glora:

I say this; let’s go and dance! We put our music and dance, we put everything we want. We cook our food. Aaahhhhhh! (Sighs loudly with a smile)

Spirituality

Many older migrant women referred to spiritual practices that helped them ease their life situations. When nothing else worked for them, they relied on and put their hope in a higher power. Research participants came from different religious backgrounds but many of them shared about spirituality as a way to find strength and meaning.

Yasodha:

I mainly listen and sing devotional songs. Reading spiritual books bring me the greatest joy.

Coney:

When I was in my 40s, the doctor said I was not going to live longer because I always got sick. But look at me: I am soon to be 70 and still alive and it’s because of my faith in God.

They shared stories about finding peace and solace through spirituality after facing many challenges.

Reewa:

We have realised that our life is incomplete without God. Now that I have been over 70 years, I have realized that life is nothing. We can find peace through God. A big tragedy happened in my life. My 45-year-old daughter who had two kids died recently after suffering from cancer. She had just bought a beautiful home, hadn’t even shifted there. After that, our life changed, our minds stopped working. For me, nothing matters now except taking God’s name, bowing my head down and doing service.

Obiye:

I pray, I mediate on God. I listen to spiritual music. That helps me a lot to deal with challenges.

Some older migrant women also use prayer as a way of coping which is in line with findings presented in previous research (Obrist & Büchi, 2008; Stevens, 2016).

Reworking practices

Serving the Community

Gloria, as the senior-most member of her community in Finland, is called upon to manage family disputes. She described it as a way of resolving issues in her community where the advice of an older person is considered valuable.

Gloria:

If someone needs me, they call me: ‘Mumma can you come? I have little problem.’ I am the oldest in my community, so they call me if they have a problem between husband and wife, for example. I go there. I listen. I give my advice and thing get better.

Apart from that, Gloria also volunteers to look after the young toddlers of migrant women who are learning the Finnish language at an NGO.

Gloria:

They said, ‘you must be retired, and it is time for you to go home and relax’. I said ‘I don’t like that. I am still strong. I want to do something’. I am working as a volunteer. I am helping the immigrant women who want to integrate and learn Finnish. But the problem is, they have small kids, so it is impossible for them to attend the class. I take care of their kids so the mothers can attend the class. Maybe if I help, the immigrants will integrate rather than stay home. People say, ‘oh why are you doing that? They don’t give you money.’ I say I know what I am doing, I must help.

Chandani spends a large amount time helping people her community who do not know the Finnish system so well, and face language barriers when trying to access services especially on child protection issues, domestic violence, and workplace problems. People come to her because she has lived in Finland for the longest time than anyone in her community.

Chandani:

As the demography of my community started changing, a lot of problems came. People started having troubles with daily life things and started seeking help from me. When they don’t know how to go forward, I take them (…) I’m quite a lot in the phone with families and troubled issues.

Older migrant women shared their experiences of volunteering to help other migrant women when systems are not favourable to them as a way of reworking. Previous studies have shown such acts of service also provide them with feelings of usefulness, empowerment, and retention of a societal role (Cattan et al., 2011; Wilson et al., 2017).

Resistance practices

Coming to Voice

Some older migrant women have formed an association or joined one to help other women as a form of resistance against patriarchal and racialised structures.

Ife:

Often when they are talking, I feel that I’m not a part of it, even when I have a Finnish citizenship because I think they are talking over me. Even when I sit in their seminar, in front of the podium and somebody’s looking at me, smiling, talking how much women now have power and how they are in the board and there and there. It is like somebody has pierced in my heart because I see that this person is looking at me, sees me, but is not talking for me. It’s not my reality! And that’s why we started this association.

Ife attested to the need to form an association for migrant women like herself because she felt that even though she lives in a Finnish society surrounded by common norms of Nordic gender equality, her position is not the same as that of Finnish women, and she does not feel her issues are talked about nor understood. Highlighting similar intersectional disadvantages and the need to reconstruct unequal power relations between men and women, Parizah formed her own organisation for migrant women.

Parizah:

I build an organization for women which stands for freedom. It’s an NGO. It is based on volunteering, but the aim is improving immigrant women’ position in Finland. The women are not so free as a man. Men easily can go wherever they want or do whatever they want to do. But for women, they even have a closed culture and they have so many rules. That kind of difficulties is so much for women (…) You have to be very powerful yourself. You have to know who you are, what you want, what is the meaning of being here and have self-knowledge.

Pariza expressed that she has learned not to tolerate any ill treatment from anyone and resists the patriarchal and racialised structures by being more confident and knowledgeable and taking back the power in her own hands. Many women likewise expressed that they resisted the discrimination, racism, and challenges they face. Most of them mentioned that things did not change on their own, but through collective effort, willpower, and resistance. Chandani describes how being proactive, choosing to join a Finnish association helped her become more a part of society.

Chandani:

As soon as I came here, I started joining an association that was established by the Finns. It’s like 40 years old now, and they were not very welcoming because I didn’t understand Finnish. But I insisted that, well, there’s an election and I want to join. I joined and after that, all these board meetings were in Finnish. I just sat there. I was so adamant that I become a board member and I demanded that they explained to me what topics they talked about. That’s how I started doing things. (…) And while our (migrant) tendency is just to keep on complaining, doing nothing about it. Go forward! Nobody will do it for you, bringing it to you and putting it to your plate.

Obiye:

We need to take our power back and say things ourselves. They do it for us because we don’t. We cannot complain that they did this and that. We need to also be active and be in our community. We can’t do anything alone. All migrants need to come together for important matters like anti-racism. We need to challenge politics. Women need to find an NGO to express themselves and be informed. When you have information, you are empowered. It’s never easy. (…) Someone has to do the dirty job! Some men even tell their wives not to go close to me, they say: she is like this and that for the work I do.

Obiye and Chandani highlighted that migrant women themselves have to find their voice and bring the issues forward in order to enact change in society. This is in line with hooks’s concept of coming to voice, which is moving from silence to speech as a form of resistance (1989). Coming to voice is considered a metaphor of self-transformation for women who have never had a public voice before, like speaking or writing (hooks, 1989).

Discussion

Our findings demonstrate that some ageing non-European migrant women manifest agency and build unique strategies in the form of resilience, reworking and resistance to cope with difficult life situations, challenge oppressive structures and foster well-being in their everyday lives. They utilise survival tactics through cultivating home place as a nurturing space, and staying socially and transnationally connected to overcome isolation, maintaining a strong sense of community solidarity when in need of support rather than making use of professional social and health care system. Through sisterhood, they were able to share stories of their mundane exuberance and tribulations as well as experiences of inequalities associated with gender, migrancy and ageing. Some of them used various alternative ways of healing instead of seeing a professional in the pursuit of their own well-being which did not resemble the Western ways of social work intervention. Some have also resorted to finding meaning through spirituality. Ageing non-European migrant women have employed reworking strategies to help other women when systems were not convenient for them, such as family counselling, childcare and migrant integration, by establishing alternative mechanisms that may seem unconventional to the standardised norms. They upheld resistance by fighting back against oppressive gendered and racialised structures, building their own spaces, and coming to voice about their rights and inclusion.

Learning about such stories of agency offers an empowering and decolonising lens in the epistemology of ageing and social work research (Mohanty, 2003). It centres ageing migrant women in research. It challenges the homogenised perspective on well-being and care. Counter-narratives question which narratives are visible and challenge the Western notion of knowledge production by introducing alternative ways of knowing (Chalmers, 2017; Chaouni et al., 2021; Rajan-Rankin, 2018). Furthermore, it contests the negative perceptions in dominant narratives that produce a problematic construction of ageing migrant women as passive, helpless, and powerless. Constructions of vulnerability and victimhood undervalue and under-recognise older women (Rydzik & Anitha, 2020). The findings present that older non-European migrant women have found sources of strength and support for each other and are often hesitant to seek support from the Finnish system. It raises some questions on why they have to adapt and need to carve out spaces of their own to promote their well-being? Does the existing system of care not support the idea of participation and well-being for all its citizens and permanent residents?

Despite the absence of support from available systems and evidence of social exclusion, ageing non-European migrant women have been active in developing their own mechanisms of survival, reconfiguration, and subversion by creating their own spaces and finding support through their own channels. Scientific knowledge has at times othered the stories of the communities in the margins (Chaouni et al., 2021). However, I also recognise the risk in highlighting such narratives of strength which people in power may use against marginalised groups when they are in need of support. Nevertheless, giving a space to these untold stories of resilience, reworking and resistance makes it possible to envision well-being for ageing migrants from a culturally humble lens in social work. Counternarratives have the power to move social workers to engage in deeper reflection regarding questions of power and privilege when determining whose stories get told, and who listens (Berrett-Abebe et al., 2023). A culturally humble lens provides self-awareness and openness that keeps the social worker in the learning mode, where people we work with are regarded as more knowledgeable, as opposed to the social worker being culturally competent or an expert in someone else’s culture (Ortega & Faller, 2010).

It is important to explore how older migrant women have dealt with oppression throughout their life-course by developing different strategies that informs us about their everyday lives and how they make sense of them (Andrews, 2002; KC et al., 2023b). Our findings have important implications for social work in Finland and internationally, addressing the need to re-imagine current ways of narrating stories of women in the margins who have been put into specific boxes, and undertake a reciprocal engagement with them as knowers and not only as objects in our scientific inquiry. It provides a space for communities that are historically silenced to make their seldom heard narratives understood and heard. As Anciano and Wheeler (2021) write, counter-narratives have the possibility to offer a pathway towards social justice which is a key element in social work. The findings also point out to the need of acknowledging diverse perspective on well-being and integrative healing in social work practice, education, and future research. It suggests us to shift beyond deficit thinking in how we construct ageing migrant women and instead focus on building on the strengths that individuals and communities possess and to sustain them in calling attention to existing inequalities.

Conclusion

Ageing women from non-European migrant backgrounds have developed and utilised various strategies, such as resilience, reworking and resistance in their own nuanced ways to confront everyday challenges and structures of oppression. These untold stories offered new perspective on agency, well-being and strengths and presented how ageing migrant women from non-European migrant backgrounds heal and re-build individually as well as collectively throughout their life-course. The findings have resituated these women in a position of agency and power, underlining their abilities to influence their everyday lives and leverage spaces of their own during the absence of formal support or professional social work. These stories bring new ways of knowing people’s life situations and reimagining well-being. They also challenge the negative and vulnerable construction of these women in the margins. The untold stories provide a space for social work to open itself up to the seldom heard narratives, and deeply reflect on broader questions of power as well as on the power of stories.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Professor Marjaana Seppänen and Professor Kris Clarke for their helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Finnish Cultural Foundation (Suomen Kulttuurirahasto) under Grant 00230582 Central Fund.

Notes on contributors

Smarika KC

Smarika KC is a doctoral researcher in Social Work, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki. Her research interests are inequalities in ageing, intersectionality, migration, and well-being.