Unskilled, Foreign, and Old

Abstract

Abstract. In order to increase our understanding of the financial disparity between older immigrants and their host-country peers, this article combines a cumulative dis/advantage analysis of immigrant life-course experiences while also attending to larger-scale, socioeconomic processes. The article combines qualitative interviews with quantitative register data from a cohort of older Turkish immigrants and compares their situation with that of their host-country peers. The analysis shows considerable inequalities in old age: While 1% of the ethnic majority live below OECD poverty levels, 29% of the immigrants do so. Their financially disadvantaged situation in late life results partly from the accumulation of a lifetime of disadvantages. Also important are the national rules that tie full social security pensions to length of residence in Denmark.

Spotting good ageing: using welfare theory of health to frame the agency of older adults with immigrant backgrounds to attain good ageing

“…Other differences are that Forssell et al talked to the care managers about so-called late-in-life immigrants while we have a more mixed sample of older adults, some of whom had a long time to integrate into society and build resources to attain good ageing. These results are in line with the argument of Liversage and Jakobsen (2016) that resources in older age should be understood from a life course perspective and that society would do well by investing in welfare systems that bolster immigrants' possibilities to raise resources. Thus, the children of the older adults in our sample seem to have been better integrated into Swedish society than the clients of the social workers in the Forssell et al's study.…”

“…To fulfil VLGs a person must also be resourceful in their context. For reference, older adults with immigrant backgrounds in Denmark originating from Turkey have about a 28% greater risk of living under the OECD poverty line (Liversage and Jakobsen 2016). The authors point especially towards a life course perspective to understand the inequality, urging states to consider bolstering integration policies to increase opportunities for immigrants to integrate into host-societies.…”