Ageing and migration
Migration has significant consequences for the ‘left behind’ – the family members who do not migrate. These include economic and social aspects of their well-being. This project explores the consequences of international migration for the older generation.
The aim is to provide a better understanding of the ways in which the migrants’ parents cope with the absence of their children. This will complement existing work on the left behind that generally deals with the consequences that migration has for the migrants’ children. The research is being carried out in five regions of Bolivia, one of the poorest countries in Latin America, which also has a significant migrant population. The aim is to sample interviewees across different living arrangements and migration destinations to study how these have additional bearings on the wellbeing of elderly people who stay behind.
This project is being carried out by Prof Tanja Bastia, it is funded by Manchester Institute for Collaborative Research on Ageing, MICRA, the British Academy and a Leverhulme Research Fellowship. The final phase of the project will be carried out in collaboration with HelpAge Bolivia.
Key academic outputs
- Tanja Bastia, 2016, Migration and older people in Bolivia: between opportunities and new vulnerabilities, British Academy Review, issue 27
- Vera-Sanso, P., Vullnetari, J., & Bastia, T. (2023). Ageing and Later Life: Unsettling Development Assumptions. Progress in Development Studies, 23(4), 379-390.
- Bastia, T., Lulle, A., & King, R. (2022). Migration and development: The overlooked roles of older people and ageing. Progress in Human Geography, 46(4), 1009-1027.
- Bastia, T., Valenzuela, C.C. and Pozo, M.E. (2021), The consequences of migration for the migrants' parents in Bolivia. Global Networks, 21: 393-412.
- Entrepreneurial grannies: migration and ‘older left-behind’ in Cochabamba, Bolivia, Chapter for Ageing and Migration in a Global Context: Challenges for welfare states (2021), edited by Marion Repetti, Toni Calasanti and Chris Phillipson
Outputs
- Ageing while your children are abroad: discussion, Tarija, Bolivia, 6 March 2015
- Collaborative research for an increasingly mobile and ageing world, Panel convened at the annual RGS IBG conference in London, 28 August 2014
- Ageing and migration in Bolivia, dissemination event in Cochabamba, Bolivia, 24 April 2014
- Ageing and migration, workshop in Manchester, 18 October 2013