Paper short abstract:

By exploring the case of elderly Eritrean women working (or who have worked) as domestics in Milan, this papers show how they try to overcome their condition of loneliness and marginalization by forging new social relations and how they reframe the meanings of ageing in the diaspora.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the meanings that ageing and loneliness have for elderly Eritrean women who, after a life spent working as domestics for rich or middle-class Italian families in Milan, are now, or soon will be, in retirement. Some of these women did not have the opportunity to marry or to have children, they worked for many years without a formal contract and they now are facing all the difficulties of surviving in Milan with a minimum pension and very little social capital. For other members of the diaspora, and for other domestics in better circumstances, their life histories epitomize the model of an unsuccessful migratory trajectory and the opposite of what a 'good ageing' should be. Their much-hated loneliness is, for them, a silent space filled with regrets and bittersweet memories. But it is also a space in which to reconsider critically the social, economic and political forces that led them into exploitation, a condition that they now actively try to overcome by forging new social relations and by reframing what it means to become an elder in the diaspora.