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- Convenors:
-
Ana-Maria Cirstea
(Newcastle University)
Cristina Douglas (University of Edinburgh)
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- Discussant:
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Jessica Robbins-Panko
(Wayne State University)
- Formats:
- Panel
Short Abstract
The emergence of Western paradigms of ageing well has shaped policies and experiences of later life in Central and Eastern Europe. This panel asks how this interplay of different models and practices of ageing can lead to new ways, both polarising and bringing possibilities, of ageing and caring.
Long Abstract
Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has been theorised as more than a geographical and historical crossroad between East and West, where different cultural, social and political models meet. Rooted in this positionality, critiques of CEE as an object of social and political intervention have addressed different policy agendas (e.g. corruption, inter-ethnic conflict), but little attention has been paid to ageing. The recent emergence of Western paradigms of ageing well (Lamb, 2017) has led to new forms of (self-) colonisation of ageing policies and care practices within and across CEE. As intergenerational models of age care become disrupted by decades of emigration from CEE countries, policy and personal narratives of ageing well may fill this gap. Recent labour migration from Southeast Asia to the age care industry in CEE may further reshape established paradigms of ageing and caring. The clashing of diverging care models could lead not only to anti-immigration or nationalist polarisation, but also to new practices of care in later life.
We invite submissions exploring ageing at these crossroads in CEE contexts. This panel asks: How can we explore spaces of intersection (geographically, politically, culturally, economically) to understand later life policies and practices in CEE? How can we ethnographically understand the interplay between kinship care, late life experiences and institutional care in CEE and critically assess political agendas of ‘ageing well’ in terms of polarisation and possibilities? How can we relate new phenomena, such as migrant care workers in CEE, to novel and established practices of ageing and caring? And how can we use ethnographic accounts of ageing in CEE to inform broader decolonising perspectives within the anthropology of ageing and beyond?
Accepted papers
Session 1Paper short abstract
The paper examines how marketized and financialized senior care in CEE reshapes everyday landscapes of care. Based on ethnographic research in the Czech Republic, it shows how care extractivism structures ageing and the lives of local and migrant care workers, deepening precarity and stratification.
Paper long abstract
Processes of marketization and financialization are transforming senior care across Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), producing new forms of social and economic inequality. The rapid expansion of residential facilities - often privately operated, semi-regulated, and driven by investment capital - illustrates how care provision has become a terrain for profit-making and speculative growth. These developments generate temporary “care fixes” (Dowling, 2021) that address systemic gaps while simultaneously reproducing structural vulnerabilities.
In my paper, I will conceptualize these transformations through the lens of landscapes of care (Milligan & Wiles, 2010), tracing how care is organized, commodified, and mobilized across households, institutions, and national borders. These shifts constitute a form of care extractivism: the systematic extraction of value from the labor, mobility, and vulnerabilities of both local and migrant caregivers (Uhde & Gheorghiev, 2025). Financialized logics of efficiency, risk, and return intensify the precarity of care workers, producing differentiated forms of ethnic, classed, and gendered hierarchization, while simultaneously creating zones of social abandonment (Biehl, 2005) for the most vulnerable seniors.
Drawing on the series of research projects I show how the Czech Republic functions as a laboratory of financialized senior care, revealing how these landscapes produce uneven access, dependency, and stratification, while generating new modalities of care provision. Overall, this analysis highlights how care crises, marketization, and financialization reshape the material and social infrastructures that sustain older adults and the local and migrant workers who care for them.
Paper short abstract
Beyond Western ideals of third-age agency, our study shows that older adults in post-socialist Romania remain in productive work as long as health allows - and sometimes beyond - driven by survival in a weak welfare regime where everyday life is a triage between food, medicine, and heating.
Paper long abstract
This study shows that older adults with age-related care needs in post-socialist Romania exercise extensive everyday agency - yet not in the form imagined by Western “ageing well” paradigms. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among older people ageing in place (qualitative interviews and participant observation), the study traces how everyday life is managed under conditions of care poverty. Agency here is not leisure, choice, or self-realisation, but practical work for firewood and food, and relation building in a welfare regime defined by fragmentation, inadequacy, and the absence of formal rights for older people.
Respondents describe later life as continuous triage between food, medication, and heating. Low pensions, high pharmaceutical costs, and minimal formal support mean that “every leu matters”. Older adults remain economically productive for as long as health allows, and sometimes beyond, because survival depends on it. The paper documents the concrete work this entails: securing income through small-scale labour, stretching supplies, and assembling unstable support arrangements through neighbours, distant kin, and informal exchanges. In a context shaped by emigration and thinning family care, participants also engage in delicate relational work to obtain support wherever possible.
The paper contributes to decolonising debates in the anthropology of ageing by refusing to treat Romania as a “lagging” case measured against Western benchmarks. Instead, it takes these late-life practices as analytically generative. It argues that dominant paradigms of “ageing well” can operate as a moral colonisation of later life, obscuring how actual agency persists when ageing is lived through scarcity and endurance.
Paper short abstract
We, a research project situated in Görlitz at the German-Polish border, explore concepts of care and aging well in a region with one of the highest average ages in Germany.
Paper long abstract
Since the 1990s, Görlitz has attracted retirees from across Germany with its comparatively cheap living costs, an extensive care infrastructure and the convenience of small-town life, all set against the backdrop of its impressive Wilhelminian architecture. In this paper, we draw on interviews with care professionals and residents of both the town and its rural surroundings, complemented by observational and archival data, to tease out different models of care and ageing well that co-exist in Görlitz. We use moments when personal narratives of care and ageing merge into political commentary as entry points for examining how local histories of polarisation intersect with shifting concepts of ageing and care.
Our research project is part of the broader transfer initiative „AlterPerimentale“ (age – periphery – experiment), a programme funded by the German Ministry of Research, Technology and Space. The programme is designed to support ageing well the German-Polish border area through participatory and co-creative activities with older people and those who care for them. Görlitz is one of three locations where the programme maintains a local presence in the form of a gerontological laboratory. Here older people are invited act as co-researchers in addressing their questions towards care and ageing well in rural areas.
Paper short abstract
This paper examines how Ukrainian migrants in Iceland navigate transnational elder care amid war, different welfare regimes and institutional change. Drawing on interviews, it explores emotional, legal and practical challenges and how formal and informal care systems adapt in times of crisis.
Paper long abstract
The ongoing migration from EEA countries disturbs traditional models of care by replacing hands on, direct care with transnational, distant care and an increasing reliance on care institutions and the third sector. While transnational parenting has been extensively researched, relatively little is known about institutional challenges care givers face when providing care for their elderly parents across borders. The socio-legal dimension of elderly caregiving and the evolving power dynamics among migrants and between migrants and the local population remain understudied.
Ukraine has a long history of emigration prompted mostly by economic factors. The full-scale Russian invasion into Ukraine has resulted in an exponential growth in both the numbers and composition of those migrating, with women (typically the primary caregivers) and children forming the majority. War poses new challenges to transnational care.
In this paper we focus on migrants and how they navigate different welfare regimes, care models, geographical distance and political conflict. We are interested in the intersection of the emotional, practical, legal and financial challenges that transnational care posits from the adult migrant child via the care giver perspective. Focusing on interviews with Ukrainian migrants residing in Iceland, our case studies illustrate the evolving institutional landscape following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, shedding light on how formal and informal care services have been adjusted in times of crisis, as well as, exposing how migrants navigate multiple welfare regimes in their caregiving practices.
Paper short abstract
This paper presents a comparative analysis of caring communities in Austria and Hungary, focusing on their development, institutional integration, and social and political implications of different welfare and governance regimes.
Paper long abstract
This paper presents a comparative analysis of caring communities in Austria and Hungary, focusing on their development, institutional integration, and social and political implications of different welfare and governance regimes. Caring communities are understood as locally rooted, often neighborhood-based initiatives that support the autonomy, empowerment, and social participation of older adults through collective learning. In Austria, caring communities have been established for more than a decade and are explicitly integrated into long-term care policies. Supported by public funding schemes and municipal involvement, these initiatives foster a democratic co-creation process (Wegleitner et al., 2026). In contrast, care policies in Hungary do not address community-oriented initiatives; instead, the authoritarian neoliberal state promotes unsupported familism and the centralization of public care services. However, civil society organizations often facilitate community initiatives that may shape local attitudes and may challenge traditional understandings of care. The paper raises questions about civil society engagement as a key facilitator of local care landscapes, the impacts of shrinking welfare capacities, and the critique of community-based initiatives. Based on qualitative research methods, including participatory fieldwork, semi-structured interviews, and focus groups, the analysis explores how stakeholders negotiate their roles at the local level and how older people’s living conditions may improve as a result of these initiatives. The comparison underscores how differing policy frameworks and political environments shape the transformative potential of caring communities.