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Paper short abstract

The ethnographic research on Indian older migrants in Germany explores ageing and migration experiences through an affective lens, where everyday experiences of health and illness with ageing become a crucial site through which belongingness, vulnerability, and attachment are experienced.

Paper long abstract

Drawing on ethnographic research with Indian migrants aged 55 and above living in Germany, this paper examines how ageing and health are lived as affective and embodied dimensions of long-term migration. For older individuals, who often describe Germany as “home,” health becomes a crucial site through which belonging, vulnerability, and attachment are negotiated in everyday life. I explore how encounters with Germany’s healthcare system, social institutions, and bureaucratic regimes generate ambivalent emotions, ranging from trust and security to frustration, uncertainty, and alienation. These affective experiences shape how ageing migrants make sense of their bodies, their life trajectories, and their place within their host society, while also maintaining transnational ties and moral obligations with India. By foregrounding health management as an affective practice, the paper highlights how ageing migrants navigate not only institutional structures but also emotional landscapes of care, dependency, and autonomy. Methodologically, the paper reflects on the role of long-term ethnographic engagement and case studies in capturing the emotional textures of ageing and migration. Overall, the contribution situates ageing migrant health as a relational and affective process that reveals the complex entanglements of mobility, belonging, and well-being.