Paper short abstract:

Most of the guest workers came to Germany as a result of binational recruitment agreements choose a transnational lifestyle in old age. This lifestyle often can´t be continued due to a dementia disease. The project focused on heterogeneous living arrangements of Turkish people with dementia.

Paper long abstract:

Guest workers came to Germany as a result of binational recruitment agreements in order to work for a few years and they were expected to return to their home country. Most of this migrants decided to spend their lives in Germany or chose a transnational lifestyle between their host and home countries. These individuals are getting older and their probability of being in need of care rises. This leaves them with the choice of staying in the host country or returning to their country of origin in the face of decreasing mobility-competencies.

With a qualitative approach, interviews with family caregivers of Turkish people with dementia who pursued/pursues a transnational life are conducted. The interviews are analyzed with the hermeneutic method of Documentary Method (Bohnsack 2003). The study asks how a transnational lifestyle is experienced by Turkish migrants with dementia and how the decision is reached regarding which country the person with dementia will continue living in when the disease progresses and travelling becomes more difficult. The presentation explores how the living environment in the home and the host countries is arranged and how the sense of home and allegiance is constituted by/for Turkish migrants with dementia. Possible implications for the constitution of individual living arrangements, social life and nursing care system will be pointed out.

Bohnsack, Ralf (2003): Rekonstruktive Sozialforschung. Opladen: Leske & Budrich.