Leonie Kellaher

The diversity and welfare of older migrants in Europe

This paper sets the scene and provides a conceptual framework for the articles in this special issue. They present the findings of research on European residents who have reached or are on the threshold of old age and whose current circumstances have been strongly influenced by a migration across an international border. Such ‘older migrants’ are scattered throughout Europe and they have especially diverse characteristics. They include some of the most deprived and socially excluded, and some of the most affluent and accomplished, but all to a greater or lesser extent are disadvantaged through an interaction between social policies and their ‘otherness’ by living in a foreign country. Some claim attention through the severity of their unmet health and welfare needs and poor capacity to access advice and treatment, while the affluent groups are of great interest to social gerontology because of their enterprising, developmental and positive approaches to old age. They include among the most innovative of the latest generation of older people, who pursue new combinations of family responsibilities, leisure pursuits and income generation. The paper proposes that the concept ‘human capital’ summarises variations in preparedness for old age, that is, the resources by which people cope with demands for income, roles, treatment, care and support. A typology of the ‘welfare position’ of international migrants in contemporary Europe is presented.

‘Option recognition’ in later life: variations in ageing in place

ABSTRACT During the 1970s, American gerontologist M. Powell Lawton and colleagues saw the person–environment system as fundamental to defining the quality of later life. They proposed the environmental docility hypothesis that weighed whether the more competent the person, the less dependent they are on environmental circumstances. This work was later advanced to show that environmental pro-activity, including adaptation, could reinforce control and autonomy. While that theoretical development focused on the micro-environment of accommodation, it can be applied to the macro-environment of community living. This paper, which utilises data from an empirical study ‘Environment and Identity in Later Life’, examines both the micro and macro scales, develops the theoretical content of the person-competence model, considers the complexity of person–environment interaction, and argues that over time some people find that their attachments to particular environments are compromised by declining competence or changes in the environment, or both. The point at which change impacts on an individuals independence and wellbeing is reached when adaptive behaviour cannot rebalance the macro- and micro-environmental press. This point, termed ‘option recognition’, leads to a range of strategic responses including: modification of behaviour or environment; structural support using formal and informal services; and relocation; all of which impact on self-identity.

In the shadow of the traditional grave

Abstract This article draws on data from a qualitative study of the destinations of ashes now being removed in increasing numbers from crematoria, the practice of cremation, and particularly the private disposal of ashes outside crematoria. 1 It explores the case that such disposals may frequently be informed by the recollection, or awareness, of practices surrounding whole body burial. These include notions of bodily integrity, the creation and preservation of a clear, bounded space for the deceased, and expectations and negotiations about grave visiting and upkeep. The article therefore seeks to determine whether new ritual practice is being developed, or instead, whether a reformulation of traditional beliefs and practices is taking place. Data are presented which primarily demonstrate either a strong parallel between burial and cremation practice or a serious intention to stand clear of the shadow of the traditional grave. In addition we discuss a smaller body of material which reveals more ambiguous approaches that do not support either argument. By examining data within these categories, the article explores the varying degrees of alignment between traditional burial and cremation practices and asks whether cremation provides scope for a return to positively perceived aspects of burial, while side-stepping its less welcome aspects, such as slow bodily deterioration.

Of Grief and Well-being: Competing Conceptions of Restorative Ritualization

Informants’ accounts of what they did with ashes they had chosen to remove from UK crematoria described disposal and memorialization strategies that have implications for anthropological understanding of issues of well-being, and the generation of new ritual practices. Here we aim to explore informants’ conceptions of how well-being might be restored after a bereavement and how these were being put into practice. Data were gathered as part of an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded project, which used qualitative interviewing and focus groups among professionals involved with independent ash disposal; and individuals who had removed the ashes of relative or friend from a crematorium. Barking and Dagenham, Nottingham, Sunderland and Glasgow were our field sites. Analysis involved recognizing these data as ‘motivated narratives’ (Bury 2001) that, for example, extended informants’ relationships with the dead, as well as reflecting tensions between professionals’ imperatives to complete work with a client and their commitment to offering individual choice and support during their ongoing relationship with the dead. Such findings highlight the contested nature of contemporary conceptions of restorative ritual, with tensions existing between the meta-narratives of individual choice and professional expertise; between different individuals’ ‘choices’; and between the event of a death ritual and the process of ritualization. These findings contribute a nuanced account of the diversity of discursive practices through which the individuals, both ‘lay’ and professional, involved in a particular death, might understand how well-being can be restored.

Wandering Lines and Cul-de-sacs: Trajectories of Ashes in the United Kingdom

Cremation was introduced in the United Kingdom in the 1870s and legalised in the 1902 Cremation Act (Jalland, 1999). Its uptake was slow however and only overtook burial in 1968. By 1995, just over 70 per cent of all disposals in the United Kingdom were cremations, the rate then remaining at this level (Davies and Mates, 2005). As a result of this relatively low initial uptake, local councils were unwilling to invest in new sites for crematoria, instead using existing cemetery land. In addition, their location in existing cemeteries was seen to ‘mitigate the “strangeness” of this new form of disposal by offering its provision in a familiar context’ (Rugg, 2006: 217). While the siting of crematoria subsequently became more diverse, cremation and the disposal of ashes usually occurred in the same landscape: the crematorium and its surrounding gardens. Thus in the 1970s only 12 per cent of ashes were removed from crematoria by family or friends for disposal elsewhere (Davies and Guest, 1999).

From grief towards well‐being

Working with Older People September 2007 Volume 11 Issue 3