Transnational family support and the transformation of local networks: old-age support among a German minority in Romania

Abstract

In our progressively mobile and ageing world, researchers and policy makers are increasingly interested in the implications of migration for the support and care of older people ‘left behind’. An important strand within this work examines transnational family support by older people’s migrant children. The main tenor is one of viewing migration as leading to older people’s greater social, material and emotional vulnerability, unless offset by remittance flows and/or ‘caring from a distance’. Very little research has considered transnational family links within the context of the wider networks within which older people are embedded, nor has the impact of migration on these networks been scrutinised. The Transylvanian Saxons, a German-speaking minority in Romania, present an ideal case study to examine the interplay of local and transnational dynamics in old-age support provision, because emigration to Germany post-1990 among this minority group was dramatic, and the Saxon population remaining in Romania is now notably aged. This paper draws on interviews from 2008 and 2015 with stakeholders and older Saxons in and around Sibiu. It argues that transnational family support is surprisingly limited, consisting chiefly of visits and occasional gifts, but rarely extending to monetary support or hands-on care. Instead local networks comprising local kin, Romanian neighbours and German institutions (esp. the Lutheran church) play a more significant role for older people’s wellbeing. However, the importance of local networks is not incidental to mass emigration, but instead has arisen out of the transformation of local kinship and community networks through emigration and wider societal changes.

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ORCID for Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill: orcid.org/0000-0002-5071-8710

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