“Those left-behind”: Issues and adaptations by older people in situations of rural out-migration . John A. Vincent, Dep

1. “Those left-behind”: Issues and adaptations by older people in situations of rural out-migration. John A. Vincent, Dept. of Sociology, University of Exeter Paper presented to the Current and Future Pasts The 5th International Symposium on Cultural Gerontology/CABS 10th Anniversary Conference. Open University. 19th 21st May, 2005

2. “Those left-behind” • Older people left behind by migration of their families, kin and neighbours from the rural areas of the developing world are amongst the most vulnerable and least studied of older people.

3. “Those left-behind” Have been studied from point of view of: • rural depopulation • migration studies • anthropology or folklore They have not been studied from the point of view of the older people themselves.

4. “Those left-behind” • exploitation is the unpaid labour involved in the work of raising a family only to see them as adult workers disappear to another continent • viewed from the outside in archetypical ageist terms, as backward lacking flexibility, innovativeness and initiative, as a useless remainder serving no useful social function. • Social problem framework: rural depopulation, marginality, service provision in rural areas.

5. “Those left-behind” How do older people adapt to life courses disrupted by out-migration? This paper is based on three comparative ethnographic case studies • West of Ireland, • Alpine Italy, and • Bosnia.

6. County Clare 1966 • The rural West of Ireland in the 1960s was amongst the poorest parts of Europe. • Now the Celtic tiger but at the time it was an area which had seen massive out-migration since the Irish famine • In the 1950 and 60s many Irish people of both sexes moved to English cities and manual occupations.

7. Irish identity is constructed in opposition to English identity. • Irish nationalist intellectuals who drew on Irish history – Gaelic in its Irish form and the stories legends and cultural forms. • A folk tradition of the rural poor, drawn upon by the cultural entrepreneurs but was also informed by the nationalist revival.

8. Tommy Fahey • A single man unmarried in his late fifties. By local reputation a very bad farmer because he drank but mostly because he was inattentive to his farm. He much preferred touring local hostelries to sing and perform his music. His music was nothing special, the local popular songs, a mixture of music hall ballads, country music and traditional songs sung unaccompanied • But the place and the family name are identified with providing the minstrels to the kings of Connaught . Thus this ageing man, who failed to marry or to work his farm properly in marginal agriculture in a backward region was able to create an identity which placed himself in an ancient and revered tradition of Irishness.

9. Mary Daley • I made a cultural error of a stranger. I said, you feel sad when your children have to go. Making the assumption that was obvious to an outsider, all the children left first to secondary school then to work in England. It almost reduced her to tears, no she said they won’t have to go.

10. Val d'Aosta in 1970/1 • St Maurice was 500 people amongst the highest continuously inhabited villages in Europe. They were transhumant dairy farmers - making a cheese called Fontina. The local everyday language was a distinctive dialect which has also become a symbol of local identity.

11. The elite and the landless poor left the rural areas while only the middle peasants, attached to the village by their ownership of land stayed behind. As the 20C progressed land lost its value, the successful members of the village elite educated their children who subsequently left to find professional employment.

12. Mademoiselle A, taught me to speak Valdotain. She had emigrated to American with her father where she lived until she was twelve. She had been the school teacher but was now retired in her late sixties. He was very religious, and almost a recluse. She lived on her own in an enormous house. She lived in a house she could not afford to maintain and indeed was partial derelict, where it was both impractical and below her station to maintain herself. Large prestige house of previous generation now a liability, successful middle farmers building their own new modern houses. Joseph A. He was an old widower, a fit eighty year old. He also lived in large house in a different hamlet, although his property was partially let to an active farmer. He was also very isolated socially (partly for reason I outline below) but nevertheless well off by the standards of local older people because of a first world war American veterans pension.

13. Reciprocity and isolation • There was an ethic of ‘competitive equality’. People strove to avoid putting themselves in superior or inferior positions to others. • They had elaborate institutions of turn taking to avoid invidious notions of precedent. • Important all favours where asked for not proffered, to avoid giving the potential for insult.

14. Local knowledge • Traditional knowledge in a globalising world is being lost but some still value it and can be a source of status and self identity. Skills and knowledge of a good fruitier, could command by local standards good wages.. The shop keeper in chief-lieu also doubled as the local midwife.

15. Bosnia 1990 With Zeljka Mudrovcic I conducted interviews with 36 people and with members of the administration of the community in which they were living. We asked this sample of elderly people to recount their personal histories.

16. Yugoslav policy to encourage labour migration. Many Bosnians went to work in Germany to participate in 1960/70s growth as gastarbieters. The Bosnia economy was supported by a large volume of Deutchmark remittances, and indeed the Mark was the effective currency of the area in times of economic crisis. There was considerable circulatory and return migration. There are major differences between urban and rural Bosnia. The standard of living decreased and dependence on agriculture and remittances increased the further away from Sarajevo that you went. Welfare was enterprise/industry based or for ‘partizans’.

17. An older women woman, Nadia, in modern but run down house. Widow with niece for company/ support. Her son was going to come and visit her. But when? He used to come but had not for a number of years. Still believed his return was imminent. He had married in Germany to a Yugoslav but not from their locality in Bosnia. There was little tangible evidence of continued support . Left behind women have to sustain a fragile fantasy of family broken by migration. The son who left as young man was now married with own family. ‘Home’ had nothing tangible to offer to sustain a fading relationship.

18. Some informants had grown up in families twenty or thirty strong. Crucially the senior women were in charge and its was daughters in law who were the workforce. It is daughters in law who most dislike the extended family obligations. So although she could say that her son was ‘good to me’, and the household was economically sound, the loss of expectations by an older woman that she should be in charge of large households with many female hands for the domestic activity, expresses itself in a feeling of loss.

19. A Croat women in her late sixties proudly showed us her skill as a weaver. She had a large handloom in a room in her home and spun, dyed and wove local wool. She was concerned that these skills were being lost, that the young people did not value them. Without tourism or a folk revival movement such skills although they can provide meaningful identities for some older people seem destined to be lost.

20. Emergent themes. • From these case examples it is possible to start to identify a number of themes. These strategies can only be understood through an appreciation of the specific circumstances in terms of history, geography, and social and economic change experienced through the life course of the older people themselves. Generalities about the left behind tend to be the banalities of laggards or social problems and not do justice to their situation either in terms of creative adaptation and meaningfulness or in terms of the real causes of personal distress.

21. Sustaining illusions. • From a phenomenological point of view one persons illusions is another’s reality. • some older people left behind might be labelled ‘deny-ers’. This adaptation involves work to sustain the image of important values in the absence of interaction which would normally sustain them. The masks of a loving family is sustained in the absence of the sons, daughters and relatives who make up the family. The little tokens, the occasional visit, the promise to return made long age, are cherished and defended against absence and neglect. Similarly the Irish woman who could not face that her children would leave and migrate away from the locality.

22. The illusions sustainable by distance are not only on the part of those left behind. The illusion of the homeland, the community of origin of migrants create important illusions by which life in the urban diasporas become liveable. The rural idyll has all the illusions of a tourist brochure with a thick layering of nostalgia for an idealised way of life. Healthy food, fresh air, good companionship, and holidays with granny can sustain these illusions or at least the dream of return; tasties from the home farm can be sent and received and the aroma of home seep nostalgia into the nostrils of the migrant.

23. Those left behind can become symbols of another era, or a time of a pure rural folk life and as such stand for ethnic nationalism. • These can have a positive side in legitimising subsidies and pensions for the rural margins and lead to cultural productions of music, cuisine etc. • It can also have a negative side as bearers of ancient grievances and antagonisms. In Ireland and Bosnia a strong case can be made that those in the diaspora, with only memories of ancient hatred from a previous generation, rather than current inhabitants, funded and fuelled violent nationalist movements.

24. Family, kin and community • Marriage and households in most peasant communities are are embedded in sex segregated communities where men’s and women’s lives are very different. Typically men found their companionship with other men in public arenas, while women found their mutual support in a domestic environment. If out migration breaks up these support networks, if the women find they are stuck with just the old man at home and do not have a house full of daughters or daughters in law and grandchildren the experience is one of loneliness and loss.

25. The size and density of the population left behind may be insufficient to sustain local social institutions. For example in the Val d’Aosta the annual communal baking of bread requires sufficient families to co-operate. Enough men to cut the wood and stoke the oven to keep it hot over the three of four days necessary to bake enough loaves to dry and store for the year to come. The real constraint was having enough women to knead and prepare the dough in loaves ready for baking. Sufficient women to bake the annual bread communally becomes having sufficient partners of the right social standing willing to be a farm spouse and sustain family and kinship institutions.

26. There are variety of explanations for high rates of celibacy in different parts of Europe from a cultural adaptation to over population, partable inheritance, environmental crisis and depopulation. However it is clear that such high rates of celibacy amongst ‘those left behind’ has considerable consequences in terms of support and personal care. • There is a cultural divide between the West with its emphasis on nuclear families and new households created at marriage to traditions of extended families with an acceptance of more than one conjugal couple in a household. The former are more prone to celibacy, whereas in other cultures such a status is unthinkable.

27. Conclusion • Cautionary tales about over generalisation, and the distortions and blinkers that can arise from a social problems perspective. • We can find heart-warming tails of success in adapting to out migration and declining institutions e.g. weaver in Bosnia finding pride and recognition for her skill. But many more tales of rural isolation and dire poverty, where the fantasy of familial support is no substitute for someone to help bath and feed a frail and infirm older person.