Introduction
The phenomenon of international migration is a pervasive characteristic of contemporary society. Interest in migration as a research and policy area has grown as new waves of migration have developed. On the whole, however, migration research and related policy is still fixated on ‘young’ labour migrants. While feminist migration research (Silvey Reference Silvey2004) has done much to redress this imbalance, insufficient attention has been paid to people who migrate in later life or of migrants who have aged in place (Warnes and Williams Reference Warnes and Williams2006). Research on how migration in later life shapes the welfare needs, preferences and expectations of older people is therefore in its infancy, with both the ageing and migration fields being slow to examine the experiences of older migrants. Additionally, until recently there has been little attention to the lives and experiences of older women and, in the few available studies, issues of migration and ethnicity are marginal and under-theorised (Bernard et al. Reference Bernard, Phillips, Machin and Harding Davis2000; Maynard et al. Reference Maynard, Afshar, Franks and Wray2008).
As a response to these information gaps, this article examines the impact that migration in later life has on the welfare citizenship of older women. It explores their experiences of accessing welfare rights and services and the barriers they encounter in negotiating inclusion. In particular, it examines the unequal platform from which older women migrants who do not speak English access welfare citizenship rights and services. Through this exploration, the article argues for more recognition of the role that informal networks of support can play in meeting the welfare needs of some older migrants. Further, it considers the role of community-based organisations in bridging the gap between formal services and the lives of older migrants (Butt and Moriarty Reference Butt, Moriarty, Walker and Hagan Hennessy2004; Cook, Maltby and Warren Reference Cook, Maltby, Warren, Walker and Hagan Hennessy2004).
While some important studies have emerged, the under-investigation of older migrants in the United Kingdom (UK) can be partly attributed to the very low representation of older people in most of Britain's minority ethnic populations (Burholt Reference Burholt2004; Nazroo et al. Reference Nazroo, Bajekal, Blane, Grewal, Walker and Hagan Hennessy2004). As earlier migrant generations reach old age, however, the UK is witnessing a rapid growth in the number of minority ethnic elders. For example, by 2020 five per cent of the UK population aged 60 or more years will be members of minority ethnic communities (Bajekal et al. Reference Bajekal, Blane, Grewal, Karlsen and Nazroo2004). The growth is supplemented by family-joining migration – older relatives migrating in later life to join their children living in the UK.Footnote 1
The findings discussed in this article are from the Older Women's Lives and Voices Study which took place between 2000 and 2002. It worked with women aged 50 or more years from five ethnic communities living in Sheffield, Yorkshire, UK: black Caribbean, white British, Chinese, Irish and Somali. Ninety-six women participated in the study, and just over one-half (56) were from minority ethnic groups. Their migrations occurred at different stages of the lifecourse, but typically the participants from the black Caribbean and Irish communities migrated as children or young adults and had grown old in the UK, whereas the Chinese and Somali women migrated in later life, as family joiners or refugees. An action research approach was adopted to identify the factors that shaped quality of life in old age and the desire and agency of older women to get their voices heard in policy making and service provision in the city of Sheffield.
This paper draws particularly on the findings from focus groups and life-story interviews with the ethnic minority women. The participants were recruited through established community groups, and six focus groups were organised by ethnicity. Because they were recruited through active organisations, the findings do not reflect the experiences of more isolated older women, nor are they necessarily reflective of those who choose not to participate in the community organisations. Each focus group met three times. Two groups were formed from the 19 Chinese women, two from the 23 Somali women, and there was a single group of five Irish women and another of nine black Caribbean women. The paper also draws upon 47 life-story interviews, of which 27 were with minority ethnic women. The interviews and focus groups were conducted by one male and two female members of the research team and by older women from the Chinese, Irish and black Caribbean focus groups who were trained as interviewers.Footnote 2
The welfare citizenship of older migrants: emerging themes
This article focuses on the impact of migration upon welfare citizenship in later life, which in this context refers to formal welfare state rights, i.e. pensions, social security benefits, health care and housing (Marshall Reference Marshall1950), and to the less formal provision of social welfare both through community-based organisations (including language support, welfare advice and other support services) and through family and social networks that act as bridges to formal welfare benefits and services. Welfare citizenship is therefore examined both in terms of formal rights and in relation to actual experiences of welfare citizenship. The objective was to understand the importance of the circumstances of the migration context and the roles of the participants' welfare preferences and needs and of individual and community resources.
In the UK, state welfare entitlements or citizenship has been significantly restructured over the last two decades, but the right to welfare remains central to ‘effective citizenship’ (Dwyer Reference Dwyer2000). An important element of welfare citizenship is therefore ‘being included in the systems of rights and welfare provision that are mediated or managed by state agencies’ (Harrison Reference Harrison1995, cited in Dwyer Reference Dwyer2000: 4). While the UK was one of the first countries to grant full citizenship rights to migrants (from the British Commonwealth), the citizenship status of new migrants over the past decade has been increasingly restricted. In particular, the extension of welfare entitlements to new migrants has been subject to a ‘series of ever more draconian immigration and asylum rules’ (Schierup, Hansen and Castles Reference Schierup, Hansen and Castles2006: 121), including measures to reduce entries, detention camps, exclusion from welfare benefits and the denial of the right to work. While these policies did not directly affect the citizenship of the older women in this study, the more restrictive policy environment and the prominence of integrationist agendas have affected the welfare experiences of all minority ethnic citizens.
Previous research has pointed to the significance of international migration in shaping the citizenship entitlements and welfare needs of older migrants (Ackers and Dwyer Reference Ackers and Dwyer2004; Dwyer and Papadimitriou Reference Dwyer and Papadimitriou2006; Warnes and Williams Reference Warnes and Williams2006; Warnes et al. Reference Warnes, Freidrich, Kellaher and Torres2004). These studies have illuminated the effects that the type of migration, the migrant's status (i.e. migrant workers as opposed to refugees or family joiners), and the stage of life at which migration takes place can have upon accrued rights and entitlements and the resources available to older migrants. For example, Dwyer and Papadimitriou (Reference Dwyer and Papadimitriou2006: 1315) found that national welfare, citizenship and migration policies systematically disadvantage many older migrants who are legally resident in Europe. They argued that four factors shape the economic welfare rights of older migrants: migration history, residence and citizenship status, past relationship to the paid labour market, and the particular national migration and welfare regime (2006: 1302). In the case of refugees, dependency on minimal state welfare support shapes the early years of residence – dependency on means-tested benefits characterised the experiences of Somali women in this study. For older family joiners, in the early years at least, access to welfare citizenship is shaped by their right to reside being subject to continuing family support and ‘no recourse’ to public welfare (Seddon, Fitzpatrick and Chatwin Reference Seddon, Fitzpatrick and Chatwin2002).
The age at migration and the associated duration of residence also impacts on the lives of older migrants, with clear differences between those who migrate when young and ‘age in place’ and those who migrate after retirement (Dwyer and Papadimitriou Reference Dwyer and Papadimitriou2006; Warnes et al. Reference Warnes, Freidrich, Kellaher and Torres2004). For example, Moriarty and Butt (Reference Butt, Moriarty, Walker and Hagan Hennessy2004) found in their study of older asylum seekers, refugees and some older family joiners that those who migrated as young adults had better social support than those who migrated at older ages. Age at migration is strongly associated with acquisition of the destination country language (Burholt Reference Burholt2004; Cook, Maltby and Warren Reference Cook, Maltby, Warren, Walker and Hagan Hennessy2004), since the opportunity to learn is often mediated by participation in the labour market and other processes, such as interaction with schools and other parents that many experience in early adulthood. From this brief review, it is apparent that international migration can bring restricted or no citizenship rights. Even where formal citizenship of the new country is attained, many migrants experience varying degrees of exclusion from welfare, through lack of experience and knowledge and as a result of incomplete contributions to social insurance funds (Barbalet Reference Barbalet1988; Yuval-Davis Reference Yuval-Davis1997).
This structuring of welfare benefits entitlements shaped the welfare of the participants in this study in various ways. They migrated along three distinct paths. All the black Caribbean and Irish women migrated as young children or young adults. At the time of interview, they were British citizens with accrued welfare benefits/pension rights and considerable knowledge of the nation's welfare system and processes. The second pathway, migration after the (UK) retirement age, had been followed by many of the Chinese women and all the Somalis. The Somali women migrated as refugees but had since been granted full citizenship; their economic welfare rights were characterised by dependency on state benefits and sometimes turbulent relationships with the welfare benefits and Home Office agencies. By contrast, the Chinese women had followed various migration paths: some had joined their husbands as labour migrants and therefore were ‘formally’ entitled to welfare benefits and services, and some had moved as family joiners and therefore had a more precarious relationship to formal welfare rights: some were dependent on social security pensions, and others lived off private incomes and/or received financial support from their families. Many of the black Caribbean, Irish and Chinese women had uneven or partial entitlements to state welfare, such as pensions, as a consequence of their informal and intermittent employment histories.Footnote 3
The concept and practices of citizenship have long been criticised by feminist and other critical scholars for their formulation of rights and obligations appropriate to white, middle-class men (Pateman Reference Pateman1988). As well established in the feminist welfare and citizenship literatures, gendered inequalities across the lifecourse impact on the migration experience, and gendered lifecourse factors shape old age (Orloff Reference Orloff1993; Walby Reference Walby1986, Reference Walby1997). The welfare state, the family and the labour market interact to differentiate women's access to social rights and participation from men's (Lister Reference Lister1997; Walby Reference Walby1997). Distinctive gender roles also structure informal relations of family, care, social networks and community (Lewis Reference Lewis1997; Orloff Reference Orloff1993). Similarly feminist migration research has worked hard to redress accounts of the male migrant, to demonstrate how migration transforms women's lives in a particularly gendered way (Kofman et al. Reference Kofman, Phizacklea, Raghuram and Sales2000; Silvey Reference Silvey2004). Research has shown how differences in education, language fluency and cultural traditions all shape the labour market and migrant women's participation (Burholt Reference Burholt2004; Maynard et al. Reference Maynard, Afshar, Franks and Wray2008; Torres Reference Torres2006). Similar factors shape their links to social networks and resources in later life, with the result that the consequences of the migration experience are explicitly gendered and racialised.
The migration background can heighten gender inequalities, with migrant women finding themselves in the worst paid and most insecure jobs with little opportunity to accrue welfare rights and pensions (Arber and Ginn Reference Arber and Ginn1995; Nazroo et al. Reference Nazroo, Bajekal, Blane, Grewal, Walker and Hagan Hennessy2004). The lives of the women in this study were shaped by their role as primary carers and their intermittent participation in, or in some cases exclusion from, paid work. Therefore, the interaction of gender and migration can produce quite different lifecourses, welfare rights and spheres of participation than those experienced by men, which in turn can produce different welfare preferences and needs in later life (Maynard et al. Reference Maynard, Afshar, Franks and Wray2008).
Alongside the complex structuring of entitlements brought about by migration trajectories, welfare rights and services can be out of reach because mainstream services do not meet the needs of minority ethnic communities. Previous studies have shown that minority ethnic older people have recurrent difficulties in accessing the benefits and services provided by statutory agencies (Butt and Mirza Reference Butt and Mirza1996; Cook, Maltby and Warren Reference Cook, Maltby, Warren, Walker and Hagan Hennessy2004; Moriarty and Butt Reference Butt, Moriarty, Walker and Hagan Hennessy2004). The way in which mainstream services are organised and delivered often does not take account of the specific experiences, preferences and needs of older migrants, a failure that leads to low contact rates of utilisation. Exclusion from welfare services is further enhanced by the playing out of inequalities across the lifecourse that characterise the lives of many older migrants. For example, the examination of Nazroo et al. (Reference Nazroo, Bajekal, Blane, Grewal, Walker and Hagan Hennessy2004) of external measures of economic position, local-area deprivation and subjective health assessment data, revealed significant disadvantages across the lifecourse amongst minority ethnic people, and that the relative disadvantage increased with age (see also Schierup, Hansen and Castles Reference Schierup, Hansen and Castles2006). These inequalities place many older migrants in a position of high welfare service need without the necessary resources and targeted services to meet this need.
Importantly then, examining the processes that structure formal entitlement provides only a partial picture, and to understand fully the impact of migration on welfare citizenship, it is important to examine the informal routes to achieving inclusion or welfare citizenship. How people react to the barriers and how they advance their claims to entitlements and benefits are shaped by their migration experience, as exemplified by the differences between the Somali women, who were ‘forced’ migrants through civil war, and the Chinese participants who chose to join family members. Despite the obstacles to welfare citizenship, older migrants are not passive recipients, for they are actors in their own right, and that they can be simultaneously ‘empowered in some areas of their lives and disempowered in others’ (Wray Reference Wray2004: 23). We must examine the more informal approaches to inclusion and participation that emerge from family, community and social networks of support.Footnote 4
Previous studies have demonstrated that migration brings about a process of rebuilding communities and social networks, often around cultural practices, ethnic communities and religious organisations (Maynard et al. Reference Maynard, Afshar, Franks and Wray2008; Wray Reference Wray2004). For example, Butt and Moriarty (Reference Butt, Moriarty, Walker and Hagan Hennessy2004) found that it was noticeable how quickly people had begun to rebuild their social support upon arrival in Britain, often showing considerable adaptability. Fundamentally then, it is important to understand the situation of older minority ethnic people not just ‘in terms of how their lives have been structured by economic and social forces but also in terms of how this structuring has been resisted by individuals and groups’ (Nazroo et al. Reference Nazroo, Bajekal, Blane, Grewal, Walker and Hagan Hennessy2004: 59; see also Grewal et al. Reference Grewal, Nazroo, Bajekal, Blane and Lewis2004). The building of cultural communities as meeting places and providers of welfare for women from their communities was a preferred strategy for many of the older women in the study. In this sense, experiences of exclusion and obstacles to welfare services can result in the development of alternative strategies for inclusion. This is discussed below in relation to the important enabling role played by community or cultural organisations in the welfare of the participants.
The insights offered by the gerontology and migration literatures are pertinent to the social welfare experiences of the older women in this study. Understanding that the migration context and the age at which this transition takes place can structure the citizenship and participation of older migrant women resonates in two ways: first, the context of international migration can determine citizenship entitlements and/or lead to significant obstacles to accessing social welfare rights and the resources to exercise agency, and second, the experience of migration combined with expectations and preferences, formed by practices and traditions in the country of origin, may shape welfare expectations, needs and preferences. Adding to these factors, welfare needs and experiences are complicated by cultural practices and gender and ethnic inequalities across the lifecourse, all of which can pose obstacles to the realisation of rights. The failure of mainstream welfare services to recognise and meet the needs of older migrants may pose additional barriers to their inclusion as welfare citizens, but welfare citizenship is not determined by formal rights alone but also by the migrants' agency. Research must therefore examine both formal and informal experiences of welfare rights and services.
The variable experiences of migration and welfare citizenship
This section draws from the focus groups and interviews conducted for the Older Women's Lives and Voices Study to examine how the different groups' migrations had shaped their welfare expectations, needs and preferences in old age. Selected extracts from the transcript data on the participants' experiences of migration and accessing welfare rights and services in the UK are presented under three themes. The paper concludes by discussing the enabling role of informal networks of support.
The migration histories and entitlements to welfare citizenship
The black Caribbean women came to England during the economic boom of the 1950s and 1960s, generally for employment or to join their husbands (or both). When discussing their motivations for migrating, they remembered that at the time the UK offered them exciting opportunities that they had been keen to pursue. One focus group member explained:
Yes, it was employment, and to travel out and get experience, because in Jamaica they was going around in public places saying that there was a lot of work here, and they wanted people to come and help the country.
All the black Caribbean women had been young adults when they migrated and they had spent most of their working life in the UK. Similarly, all of the Irish women in the study had migrated as young children with their parents when they moved to find work. Both the black Caribbean and the Irish women had aged in place: many had been educated in the UK, and all had migrated at younger ages and been in paid employment, which meant that they had accrued work-related welfare rights. As found by other studies, length of stay was related to their familiarity with welfare services (Butt and Moriarty Reference Butt, Moriarty, Walker and Hagan Hennessy2004). Compared to the participants who migrated late in life, both the Irish and black Caribbean women had more knowledge and experience of the welfare system and had established familial and community networks that was a resource in later life. For the black Caribbean women, however, their early experiences of migration had been blighted by discrimination, which had shaped their attitudes and in some cases their health in later life (see Maynard et al. Reference Maynard, Afshar, Franks and Wray2008; Wray Reference Wray2004).
For the Chinese women, migration was more recent and for more diverse reasons. There were two distinct sub-groups. One of those aged mainly in the early fifties had followed migration pathways similar to those of the black Caribbean and Irish women and migrated with their families for work or to run a business: only a minority spoke fluent English. The second group were older, aged 60–80 years, and migrated post-retirement to join their children. The welfare status of these ‘older family joiners’ consequently was less clearly defined.Footnote 5 There were interesting generational and experiential differences between the two groups. The older group had migrated mainly from rural areas at much later stages of life, they had not worked in the UK, they spoke no or very little English, and many had received no formal education and were illiterate. The socio-cultural differences between the two groups were reflected in their attitudes to British welfare services. The younger group were more openly critical of service provision for the Chinese community, while the older group were reluctant to be openly critical, which can be explained partly by a fear of losing services and partly by their different cultural expectations. The older group had relatively low expectations of welfare services, partly through comparisons with their countries of origin and their relative affluence in Britain. As one said during a focus group:
Since I am older, I am quite lucky to be living in England. Our welfare is quite well looked after by the government; personally I think I am fortunate. The government pay for all the services. When you're ill, there are health services which are very good. When I need a shelter, the government provides that, I'm living in a sheltered home. I don't have to pay for health services and prescriptions.
This quote reflects the importance of attitudes and expectations in framing experiences of welfare citizenship. Despite their satisfaction with welfare services, however, the older group identified services that they believed insufficient. The younger group were keenly aware of Chinese older people's low expectations. As one said during a focus group, ‘it's in our culture and we try to be self-sufficient and not to rely on others. Some of the older generation Chinese people don't want to ask for help’.
The project also worked with two groups of Somali women that lived in different areas of Sheffield and had contrasting backgrounds: some had held professional jobs in Somalia, but many had migrated from rural areas and in common with the older Chinese women could not read or write. Their ages ranged from 50 to the seventies. They migrated to the UK either directly from refugee camps or through other European countries to flee the civil war in Somalia.Footnote 6 The welfare status of some of these women had undergone several transitions, from being an asylum seeker, to being granted refugee status and the right to reside in the UK. A minority were in the process of acquiring citizenship but most had this status. Many had shared the experience of arriving with no possessions or assets and with significant health problems, some derived from the trauma and bereavements of the civil war. Two extracts from the life-story interviews exemplify their diverse experiences:
The worst experience was the civil war because I lost some members of my family and some are still missing. Due to the war I have experienced displacements. I have been separated from my daughter and she is still missing.
When we came here in this country, we were welcomed and given the residence and we almost forgot the suffering we experienced at the camps.
Many of the Somali women said that their migration had given them a chance to re-build their lives, but their traumatic migration pathway profoundly shaped both their needs for and entitlements to welfare. There was common ground with the Chinese women, for neither group were as familiar with the welfare system as the Irish and black Caribbean women. They had not accrued employment-related welfare rights, they experienced language inequalities, and they had limited access to the established systems of support that grow with ageing in place (see Burholt Reference Burholt2004; Dwyer and Papadimitriou Reference Dwyer and Papadimitriou2006; Warnes et al. Reference Warnes, Freidrich, Kellaher and Torres2004). It was not only the age at which they migrated that had structured their welfare situation; the contexts of their migrations were equally important. In contrast to the Chinese women, the Somalis felt that their quality of life and welfare had declined since migrating to the UK. This was not explained by differences between British and Somali welfare provision but related to their lesser independence and ability to take care of themselves, and their compromised status as respected heads of households. As was repeatedly explained, in Somalia old age is a time to be free from worries and supported by one's children – their forced migration to Britain changed all this. Unlike the Chinese participants, they described the loss of autonomy as a result of migration, and referred to the different family structures and lifestyles in England, which they saw as undermining their roles and positions in their families and society. The following two extracts from the Somali women's focus group make these points well:
I am proud to be old, and when I was back home I was very active doing something, looking after children, cleaning the house, going out. When I came here everything changed … the [our] income is not enough, there is nothing I can do, so sometimes you are at home sitting all the time … but at the same time you haven't anything to do to make you active.
[In Somalia] we did not need help, interpreters and so on, we could help ourselves, provide for ourselves since we have moved here, everything is totally different. Our health has deteriorated because of the stress and worry and not knowing what to do.
The socio-economic backgrounds and migration pathways of the Chinese and Somali women were significantly different. For the Somali women, migration was not through choice, whereas the Chinese women perceived their migration as a positive opportunity that led to a better quality of life (Cook, Maltby and Warren Reference Cook, Maltby, Warren, Walker and Hagan Hennessy2004). Another important distinction is that the Somali women had moved from an Islamic country, which has impacted upon their traditional family practices and radically changed the character of their socio-cultural world (see also Sporton and Valentine Reference Sporton and Valentine2008). This has produced important differences in experiences which are key to understanding the way that older women who have migrated experience welfare citizenship.
The welfare situations of the Somali and Chinese women are embedded in the context of their migration; that is, where they have migrated from, the nature of social welfare provision, the recency of their arrival and the ages at which they migrated. Migration researchers have shown how the social worlds of migrants are shaped by their interaction with transnational communities, in that they do not occupy a single cultural space and thus, their preferences are a product of shared cultural expectations (Ajrouch Reference Ajrouch2005; Bloch Reference Bloch2006; King and Vullnetari Reference King and Vullnetari2006; Vertovec Reference Vertovec2001; Wilson and Peters Reference Wilson and Peters2005). The experiences of the Somali and Chinese women illustrate that expectations and needs are shaped by values and practices in the country of origin as well as by what is seen as legitimate in the new host country (Maynard et al. Reference Maynard, Afshar, Franks and Wray2008; Wray Reference Wray2004). In this sense, perceptions and expectations of citizenship and participation are both transnational and culturally differentiated, which has to be borne in mind when examining welfare citizenship.
Experiences of accessing welfare rights and services
While the migration trajectories of the Somali and Chinese women produced differentiated experiences of autonomy and welfare, many of the obstacles to welfare were similar for the two groups, with language being a key feature of their exclusion from welfare services. Discussions about services centred on two themes: the obstacles to accessing welfare rights and services, and the failure of mainstream services to take account of their particular needs. Two particular aspects demonstrate the issues that many of the women were grappling with. The Somali women's experiences of dealing with the benefits agency and Home Office (as refugees) will first be discussed, and then the Somali and Chinese women's shared experiences of deficient welfare. The Somali participants spoke of the long delays in Home Office decisions about their citizenship. These experiences were conveyed with a sense of powerlessness that characterised many of their interactions with welfare agencies. As one Somali women said during a focus group:
In some cases there is no time limit on the decisions made by the government offices. … The Home Office will probably write to say that your application will take up to 12 weeks but actually it takes six to nine months. British naturalisations are the same. Again they will write to you and say that it will take 12–15 months but it takes over two years.
Sadly, many of the Somali women talked of encountering racist attitudes. As one said in the focus group:
Sometimes you experience racism at some of the offices. You will be surprised by the attitude of some of the staff, the way they look at you, the way they speak to you, especially when your oral language is poor. You feel embarrassed when they say with a loud voice, ‘sorry, I don't understand what you are saying’. I think this is disgusting and not acceptable and it actually discourages you when learning the English language.
It is important to understand that discriminatory treatment extended to entitlements and provision. When many of the Somali women joined their families in Britain, their ages were not recorded because they had no birth certificates and their families did not know their actual age. The result was that they had been denied the basic state pension and instead received the Job Seekers' Allowance (an unemployment benefit). One community centre had been asked by the Benefits Agency why so many Somali applicants registered their birthday as Independence Day in Somaliland. The failure of the Home Office to register the correct ages of the Somali women, along with the Benefits Agency's refusal to deal with the issue directly, had left these women with the minimum social security income and excluded from other benefits associated with retirement (Cook, Maltby and Warren Reference Cook, Maltby, Warren, Walker and Hagan Hennessy2004). It has proved very difficult to correct this problem because the benefits system is extremely inflexible and insists that the women take their cases to the Home Office, which is time consuming, expensive and disruptive. As a result, the majority have chosen to stay on the low benefits. The pensions issue indicates a broader problem of the insensitivity of the benefits system to the needs of later-life migrants, particularly women. The inflexibility is evident in the experiences of two of the Somali women:
My husband died a couple of months ago. We lived together as a married couple and the DHS asked me to bring my marriage and birth certificates. How can I get these certificates at this age? This is the third month and I have no other income. What should I do now?
The DSS people return your application forms if there are even minor mistakes. DSS only looks at properly-filled applications. They don't care whether you speak English or not.Footnote 7
These obstacles coloured the Somali women's interactions with welfare agencies and increased their stress around accessing welfare rights. The experiences of these women derive from their particular migration pathways as refugees, but the inability of the benefits system to respond to specific needs and cultural differences is symptomatic of the limitations of mainstream welfare services in meeting the needs of minority ethnic older people. Given the low wages and insecurity that characterises the types of employment generally undertaken by migrants, which arises partly from the gendered nature of work, older migrant women are highly likely to be reliant on means-tested benefits (Arber and Ginn Reference Arber and Ginn1995; Burholt Reference Burholt2004). The inability of formal welfare services to be responsive to difference is compounded by language barriers. All the Somali and Chinese women related how their lack of proficiency in English posed problems for accessing welfare rights and services, and placed significant limitations on their mobility and their relationships with their families and social networks. As one Somali woman explained:
Language barriers are the worst thing that we experience. We are not able to make friends and mix with the wider community. Now we have reached a stage where we cannot understand our own children.
While research has amply demonstrated the difficulties posed by language differences (e.g. Butt and Mizra Reference Butt and Mirza1996), obstacles remain and interpretation services are still woefully inadequate and under-funded. It is important to note that not all of the Chinese and Somali women experienced personal difficulties in accessing services, for a minority were satisfied with the services they received,Footnote 8 but inequalities in access related to language difficulties remain one of the most defining characteristics of migrants who move to the UK in later life (Burholt Reference Burholt2004).
Many of the participants were not passively accepting these limitations, for all the Somali and many of the Chinese women attended English-language classes, but they found learning a new language extremely difficult. Not surprisingly, then, all the women stressed the need to improve interpretation and translation services so that the barriers they experienced in accessing welfare services were reduced.Footnote 9 Not only did they cite several instances where they had tried to use services without interpreters, they also raised concerns about the quality of the interpreters that were available. The impact of inadequate interpretation was demonstrated well by one Somali focus group participant who said:
We worry a lot in here because we are not able to say what we want. Sometimes you go to a service provider's office and don't find an interpreter, and when you come back you feel frustrated and angry because you didn't get what you wanted.
Language differences create severe barriers to having basic welfare needs met. Access to health-care services was raised by most of the women but only the Somalis described difficulties in registering with a GP (general (medical) practitioner).Footnote 10 Many had experienced delays in finding a convenient practice that would register them. All the Somali women also emphasised that communication with their GPs and other health professionals was poor – an experience shared to a lesser extent by the Chinese women. One Somali informant explained how communication is made difficult through interpretation; ‘sometimes you feel sorry for some of the interpreters because you can see from their reaction that they cannot interpret what is being said’. The consequences of poor communication become clearer when you consider that health issues were pertinent for the Somali women because of the affects of civil war and bereavement. The voluntary workers who support them say that there is not enough awareness of the physical and mental health problems that stem from the civil war in Somalia, and that very few services address these needs.
Poor interpretation services affected not only the welfare experiences of older women but also shaped their family relationships and community networks. The participants were keen to dispute the myth that their families will interpret for them – they mentioned that their grandchildren missed school to translate for them and that family members did not have sufficiently good English to make their needs understood (cf. Blackmore and Boneham Reference Blackmore and Boneham1994; Grewal et al. Reference Grewal, Nazroo, Bajekal, Blane and Lewis2004). Some of the implications of relying on family members were brought out well by a Somali participant during a focus group:
If you ask your child to act as interpreter his or her education will suffer because he or she will miss some lessons or days. On the other hand, children are not professional interpreters and their interpretation skills are very limited.
Relying on relatives for basic language needs can lead to a loss of autonomy in later life. For many of the Somali women, this unnecessary strain on their families was one element of broader disruptions in family practices brought about by their migration. All of the Somali women explained that traditionally the family is centrally important, but after migrating to the UK there have been radical changes in the structure and culture of their families. They spoke of how their children now lived very different and busy lives. The Chinese women also depended on their families a lot for interpretation and spoke of the resulting strain; for these women, migration to the UK had undermined their status in their families, they had suffered a significant loss of autonomy and felt a burden to their families who were trying to adapt to a new home or were integrated into a very different cultural system to their grandparents. In this situation, they turned to the support of local community and cultural groups, and the Somali and Chinese women talked of relying on friends to interpret letters and information, and to help them deal with service providers. The cultural and community organisations involved in the research spoke of the huge demand on their resources to provide basic welfare and language support.
If interpretation services are absent or inadequate, people who do not speak English will inevitably experience difficulties in realising welfare rights and find their participation in activities outside communities restricted. This remained the biggest single problem for the older women who did not speak English, a finding that has implications for the welfare citizenship of older migrants on two levels: first, it demonstrates the fundamental role of familial and community-based networks in enabling some migrants to realise welfare rights and services; and second, it illustrates the importance of targeting resources at the community and service-delivery levels to enable those who do not speak English to access welfare citizenship on the same basis as other service users.
The importance of resourcing communities
All of the women discussed the role that participation in their local community centre played in their lives, not only as a social venue but also as an enabling resource for accessing informal and formal welfare. Previous research on the quality of life of older people from minority ethnic communities has revealed the important enabling and bridging roles of informal community, faith and familial networks in meeting the needs of older people, and in facilitating their participation and offering a forum through which they can exercise agency in later life (Butt and Moriarty Reference Butt, Moriarty, Walker and Hagan Hennessy2004; Cook, Maltby and Warren Reference Cook, Maltby, Warren, Walker and Hagan Hennessy2004; Maynard et al. Reference Maynard, Afshar, Franks and Wray2008; Moriarty and Butt Reference Butt, Moriarty, Walker and Hagan Hennessy2004).Footnote 11 This study has shown the more specific roles of community or cultural centres as places of shared language, interests and culturally appropriate and intimate support. In a sense, migrations not only bring about exclusion but can also foster the process of rebuilding communities and social networks that are an important resource in older age, often around cultural practices, ethnic communities and religious organisations (Nazroo et al. Reference Nazroo, Bajekal, Blane, Grewal, Walker and Hagan Hennessy2004).
Many of the community groups contacted by this study were struggling for resources and competing with each other for scarce public and charitable funds. Despite these limitations, they provided a source of agency for participants on the collective and individual levels. These informal structures of support can empower older women on an individual level through the realisation that they are not alone, that others share their experiences and through the exchange of advice and support. This participation can also lead to the development of collective agency through the sharing of experiences and the development of organisational campaigns for culturally-targeted services. While we do not argue that community centres have the capacity to include all older migrants, they are accessible, local sources of support for many older migrants and play an important role in enabling welfare citizenship. The women stressed the importance of targeting resources for community centres to enable them to ‘provide for themselves’. They saw the centres not as replacements for mainstream welfare services but as an additional layer of support that helps them realise their welfare rights and access services. This final section explores the role of community centres through the specific experiences of two groups: the Irish and Chinese women.Footnote 12
An Irish community has been established in Sheffield since at least the 1840s. There was relatively high immigration up to the 1950s and 1960s, but it has since slowed. In recent decades the city's Irish community has aged and changed in many other ways, and it has re-built its cultural base. Many long-established features, such as the clubs and churches in Victorian housing areas, have been lost and housing regeneration has dispersed the community throughout the city. During the research, some women in the Irish group were campaigning for an ‘Irish Village’, and it featured in their discussions of community and welfare services.Footnote 13 During a focus group, one spoke passionately about her involvement in this venture and her other work for the Irish community, in which she had been involved for many years. When giving her reasons for being active in the campaign, she referred to her earlier experience of applying for resources for Irish children from the city council:
I was told on that day that we can't give you a grant. [They said] how do we know that you are going to spend it on what you are saying? How do we know that you are not going to go back and buy semtex and give it to the IRA [Irish Republican Army]? … That is why we have to be powerful. We have to be like that because, all the while, whenever I have been working, which is 20-odd years now, I have had that reaction, which is what has made me strong. At first I used to sit and cry – I have sat and cried on things that have been said to me on many occasions – I have grown stronger for it.
These remarks indicate the importance of building cultural or community centres as a resource for welfare citizenship, and show how the struggle to gain public resources is often entangled with experiences of racism or other prejudice for migrant communities. The Irish women recounted many similar experiences of discrimination, and explained that having an Irish community centre would provide opportunities to come together, to support each other and to enhance the welfare of their community.
The situation was slightly different for the Chinese women, for they had two small rooms in which their society met. While too small for their needs, and there is a larger Chinese community centre, the women felt there was a real need for a meeting place specifically for Chinese women. In common with the other groups of minority women, the Chinese women said that no mainstream services or leisure facilities were available for them. The group was run mainly by volunteers with funds only for a part-time worker, and the women described the strains of providing support services, particularly language support, for the members (only two members read and spoke English). When asked which activities or services they would like to be made available, the participants emphasised the importance of a centre. One exchange between two participants in the discussion made these points:
We campaign for a building where all the women can get together. Just look at this room, what can we do here? With 20 people in here, it's all crowded. /But this place has got to be for the Chinese women, not because we don't want to get together with others, it's mainly because of language, culture and custom differences. /Some women who lack company, don't go out and socialise … have depression, feel sad and have a lot of other problems. So if there's a place to give them support and different activities to do, that can help solve a lot of problems.
At one point during the discussion, one member told us that ‘we're very reserved people who tend to keep things to ourselves and do not want to tell people about your problems’, but given the opportunity and the reinforcement of the group exchange, the view was strongly expressed that creating a space for Chinese women to come together and support each other was the best way of addressing the needs and preferences of Chinese women.
The experiences of both the Irish and the Chinese communities illustrate the importance of informal community networks for enabling the realisation of welfare citizenship and social participation among recent migrant communities. The strategies adopted by the women in this research evince the importance of informal systems of welfare support. The challenges for policy are how to support these informal structures both to enable equal welfare citizenship and to address the inadequacies of existing services. The provision of culturally-targeted community centres, informal welfare services and trained community workers from shared minority backgrounds are key requirements for enabling the welfare citizenship of minority ethnic older people, especially women. It has been argued that the funding of group-specific resources has become increasingly difficult in the UK since the London bombings in July 2007, for segregated minority communities are now seen as problematic, and local authority funding favours measures that promote dispersal and integration rather than group-specific provisions (Institute for Public Policy Research 2007; Schierup, Hansen and Castles Reference Schierup, Hansen and Castles2006). Public expenditure cuts also mean that the resources for community initiatives for which different minority ethnic organisations compete are shrinking.Footnote 14
Conclusions
This article has examined how the migration experience and the age at which a person moves shapes the welfare preferences, needs and access to welfare services of older migrant women. While previous research has shown that migration pathways affect migrants' formal welfare rights, this study has examined the contrasting circumstances of older people in four distinct migrant communities in a northern English city. It has been confirmed that the perceptions and expectations of citizenship are culturally differentiated (cf. Wray Reference Wray2004; Vertovec Reference Vertovec2001). For the Somali and Chinese women in particular, welfare services fell short with respect to language provision and to the responses of welfare providers to their particular needs and difficulties. Consequently, many did not receive essential welfare services and their experiences of interacting with welfare agencies were characterised by poor communication, low levels of rights awareness and, in the case of some particularly Somali women, discrimination and stigma.
Their circumstances are not simply a case of total exclusion. Formally they have access to welfare citizenship, and some of their needs were met through their own agency and through local, culturally-sensitive forms of informal welfare support. This research highlights the important bridging and enabling roles played by these cultural and community organisations. Actual welfare citizenship is more than the sum of formal rights and services. The women in this study were using and contributing to informal community networks; they were active agents in their own lives while encountering barriers to basic welfare provision (Maynard et al. Reference Maynard, Afshar, Franks and Wray2008). The message for policy makers that the participants wanted to be conveyed is the importance of resourcing these networks so as to enable older migrants collectively ‘to provide for themselves’. They did not advocate replacements for mainstream welfare services but argued for an additional layer of support so that they could realise their welfare rights and access services. Examples of how to enable the inclusion and broader participation of the older women in this study are: more resources for language services, more support workers from minority communities, and training of frontline staff in their patients' and clients' migration backgrounds. Without such investment, people who do not speak English will inevitably experience difficulties in realising welfare rights and will find their participation restricted outside their migrant community. Language and communication was the biggest single issue for the majority of the older women in this study.
Acknowledgements
The Older Women's Lives and Voices Study was funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council's ‘Growing Older’ Programme (grant L480254048). The research team was Lorna Warren, Tony Maltby, Joanne Cook and eight older women volunteers: Norma Clarke, Pat Hadfield, Pam Haywood-Reed, Lilieth Millen, Movania Parkinson, Judy Robinson, Ying Wah Cheng and Winnie Winfield. We are immensely grateful to the older women volunteers and participants who gave their time and experiences to this project and the researchers
