This is an ambitious book that takes a broad conceptualisation of the Mediterranean region to address aspects of ageing in places as diverse as Italy and Spain that have experienced the financial crisis in southern Europe; Turkey that has undergone a distinctive period of change as a result of Turkish Islamist reforms; Israel and Malta that are understood to have more developed welfare provision than their neighbours; and Tunisia that is considered to be the birthplace of the ‘Arab Spring’. The book aims to grapple with similarity and difference across countries that have had ambivalent relations in terms of co-operation, comparing and contrasting the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, in particular. The book argues that all Mediterranean societies are, or soon will be, ageing despite persistent myths to the contrary and it provides extensive social policy critique on this basis. The chapters of this edited collection draw largely on quantitative survey data generated in the last decade, however, several also present a wealth of historical research on the cultures of the Mediterranean. The book is likely to be enjoyed particularly by those with an interest in social policy, care and migration, and it has a very useful index.
The first part of the book examines ‘the Mediterranean’ in historical and contemporary imaginations. The aptly titled first chapter by Hans-Joachim von Kondratowitz, ‘Squaring the Circle’, addresses contrasting images of unified and fragmented landscapes of the Mediterranean. The chapter critiques theories of modernisation based on linear progress and introduces themes that are addressed throughout the book including migration, both in terms of migrant retirees and migrant care workers, and ‘familism’ – a social structure often ascribed to the Mediterranean involving practices such as co-residence and residential proximity – while acknowledging the diversity of family dynamics. Chapter Three, by Pier Paolo Viazzo, draws on historical studies and contemporary survey data, especially the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), to examine the family in detail. The chapter cautions that the idea of live-in migrant care workers, especially in the northern shore countries of Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece, providing cultural continuity by supporting the ‘familistic’ model, might give cultural legitimacy to inadequate state intervention. In regard to the southern shores, the final chapter in this section, by Hans-Joachim von Kondratowitz, examines how they are neglected in European discourse on the Mediterranean, and highlights how the Arab Mediterranean countries are omitted from studies both on southern Europe and on ‘emerging’ welfare states.
The second part of the book contains five chapters that address employment, health and care. Chapter Seven, by Moreno Fuentes, applies statistical analysis of large-scale survey data to the consideration of policy-making environments in southern Europe, especially Italy and Spain. The chapter suggests that there is a missed opportunity to create employment opportunities in the formal care sector, linked to the practice of families employing directly migrant care workers who are often undocumented, thereby creating a shadow underground care labour market. Chapter Eight, by Claudine Attias-Donfut, analyses data from the Immigrants and Retirement Survey (PRI) to examine the links that ageing migrants in France have with their countries of origin. The chapter reports that most people maintain ties to both countries and that while not many wish to return to their country of origin on retirement, transmigration practices increase on retirement (transmigrants being people who make several annual visits a year or at least one annual visit of more than one month to their country of origin) and repatriation of bodies after death is frequent.
The third part of the book focuses on care policies and models of arranging care, with a particularly interesting emphasis on transnational dynamics. The topics of the chapters include older people's care in Israel, including that provided by both migrant care workers and family care-givers, and the notion of ‘ageing in place’ in Malta. Chapter Eleven, by Giovanni Lamura, argues that in Italy cash-for-care policies have encouraged the development of an informal labour market alongside the official one and may contribute to a ‘care drain’ from the workers' countries of origin. The fourth and final part of the book addresses the southern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and includes investigations of ageing in Lebanon and Tunisia. Chapter Fourteen, by Özgür Arun, is about ageing in Turkey and draws on data from several large-scale surveys to critique what it calls ‘Peter Pan syndrome’, which involves the denial that Turkey will soon be an ageing society, and to highlight the inadequacies of social policies, such as in leaving one out of five older people without comprehensive social security. The chapter is a call for increased access to social welfare provision and suggests a citizenship approach. The book concludes with a final chapter that is largely a call for further research.
The most obvious omission from the book is Greece, given the implications of the financial crisis for older people in hardship there. The book is perhaps limited by its origins in papers for a conference that took place in 2009. Other important topics that could have been addressed more substantively include approaches to care for people with specific long-term conditions, particularly dementia. The focus on demographics perhaps also distracts from aspects of the contemporary context such as the shaping of the nature of care work by technological change. The strengths of the book lie in how it brings together data from diverse countries, supported by numerous clear and well-presented tables and figures. Overall, the book achieves its aim of addressing the tension between unity and variety in the Mediterranean region and is particularly effective at highlighting the complexities of migration within the region in relation to ageing.
