Research seminar May 13, 2025
Ageing and migration
Organizer: Eveliina Lyytinen, MIF (Mobile Futures and Endings projects)
Ageing Migrants: The twilight years – Professor Edwina Pio ONZM
Abstract:
In the exquisite understandings of ageing, this session will present my research in the context of New Zealand with some tantalising suggestions to understand what goes right and what goes wrong in the twilight years. The longevity revolution coupled with migration, has major political, fiscal, economic, wellbeing and social consequences for regions, countries and societies. There may be the need for rethinking and remoulding how we think about ageing for migrants and how we choose to live forward in the miraculous mysterious dimensions of living. In creating a culture for graceful, dignified ageing, a multi-layered, holistic approach involving educators, policymakers, not-for-profit, faith-based and business organisations is important. Ultimately, the question we need to ask is – what kind of community do we want and what are we doing to make that a reality?
Biography:
Emeritus Professor Edwina Pio is Associate Professorial Fellow at the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing and Research Fellow at Black Friars Hall Oxford University UK. Recipient of an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM) from King Charles III for her service to ethnic communities, awarded the Te Rangi Hiroa Royal Society medal, and Duke of Edinburgh Fellowship, Fulbright alumna, Edwina is New Zealand’s first Professor of Diversity. She currently chairs the Ethics Committee at the University of Auckland, is a member of the Ethnic Communities Development Fund New Zealand and is Visiting Professor at Turku University, Finland. Widely published, she is a woman of peace and prayer, a scholar of colour, and a passionately engaged educator cum practitioner in the diversity landscape nationally and internationally.
Ageing stones and bones: how bodies and buildings age and what they teach us about humanity – Associate professor Aija Lulle (UEF)
Abstract:
I make an argument that materiality cannot be separated from discursive ideas of East-West and other divisions and illustrate my point with finding from my ethnographic work in Latvia. Whilst my research is fine-grained in particular contexts, it yields broader lessons on value of ageing and our humanity. Based on ethnographic research in the capital city and a small town with rural surroundings in Latvia in 2021-2024, I analyse lived experiences of housing and refurbishment and ageing. The first context concerns people who never migrated internationally and yet are influenced by general appeal to Nordic and personal encounters with returnees from the Nordic countries. The second focuses on labour migrants, circulating or returning to Latvia, especially from Nordic countries; they renovate or build their new homes for themselves and others. The third was the context of the necessity to seek accommodation by refugees from Ukraine. I weave together these lived experiences with official and idealistic discourses circulating in wider societies on how to not only talk about East, North, West and the rest, but primarily how to live in and with these categories, which are concretely observable in built environment and human bodies.
Biography:
Aija Lulle is Associate Professor at University of Eastern Finland and guest Professor at Riga Stradiņš University. She has studied extensively migrant and non-migrant encounters and lifecourses. With range of expertise in migration and ethnic studies, she currently pursues an innovative agenda on gender, ageing and knowledge production. Her current project, funded by Research Council of Finland, titled ‘Menopausing: Exploring diversity, awareness and activism’ studies how knowledge and awareness travel along with networks of migrants, racialised minorities and queer communities in exile. In her other project ‘Enhancing capacities in disaster risk reduction by facilitating public-civil cooperation’, funded by INTERREG, she focuses on intergenerational solidarity and roles of ageing people in prevention and risk reduction in environmental disasters and military crises
