The feeling of not belonging in the context of migration 107

Filomena was a first generation Italian aged 84 from Campania, and had moved to Newcastle after the Second World War, with a work permit. From a well-to-do peasant family, she was the only child amongst her siblings who decided to migrate. She said that she took this decision as the rural life was too hard for her, and as she had always been ‘very skinny’ as a young girl. By this she meant that the cultural system in which she was born considered her not strong enough for hard laborious work in the countryside. She preferred to sew, and afterwards she became a good seamstress. Similarly to some of the previous participants reported above, I met Filomena at the Club where I conducted my participant observation, and I was invited to her house more than once. We used to spend the entire day together, sharing meals. Filomena said that she enjoyed my company during the fieldwork, as she had lived alone since her husband passed away several years before and she rarely had guests. In saying this, she revealed an important point about her everyday life experience of ageing in the context of migration:

‘I’m happy to be where I am. I compare myself to my sister in Italy, who is younger than me but looks older. She is always very busy in the countryside, taking care of animals, the huge house, with many relatives. I spend all day without doing much. If I’m tired, I rest; if it’s sunny, I go out for a walk. I go out food shopping with my son. Otherwise, I spend my days indoors. […] But, I always say to myself “From walking in the countryside, I walk on carpets now.” So I’m happy to be in the UK, and enjoy a cup of tea, as a proper British lady. […] Unfortunately, never mind

what you do to have friends, you will always be a foreigner here. Especially when you are not useful any more. Before, when I was younger, everybody in the neighborhood used to knock at this door. I did many clothes for people around. “Filomena, please can you mend this, can you fix that?” I also did a wedding dress for the lady nearby. Before, I was a very popular seamstress, per un dire.37 Well, you know, you grow older and you don’t have the same energy. […] Then, four years ago, I lost an eye. It was a great loss for me, and I felt discouraged. Recently, I had an infection in the other eye, so I am worried. The problem is that when I walk around, people don’t care about me any longer. Before, they said “hello” to me here, in the streets. Now, as I’m not useful anymore to them, they don’t come here for a cup of tea anymore. […] So, I said, I have lost an eye, but why don’t they see me, now? That’s why I think: You are always a forestiera38 here.’

(Filomena, Heaton, translated into English, November, 2015) In retrospectively reinterpreting her experiences of migration, Filomena’s happiness in later life derived from her transition from a rural to a worldly and sophisticated lifestyle, symbolized by the meaning she ascribed to material objects in her house (the change from walking on ‘the land’ in her youth, to ‘the carpet’ in later life). Filomena’s example thus introduces the theme of migration as the accomplishment of an aspirational identity and the material effect of transformation after migration (Basu and Coleman, 2008), that I shall address in greater detail in Chapter 5. As a consequence of this, she articulates her identity as being ‘a British lady’, in the place in which she is growing old and her activities. Filomena also expressed this in direct comparison to her sister, who is still involved in the manual labour duties of the Italian countryside. From Filomena’s perspective, the ‘hard life style’ of the countryside, for which she was considered unsuitable in her youth, is the reason why she migrated from Italy. It is something that has, to her mind, also contributed to the ageing of her sister’s body (‘she looks older than me’) despite her sister being the younger sibling. By this, in a first instance, it appears that Filomena does not replicate the social representation of the ‘rural idyill’ (Walsh et al., 2012; Burholt et al., 2013), such as bucolic and virtuous trope associated to rural life. However, Filomena’s emotional and the idealized ‘rural idyill’ emerges when she reveal her expectation of older age.

37 Per un dire’, means ‘just for saying’, in a modest way. 38 ‘Forestiera’ means ‘foreigner’ in Italian.

Hence, she implicitly compares herself to her sister’s ageing, as shaped by the differences determined by the places in which they are growing older (‘she is always busy’, ‘surrounded by relatives’). These refers to the features commonly associated to rural sites: for example in the work of Walsh et al. (2012) social visiting in each other’s homes was part of daily social contact and interactions. In this respect, the participant, in this example, stressed another side of transformation after migration, namely the vulnerability experienced as an ageing migrant, according to her own perspective. That is to say, Filomena compared her social life during the first years of migration, when her skills as a seamstress enabled her to cultivate social relationships within the local area, with the sense of disengagement from social life that she felt due to the onset of older age. In the past, she felt active in her work and talked proudly of her skills; she was happy to have guests visiting her house. However, in later life she felt ignored by the many people she had met in the neighbourhood, and experienced loneliness, as I witnessed. This shaped her sense of identity in later life, as she felt she was always a ‘stranger’, despite having done her best to create social bonds when she was younger. Therefore, the sense of a shrinking social network and her perceived social exclusion in later life, due to physical decline, illness, and disability, according to Filomena’s perspective, may be linked to the experience of ageing in the context of migration (‘you will be always a foreigner here’). Hence, the contingencies of ageing and disability in later life (the loss of her eye) became associated with the new condition of being socially invisible, or not socially recognized by others in the local area.

Filomena’s feeling of invisibility is similar to Rowles’ notion of ‘autobiographical insideness’ (Rowles, 1983). As explained in Chapter Two, with this term, the gerontologist refers to awareness of the experiences of places (among others, recognizing people, and being recognized by them) as defining a sense of belonging in later life. Rowles (1983) argued that this feeling, shaping the relationship established with places, influences the process of self-definition and identity among older adults. Filomena reported a recent condition of feeling ignored by people when out in her local neighbourhoods, as she describes lots of involvement in local neighbourhood in younger life. This lack of autobiographical insideness in later life shaped reflections upon her condition of ageing in the context of migration in a period of loss and deprivation, by articulating her sense of not belonging to it. Whether or not the feeling of being marginalized is determined by a different ethnic identity, the

key aspect of this finding is that the participant considered that her place of provenance contributed to her vulnerability in later life. This narrative extract from Filomena’s interview evokes a dominant trope amongst scholars in migration and ageing studies defined as ‘double jeopardy’ which highlights the disadvantages of being both an older adult and a person with a different ethnicity in the context of migration (Fennell et al., 1988; Torres, 2013; Phillipson, 2015; King et al., 2017). Therefore, this example reiterates the mainstream trend in social gerontology which frames older people with images of vulnerability, disengagement and withdrawal from society (Fennell et al., 1988), as well as fragility, illness and disability (Ayis et al., 2006). Moreover, this example confirms the risk of exposure to several disadvantages in ageing migrant populations, such as social exclusion (Scharf et al., 2005) and loneliness (Victor et al., 2012), as articulated in Chapter 2. Therefore, Filomena is an example of those migrants facing isolation from their social network due to ageing in the context of migration, like many of this study’s participants. The sense of vulnerability that older Italian migrants experience is concerned with the expectations of ageing, linked to growing older in a different environment, and which accentuates the obstacles to interacting within the local communities. Therefore, by remarking that social bonds established in the context of migration are a crucial aspect for ageing migrants’ sense of belonging, I stress its importance in experiencing a positive ageing. This introduces the further theme of how the attachment and identification with places inhabited in the context of migration shapes the interpretation of ageing, and determines health and well-being in later life.