Balkan-Swiss Senior Citizens and Social Work

The social realities of elderly persons in Balkan-Swiss families have rarely been studied, in contrast to Italian or Spanish seniors in Switzerland. For the latter, different services are available, from mother-tongue counseling to Mediterranean wards in retirement homes. Due to the specific migration history between the Balkans and the Swiss cantons as well as the migration regime in Switzerland, new insights for supporting elderly parents in these families are relevant for social counseling.

During conversations with colleagues from Balkan-Swiss families on family members living in Kosovo, North Macedonia or Serbia, and widowed seniors of retirement age in need of companionship, they often raise the idea of a moral obligation to support these family members. The support they refer to is not only financial but can also take the form of contact, visits, and conversations.

Such was the case of a Kosovar-Serb man married to a Swiss woman, who spoke openly about it. His father had died a short time ago and his mother had just moved from Kosovo to Serbia to live with his unemployed brother. During the conversation, he would often highlight the fact that he should be supporting his mother and brother financially. He insisted on feeling a moral obligation, which resonated in his everyday life when he would think of his family in the Balkans.

Another Swiss colleague, when asked about her grandparents, mentioned that it would in no way bother her and her family if her Albanian grandmother came to live with them, especially since they had sufficient financial means. She is, therefore, currently tackling the necessary administrative steps for her grandmother to obtain an annual residence permit in Switzerland. This would allow her uncle to feel free to migrate from Macedonia to Germany without the worry of leaving his mother behind with insufficient financial security.

New Perspectives on Family Solidarity and Care

Both anecdotes point to an understanding of the “family” beyond a two-generation nuclear family, described in the Swiss Foreign Nationals and Integration Act for Swiss and third-country nationals. The first anecdote is about a moral obligation towards siblings and the second concerns a three-generation family perceived as common (Ammann Dula, 2020).

What does family solidarity in several unevenly developed welfare states mean to different Balkan-Swiss families? How is support or care for elderly family members organized, socially and financially? What role does migration play in these contexts? The migration history of the Balkan and Swiss states includes not only work and lifestyle migration, as well as intermarriages. This history also consists of flight from war-torn countries, forced return migration from Switzerland, remigration, or mobility between states according to cycles of life such as education, unemployment, or retirement. Various studies illustrate, how all of this makes up the density of family ties between Balkan and Swiss states. Family solidarity or the moral obligation to support senior family members, however, are new issues in these contexts.

Institutional Developments

The Swiss institutional landscape for seniors includes Pro Senectute, social welfare offices, social insurance agencies, adult protection authorities, counseling centers for people with foreign passports or outpatient care services. At all these places social workers are confronted with questions of accompaniment and support for seniors in transnational families. Curaviva, the Swiss branch association for people with support needs, together with the Swiss Red Cross, make a significant contribution to dealing with such issues as examples: there are brochures in 18 languages; websites with a wide range of information and collection of [scientific] publications on the topic. However, it is evident that more recent developments in Swiss migration demography, such as the connections in the Balkan-Swiss context just outlined, still receive far too little visibility.

Need for Further Development in (Post)migratory Social Work

A certain number of studies, such as the one on transnationality in social counseling (Johner-Kobi u. a., 2020), or on the critical examination of ethnic labeling in street-level bureaucracy (Piñeiro, Koch, und Pasche, 2019) or the gatekeeper function of social workers (Borrelli, 2020), illustrate an increasing awareness of social diversity relevant for social work in Switzerland, as well as an expanding variety of transnational family settings (Brandhorst, Baldassar, und Wilding, 2021). Yet, especially in the just outlined (post)migratory constellations in the field of counseling of seniors, social work has little encompassing practice. It is still a step-by-step approach and the unmarked dominant state position in social institutions is not sufficiently questioned.

According to the International Federation of Social Workers’ definition of social work, it aims to promote social change and development, social cohesion, and the empowerment of people. The principles of social justice, human rights, community responsibility and the recognition of diversity are central to this. Diversity competencies include transcultural competencies in counseling, based on critical reflection of the importance of ethnic labeling or the legitimization of an official state version of dealing with a specific problem. In addition, they should also include a deeper understanding of how migration regimes and different, state-based socio-political contexts, and unequal terms of trade influence and shape the accompaniment and support of seniors in, for example, Balkan-Swiss family systems.

Barbara Waldis is an anthropologist and holds a PhD from University de Fribourg (CH). She has published widely on the themes of intermarriage and intercultural communication and carried out several Swiss National Science Foundation project on transnational family ties (Universities of Fribourg and Neuchâtel, an award for the documentary film “DestiNation Love”).

References:

– Ammann Dula, Eveline. 2020. “Family Formation: An Intergenerational Comparison Subtitlte: The Relevance of Social Inequalities for Family Formation in a Transnational Migration Context.” Journal of International Migration and Integration, August.

– Borrelli, Lisa Marie. 2020. “Should (S)He Stay or Should (S)He Go? – Street-Level Suspicion and the Construction of the ‘(Un)Deserving Migrant’.” Geopolitics, September, 1–24.

– Brandhorst, R., L. Baldassar, und R. Wilding. 2021. “The Need for a ‘Migration Turn’ in Aged Care Policy: A Comparative Study of Australian and German Migration Policies and Their Impact on Migrant Aged Care.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 47 (1): 249–66.

– Johner-Kobi, Sylvie, Garabet Gül, Uwe Koch, und Milena Gehrig. 2020. “Transnationale Lebensräume und Unterstützungsnetzwerke älterer Migrantinnen und Migranten : eine Herausforderung für die Soziale Arbeit? ”  112,application/pdf.

– Piñeiro, Esteban, Martina Koch, und Nathalie Pasche. 2019. “Un/Doing Ethnicity in Intervening Swiss Street-Level Bureaucracy. A Police Service and a Child Welfare Service – an Ethnographic Perspective.” Swiss Journal of Sociology 45 (1): 35–55.