Contrasts in ageing and agency in family migratory contexts: A comparison of Albanian and Latvian older migrants

Focusing on the experiences of migration of older people, the chapter makes a unique comparison between two small post-socialist countries, Albania and Latvia. In-depth interviews with Latvian older women in the UK, and with ‘left-behind’ older people in Albania and Albanian migrants in Greece and Italy, reveal marked contrasts in their agency as regards their movements and livelihoods, and in their patterns of giving and receiving care. Latvian older women achieve economic salvation, personal independence, and an enhanced sense of self-worth through migration. Albanian older people’s movements and livelihoods are tightly enmeshed within, even controlled by, their children’s migration. These different migration patterns and outcomes are set against contrasting home-country backgrounds of patrilinearity in Albania and post-socialist neoliberalism and economic crisis in Latvia.