Transnational Ageing in Australia. Implications of the transnationalisation of social life worlds for the concept of ageing in place and for social and health policies in a society of immigration.

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In the scope of the scholarship I aim to examine transnational, virtual support networks of older migrants in Australia. The project links studies on social work, nursing and gerontology with migration studies and the transnationalism paradigm. It aims at applying the transnationalism paradigm for the notion ageing in place and identifying the implications for social- and health care policies and age care in a society of immigration. The project examines transnational care strategies and the role of distant and virtual support networks on ageing in place, based on the reconstructive analysis of ethnographic research and of biographical-narrative interviews with older migrants. In total I plan to investigate 16 older migrants and their geographically close and distant support networks. The sampling is based on the biggest migration-groupings with older population in Australia: England, Italy, Vietnam and China. The research context Australia is chosen because of its similarities with Germany due to the increasing immigration and rapid population ageing. However, the percentage of foreign-born older people is higher in Australia than in Germany. Also the use of ICTs among older people is further spread. Thus, Australia shows a development, which will be relevant in Germany in the scope of the current rising immigration in a few years. The analysis of social and age-care policies and the use of ICTs of older people in Australia can thus give important impulses for migration policies and age care 4.0 in Germany. Simultaneously, the study promises theoretic results about the research on ageing in a transantional place.