Public and private old-age security arrangements in Asia and Europe
15/04/2007 - 09:00
Call for papers
Deadline to send in abstracts: 15 April 2007
Joint conference organised by National Science Council (NSC), Taipei, Taiwan
International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS), Leiden, the Netherlands
Abstracts should be no longer than 200 words and be accompanied by a short resume/CV (max. 2 pages).
Convenors
Prof. CHENG Li-Chen, Department of Social Work, National Taiwan University
Prof. Carla Risseeuw, Department of Anthropology and Development Sociology,
Leiden University, the Netherlands
5-8 September 2007, Campus The Hague, Leiden University at The Hague, the Netherlands
The organisers invite researchers to send in paper abstracts on themes related to:
- policy making; local (commercial) initiatives and self-organisation;
- understanding the issue of community and family, personhood and sociality.
The conference will focus on East & Southeast Asia and Western Europe.
During the 21st century it is projected that there will be more than one billion people aged 60 and over. This will actually reach nearly two billion by 2050, of whom three-quarters will live in the less-developed world. The bulk of the ageing population will reside in Asia. Ageing in Asia is attributable to the marked declines in fertility shown over the last 40 years and the steady increase in life-expectancy. In Western Europe, where the development of ageing populations came at a slower pace and could initially be incorporated into welfare policy provisions, governments are currently aiming to trim and reduce government financed social welfare and health-care, including pensions systems, unleashing substantial public debate and experienced insecurity. Many governments in East and Southeast Asia are confronted with comparable challenges and dilemmas, involving both the State and the family, but which - comparatively - need to be addressed within a much shorter time-span. In short, both sets of nations are reviewing their social contract with their people.
How is the well-being of ageing populations/older adults to be achieved? How is policy to fine-tune the degree of formal support systems in contrast to informal and/or commercial care-systems? In how far are Governments to be expected to provide quality care provisions for citizens without family support circles, whose numbers are rising because of industrialisation, migration and globalisation? What forms of cooperation are found between government and private local or commercial initiatives? What makes Governments choose to promote, allow, or inhibit the entry of trans-national care-workers and what forms of job and income security are created in this context? To which extent are citizens expected to rely on their own informal support systems of family, community or other social arrangements and, even more relevantly, to what degree can these support systems be assumed to remain constant over time and through life-phases? In how far are such processes gendered and how is the disparity in security of elderly (widowed) women, in both East and West, to be addressed? Social and cultural issues play a large role but how are such issues to be analysed and compared? This leads to questions about the (often unseen) dynamics within families: in same-living arrangements as well as probing the local meanings/interpretations of religion, morality/philosophy, care, well-being and security and notions of personhood and sociality.
Learning from the approaches of different countries to the shifting demographic build-up of societies, both between Western European and East & Southeast Asian countries and between countries in each region, will be an essential contribution to a acquiring a deeper understanding of the situation and consequently to developing lasting solutions and new approaches, at the level of State policy; local social and religious initiatives; and commercial ventures and socio-cultural family and kin systems. Locally shared meanings of concepts as vulnerability, security, dependency, protection, entitlement and obligation tend to reflect specific cultural and religious philosophies, but also manifest new and changing meanings over time.
Participants are invited to present a paper related to one of the following themes:
1. Policy making; local (commercial) initiatives and self-organisation
a. Experiences with policy-making relevant to pension-build up - work-related, universal and other pension schemes and the fine-tuning of policies to local family and community ways of inter-generational living, with special emphasis on gender differences.
b. Experiences with elderly people living in various forms of institutional care; day-care centres; housing schemes facilitating inter-generational (family) support in urban centres and home care and related medical services.
c. Comparing the policies and experiences of various countries with migrant-care labour: For example, in Western Europe several countries, policy choices have to be made in relation to the experienced crunch of providing subsidized daily support arrangements for the elderly, the majority of whom either live as a couple or alone in their own homes. The shortcomings and insecure arrangements of support for those elderly in need of daily help is a regular media issue. Why does one country accept large-scale migrant care-labour, as is for instance the case in Italy, while other governments avoid this strategy ?
d. The experiences with commercially based support services for the elderly, per region or country and the reasons for success of failure of certain services over others.
e. Comparing migrant-care workers experiences with the policies and working conditions of different countries in Western Europe, East and Southeast Asia.
2. Understanding the issue of community and family, personhood and sociality
In order to understand change in relation to degrees of inclusion and exclusion in family and daily living arrangements, contextual knowledge of the basic workings of such changing family forms as bilateral, patrilineal, patrilocal, matrilineal and others is required. Within these family systems responsibilities between generations and genders are specified: In one system the eldest son (and consequently his wife) may have the main responsibility; in another, sons and their wives may all share. Family moralities may also prescribe equal responsibilities to daughters and sons, or mainly to daughters. As families are currently becoming smaller, tensions arise in relation to spouses (mainly women) being required by family systems to prioritize the care for their in-laws over that of their own parents. More and more families are having only one child in Western Europe, in East Asia and in South-East Asia, while those having no (living) children are on average 10 % or above. Family systems worldwide show great variations in incorporating single (non-) family members into shared homes and family. Modern economies lead to higher numbers of migrating younger generations, creating both specific challenges and also opportunities to support. Gender also plays a substantial role, as most cultures have different expectations of support and caring tasks for men and women. The phenomenon of elders living longer, is leading to an additional last life-phase often with no surviving close relatives.
More knowledge of the various contributions of elders to their families and/or others is needed, without directly assuming an exclusive one-way line of support. Likewise we need to know more about shifting relations of power and of support between generations and genders within families. Analysis of the family still tends to preponderate in the studies of informal/private living and care-arrangements of elderly, overlooking the substantial percentages of childless elderly, besides underplaying the level of conflicts within families.
Cultures differ markedly in the boundaries experienced between family and neighbours, wider community members. In one socio-cultural setting a single aged person can be provided with more access and (required) participation in a local community, plus receiving additional daily help if needed, while in another he/she will simply become isolated. Understanding the dynamics of a local "community" and its "sociality" will become more important in future. Underlying cultural philosophies, the socio-cultural and historical development of notions of family, personhood and sociality require deeper understanding, especially within a comparative context, in order to grasp the local meaning of change for specific actors and to understand the cultural premises and assumptions on which policy formulation is formulated and reflected in the media.
For further information
Dr Manon Osseweijer, IIAS, m.osseweijer@let.leidenuniv.nl