Human Diversity seminar with Alyona Artamonova

First Human Diversity seminar for 2024 introduces Alyona Artamonova from Population Research Institute and University of Groningen. She will tell us about her research on family proximity and relocational choices in older adulthood. You are welcome to joint seminar live at the University of Turku campus at Arcanum lecture room A269 “Black Box” or on zoom https://utu.zoom.us/j/68468703016. Please send an email to humandiversity@utu.fi to gain the passcode for the zoom.

Wednesday 31.1. from 11-12

11.00-12.00 by PhD Alyona Artamonova
Väestöliitto – Population Research Institute and University of Groningen – Population Research Centre
“Family proximity and relocations in older adulthood“

The family remains one of the biggest sources of support for older adults. Geographic proximity between family members has important implications for the growing demand for formal and informal care. As people age, their own and their family members’ residential (im)mobility may be a strategy to facilitate the exchange of care. I will talk about my research that addresses the following question: How are needs-related life circumstances of older people associated with their own and their relatives’ migration and immobility (including older adults’ moves into institutionalized care facilities)? I will focus on the roles of a range of needs-related life circumstances of older adults in their own and their family members’ locational choices: needs for formal care, severe health problems, the absence of core family members, or losing a partner recently. Drawing on the full population register data from Norway and Sweden, I show that older adults’ needs-related life circumstances deter intergenerational geographic divergence, and inspire moves toward adult children, siblings, and into institutionalized residential care. The results of my research also emphasize the importance of non-resident family members in migration and immobility both as a deterrent to moving into institutionalized care and elsewhere when family members already live nearby and as an attraction to migrate toward clusters of relatives. The findings broadly suggest that even in Norway and Sweden where formal care services are available, the welfare state is far from “crowding out” the family from the sphere of care and the family plays an important role in the locational choices of older adults.