The Effect of Migration Experiences on Wellbeing Among Ageing Migrants in Italy

Ageing and migration are two of Europe’s fundamental demographic processes, challenging a wide range of social policies. Their intersection generates a wide taxonomy of types of individuals, from the most well-off and active ones to those more deprived and marginalised and for whom being old and having a migration background represents a double jeopardy. Yet in discussions of the ‘demographic time bomb’ of ageing, the special circumstances of ageing migrants are rarely recognised. Thus far, in Europe, very little is known about ageing populations with a migratory background, and this is even more true for Italy, that turned into an immigration country only in the late 1980s and where older migrants are a neglected, although growing, group in the Italian population. In this paper, we unpack ageing migrants’ wellbeing by focusing on life satisfaction, as a broader indicator of individual’s wellbeing; in particular, we analyse the effect of migration experiences on migrants’ perception of the quality of life in old age. We use data from the Social Condition and Integration of Foreign Citizens survey (2011–2012) and build several indicators related to different structural and socio-cultural dimensions of integration to analyse different patterns of association with life satisfaction among different groups of ageing migrants in Italy. Our study has important implications form both theoretical and policy perspective as it contributes to the advancement of original knowledge on the factors that shape wellbeing in later life in a context of migration.