Older refugees

The Refugee Council and Age Concern England today ran a conference about their work with older refugees, which has included a set of interviews and three regional 'listening days.'

Key points I got from the presentations I heard:

• Older refugees define integration in terms of their labour market experiences and their local social interactions.
• Many refugees feel isolated and this is related to the sense that neighbours are seldom welcoming.
• Service providers tend to assume that older refugees are invariably cared for by their extended families, which is often not the case.
• There are intergenerational aspects to integration - being accepted by people of different ages is important, and having all generations of one's family accepted is important.
• The lack of (unconditional) respect shown to older people in the UK is very offputting to many people from other cultures and can seem a barrier to integration. (There's a nicety here, which I tried to bring out in Respect in the neighbourhood, about distinguishing between respect for others as a default value of human relations, and unconditional respect for an office or status, such as being a teacher or being old. It may be that we have lamentably low levels of both kinds in the UK, but seeking to re-establish the latter may not be the way forward...)

Copies of reports are available via Age Concern on this page.