This thesis examines older Ukrainian migrants employed as eldercare workers in Italy, situating their lives at the intersection of migration, ageing, and transnational social protection. Extending foundational literature on gender, migration, and care work through an ageing–migration lens, it shows how care work functions simultaneously as livelihood, quick-fix welfare, and a source of long-term vulnerability when intersecting with the ageing process. Based on multilingual qualitative interviews and participant observation in Naples and Milan—the thesis engages with the complexities of conducting research in politically sensitive contexts, particularly following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. It reflects on the role of translanguaging and reflexivity in co-producing knowledge across linguistic and cultural boundaries. First, transnational social protection shows intrastate variations, influenced by local welfare institutions, labour market dynamics, and urban spatial arrangements. Second, access to resources is filtered through subjective cultural and moral understandings of ageing, responsibility, and an historically constructed sense of protracted instability. Third, relational support networks—comprising NGOs, churches, employers, and kin—serve as vital but precarious infrastructures that migrants rely on to access protection. Ageing in migration is revealed as a deeply relational process, where agency is unevenly distributed and shaped by intersecting structural constraints. Collecting the voices of both practitioners and migrant care workers, this thesis calls not only for a reimagining of social protection beyond national borders, but also for a rethinking of the care work profession itself—toward a more sustainable, equitable model that addresses the needs of ageing migrant workers.
Maria Izzo (Thu,) studied this question.