Ageing, Care and kinship-state relations
In my project, I aim to investigate the interplay between state, care, kinship and ageing in rural Latvian social care centres. In recent years several schools in rural areas have been transformed into social care centres also known as nursing homes. Acknowledging that reasons for these transformations are more complex than just ‘greying society’, my research focuses on 1) how care practices in social care centres shape experiences of ageing, including how and for whom a person comes to matter in late life, 2) what the role of social care centres is in local communities, 3) and how care practices and experiences of ageing in institutional setting mark and shape one’s relation to the state and, on the broader scale, unfold the relations between kinship and the state. This project contributes to ongoing scientific debates on how institutional care for older adults seizes and forms the experience of late-life persons’ fluctuating belonging to the state and citizenry and how it embodies complex transformations of social relations in local communities.