Transforming Anxieties of Ageing
in Southeastern Europe

Political, Social, and Cultural Narratives of Demographic Change

Shrinking and Ageing Populations

Far more than other regions, Southeastern Europe is affected by demographic change: within less than a century, its population has turned from Europe’s fastest-growing into a rapidly “greying” one (Jakovljevic/Laaser 2010; Hoff 2011). A World Bank publication (Chawla et al. 2007) alluded to ageing as the “third transition”, after the transition to democracy and free-market economy. Population projections present a bleak picture: Bulgaria, for instance, once a country of 9 million people, today counts 6.8 million inhabitants and is predicted to shrink to less than 6 million until 2050. When the results of the latest population census were published, the public was alarmed by another sharp decline in the population. Bulgarian media wrote of a “demographic catastrophe”; in no other country in the world is the proportion of young people in the population so low.

Similar statements could be found in other countries, too. In Croatia, the public reacted with concern when the 2021 census showed a drop of almost ten per cent compared to 2011. Croatia would soon be left entirely to old people, read one headline.

Combining Area Studies and Ageing Studies

This is where our international project comes in. Its special focus is on the process of demographic ageing in South Eastern Europe and how this is perceived by politics and the public. One goal is to provide the scientific basis for ensuring that ageing in societies is not seen as a catastrophe, but as part of social change. Likewise, examples of how to deal with it better are to be found, especially through greater social participation of older people as well as a rethinking of immigration policy.

Our project has two major objectives:

We aim to produce comparative, multidisciplinary research on narratives of ageing and on demographic change in Southeastern Europe as a region which is representative of the challenges but also potentials of these processes for Europe as a whole.

Through participatory and citizen science approaches, we want to contribute to a transformation of narratives about ageing, moving from prevailing catastrophic representations towards more diverse and empowering ones.

The novelty of our project relates to the application of an Ageing Studies framework to an Area Studies approach. However, we do not want to simply transfer concepts from Ageing Studies with its strong focus on North America and Western Europe to another region. Southeastern Europe’s specific legacies, experiences, concepts, and knowledge production must be reconsidered.

Research Questions

To investigate why and how ageing informs such a powerful discourse in Southeastern Europe today, we have designed a set of five thematic clusters:

Cluster 1
Cluster 1
Socialist legacies and ambivalent transitions» comparative timeline (since 1960s) of policy measures targeting old people and of semantic changes

What is the legacy of state socialism and the transition period of the 1990s for current-day representations and policies? Which ruptures since the end of communist rule can be detected? How can we explain continuities and change? An example from 1985 can illustrate the ambiguities of socialism in the context of demography and ageing: Bulgaria’s Family Code of that year included the right of grandparents to personal contact with their grandchildren and the right to “grandparental” leave, as an adaptation to increased life expectancy.

We want to trace problem perceptions by the public and policy responses towards the demographic process of ageing in the media from the 1960s, when communist regimes started pronatalist policies, to the 1990s. To this end, we will compare at least Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia and Albania. In a first step, representations of old age in public and political discourse during so-called “developed” socialism will be reconstructed through document research. Analyzing policy decisions, we will explore inclusion and exclusion dynamics. Why, for instance, was the farming population in Yugoslavia not covered by the old-age pension system (except in Slovenia)? What were the hidden agendas towards ethnic minorities, such as Roma or Albanians? At the same time, socialist systems established infrastructures for the sociability of older people, such as ubiquitous pensioner clubs. Did these organizations intervene in debates about ageing and care? In a second step, we will explore a similar set of questions for the 1990s as a period of transformation. What priority was given to these issues in the turbulent politics of the 1990s? How were older people represented (in Slovenia and Serbia, pensioners’ parties managed to enter parliament)? What were the crucial changing points? The research by the PI and a PhD researcher plus input from the other teams will create a comparative timeline of policy measures targeting older adults and of associated semantic changes. With its historical approach, this cluster will make a step to situate Southeastern Europe in the global history of ageing (cf. Troyanski 2015).

Cluster 2
Cluster 2
Demographic and expert discourses » demographic modelling results, experts interviews and their discourses, foresight exercises, database

In close connection with the first theme, we explore how ageing is framed in demographic discourses by professionals (statisticians, demographers, insurance mathematicians, health professionals) and what alternative frameworks can be found beyond demographic nationalism. This research will be the basis for the creation of a novel database with social and demographic indicators for the four investigated countries starting with the 1960s.

We will begin the interviews with semi-structured and biographical sections among experts and policymakers. They reveal narrative frameworks and personal motivations. The second part of the interviews will focus on experts’ understandings and analyses and contrast them with ESS data and with the results of the project’s survey. We will explore the experts’ evaluation of the effectiveness of policy measures and their own recommendations. The third part of the interviews will focus on their understanding of the key challenges for the investigated countries and what strategies they would propose for handling tensions concerning regional development, ageing, social security, and out-migration. In each country (Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Croatia), ten interviews will be conducted with demographers, statisticians, and policy analysts. We will collect demographic modelling results with a special focus on ageing and its social consequences. These projections will be related to interwoven tendencies in out- and immigration, labour market development, health care, and social provisions in order to identify social policy imbalances which are amplified by inequality and stagnating, or even falling, redistribution levels (Gál/Monostori 2017; Katona/Melegh 2020). Based on these results and the research in the other clusters, we will carry out a foresight exercise with scenarios specified for the investigated countries (Giaoutzi/Sapio, 2012). For the foresight, team members will relate questions of redistribution, pension systems, health care, and eldercare provisions to the demographic scenarios. The foresight exercise will include experts, national and local level decision-makers, and practitioners.

Cluster 3
Cluster 3
Cross-cultural pathways and life stories of ageing and care » oral histories and ethnography of experiences, and expectations of retirees, caregivers and stakeholders

Applying an ethnographic approach, we want to find out how ageing is translated into personal experiences and expectations against the backdrop of the transformation that has led to increased insecurity for many older people. Another regional specificity is the de-population of the countryside and of small towns, which undermines traditional patterns of intergenerational co-residence. The departure of working-age adults has left many older people destitute and isolated. Despite foreign-funded projects that often promote new forms of care, there still is a persistent belief that living and staying at home is best for the oldest-old.

How did post-socialist transformation shape personal attitudes towards old age as compared to traditional cultural notions and norms? What is the relationship between care policies and practices and the quest for agency that emerges from personal expectations? How do every day experiences relate to “reform” talk and evocations of “Europe”? When searching for answers, we will turn to the transformative cultural experiences of ageing and caring accumulated across different social orders, cohorts and generations, local communities, and nation-states. The research will mainly be based on ethnographic observations and (auto-)biographical narratives. Interviewing retirees, formal and informal caregivers, and stakeholders, we will disentangle hegemonic notions and cultural legacies from personal experiences, shaped by everyday interactions. The regional focus is on Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Serbia, especially districts with contrasting demographic behavior. In view of the war in Ukraine and the refugee flow we want to interview also care-workers of Russian and Ukrainian origin, and because of the salience of transnational migration, we will interview care-workers and older migrants living in Austria and Germany. Multi-sited ethnography will reveal trans-cultural influences. In cooperation with the partners in Germany, Austria, and Hungary, we will produce cross-section samples in the mentioned countries, each including approximately 20 participants for interviews. In Austria and Germany, we plan to conduct 20 interviews each.

Cluster 4
Cluster 4
Cultural representations of age and ageing » analysis of fictional representations in literature, theatre and film; social impact of narratives and images

What are the cultural representations of age and ageing in the socialist period beginning with the 1960s and in the post-socialist context? How are dominant public discourses on demographic change reflected and challenged in literature, film, and theatre? Using the notion of “text” in a wide semiotic sense, we will explore prevailing as well as alternative narratives of ageing through close readings from an Ageing Studies perspective. We will draw on narratology and literary and cultural gerontology to analyze the meanings of age and ageing created through narrativity and visual rhetoric. How are ageing and old age narrated and visualized in specific contexts, what are genre-specific choices? Artistic forms do not simply reflect but subvert and challenge cultural imaginaries of what it means to grow old by foregrounding aspects of ambivalence and contradiction. Fictional representations – and their critical interpretation – thus significantly contribute to the understanding of the cultural constructedness of age (Kriebernegg 2021).

Social change affects the conventions of fiction and film; however, fiction and film also have an impact on how reality is perceived. We will provide comparative in-depth analyses of narratives and images which allow us to discern continuities and breaks in the contents and forms of representing old age. There has been very little research on this subject in the context of Southeastern European literatures and cinema (e.g., University of Wrocław 2017; Gramshammer-Hohl 2017; Gramshammer-Hohl/Hergenröther 2021). On account of the language competence of the researchers, the focus will be on Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian and Romanian (including minority) literatures and film. Another important corpus consists of transcultural texts, i.e., works by writers with a SoutheastEuropean background written in the language of their receiving countries. In these frequently autobiographical or autofictional texts, grandmother and grandfather figures usually play a prominent role. To add perspectives from further South Slavic, Albanian, and Hungarian literatures and cinema, a workshop will be organized with experts in Southeast European literary and cultural studies.

Cluster 5
Cluster 5
Public narratives and their politicization» scrutinizing political speeches, policy documents, seven opinion polls on ageing and associated policies

What are the contemporary political debates surrounding old age and ageing in the post-Yugoslav space, with comparative observations from Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania? How can we explain the representation of ageing as a “social threat” and “problem” by policymakers? A particular focus will be on the connection between this perception and nationalist narratives. How is ageing linked to migration, demographic decline, national identity, and Europeanness today? Migration proves relevant in two contexts: out-migration and discourses of demographic decline on the one hand, immigration and cultural alienation on the other (Krzyżanowski/Triandafyllidou/Wodak 2018). This correlates with narratives of the “great replacement” and the position of Southeastern Europe as a “bulwark” and “frontier” of Europe, which reinforces ontological insecurities (Ejdus/Rečević 2021).

The focus will lie on the past decade, building on the historical perspectives mentioned above (cluster 1). There will be especially an exchange with the research on cultural representations and expert debates, showing how they affect public and media discourses. The PI leader and the PhD researcher will apply a mixed-methods approach to map public attitudes and their links to anxieties over demographic decline. The research will be based on a Critical discourse analysis, on a regional opinion poll, as well as on experts’ and decision-makers’ interviews and the focus groups conducted in tandem with cluster 3. We scrutinize media representations, political speeches, and policy documents. The analysis will select particularly salient moments when demographic issues received attention, such as the publication of census results. The regional opinion poll will be conducted in seven countries (the selection will be made in consultation with the polling agency IPSOS but will certainly include Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Serbia). The poll will gather data on attitudes towards ageing as well as the associated demographic concerns among different segments of the population. The questions will be developed on the basis of our preliminary research, living labs, and expert interviews.