Moving to Hungary in later life: (in)dependence and transnational inequalities in assisted living abroad

Abstract How to meet care and housing needs in later life has increasingly become a transnational topic, be it in the context of care worker migration or the migration of seniors themselves. This paper examines processes of relocation to and within an assisted living facility in Hungary that targets mainly German and Swiss clients who had either lived in Hungary before or moved to the facility directly from their home countries. The facility offers seniors the opportunity to live on their own, but with help at hand, and the possibility of relocating to the nursing care department within the same facility if necessary. Drawing on interviews with clients, management, and care workers, complemented by material from participant observations, the paper analyses the problems relocating to the assisted living facility seeks to solve and the new challenges which emerge. It shows that this marketised care arrangement enables seniors to act as entrepreneurial selves who solve care needs by purchasing care services and in so doing relieve their relatives of the financial and emotional burden. However, this independence is based on new dependencies, especially on the management of the institution, as well as on the transnational inequalities that make this arrangement possible in the first place. While the tension between agency and dependency is known from assisted living arrangements in the domestic context, it becomes even more pronounced abroad. Thus, although a rather marginal phenomenon, the analysis of care relocation can magnify the tensions in the complex relationship between the exclusive marketisation of care and housing in old age.