ABSTRACT
This chapter explores older Greek-born Australians’ experience of ageing and suggests that legacies of migration have a continuing impact on their perceptions of ageing positively. This account is based on 37 in-depth interviews with first-generation older Greek-Australians, who arrived in Australia after the World War II and settled in three different cities (Adelaide, Perth and Darwin). It is argued that while multicultural discourses have succeeded culturally restrictive assimilationist policies, they have not sufficiently challenged unequal and ongoing patterns of power and privilege in Australian society. Past discrimination has resulted in older Greek Australians experiencing limited social engagement, exacerbated isolation, loneliness and resentment of dependency on adult children. The data indicated that the migrants in this study remained actively engaged with the complex and often dissonant features of migration’s legacies.
