ABSTRACT
We arrive finally at the cartographic map, as the findings we made in previous chapters have led us more and more towards the question of ageing and place. Risk cartography has aided us in thinking about ageing as an issue that urgently requires us to leave the borders of the proud nation-state (and an analytical starting point referred to as methodological nationalism), in favour of the transnational outlook and assemblage, potentially bringing us to what Ulrich Beck referred to as a cosmopolitan moment of enlightenment. In search of this moment we followed the traces left by migrations of care workers from care drain regions to wealthy European nations lacking the sufficient workforce to care for their elderly, examining the policies regulating these displacements. Ultimately, we are interested, in the risk cartography, in how different national and transnational actors are organizing themselves in the face of a coming ageing crisis, and whether there is recognition of potential victim states. Likewise, with social cartography we mapped associations between a general European agenda on ageing and the subsequent national (non-governmental) agendas that are put on the table in the form of each European country’s participation in the 2012 European Year of Active Ageing. Is Europe’s agenda one with its members, or are there particular agenda-setting blocs or corridors, and isolated minorities (themselves with urgent issues such as discrimination against elderly women). There we were alerted by a Slovenian newspaper article of the prospects of EUropeanization, where the EU sets the agenda. In Poland the EU issues are easing their way into the NGO ageing formulations, however much they are adapted (ageing women’s issues together with active ageing outside of the workplace, on mountains and with Nordic walking equipment).
