Final Journeys Migrant End-of-life Care and Rituals in Europe

A recurring theme of the public discourse on immigration in Europe today is that migrants are primarily young people, of working age. Against this short-sighted view, the main contribution of this book is to propose that processes of ageing and dying constitute a critical juncture in the settlement of migrant-origin communities, precipitating novel intercultural negotiations in societies characterized by post-migration diversity. Bringing together seven studies reflecting different institutional and (trans)national contexts, the chapters fall under two main themes. A key issue when facing death is the organization of adequate care for the dying, which may be a challenging task in pluralized settings involving both migrant patients and migrant carers. Facing the end of life furthermore involves the practice of rituals in order to make sense of the transition from life to death. Whether through care or ritual, the studies presented here show that the need to reconcile different cultural, religious and administrative norms relating to death is infused with ontological insecurities which may result in new or renewed interrogations of identities and belongings. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Intercultural Studies.

1. End-of-life Care and Rituals in Contexts of Post-migration Diversity in Europe: An Introduction Alistair Hunter and Eva Soom Ammann 2. The ‘Other’ in End-of-life Care: Providers’ Understandings of Patients with Migrant Backgrounds Sandra Torres, Pernilla Ågård and Anna Milberg 3. The Art of Enduring Contradictory Goals: Challenges in the Institutional Co-construction of a ‘good death’ Eva Soom Ammann, Corina Salis Gross and Gabriela Rauber 4. End-of-life Care and Beyond Fuusje de Graaff 5. Between Civil Society and the State: Bureaucratic Competence and Cultural Mediation among Muslim Undertakers in Berlin Osman Balkan 6. The Importance of a Religious Funeral Ceremony Among Turkish Migrants and Their Descendants in Germany: What Role do Socio-demographic Characteristics Play? Nadja Milewski and Danny Otto 7. Staking a Claim to Land, Faith and Family: Burial Location Preferences of Middle Eastern Christian Migrants Alistair Hunter 8. Uncertain Belongings: Absent Mourning, Burial, and Post-mortem Repatriations at the External Border of the EU in Spain Gerhild Perl

Alistair Hunter is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, within the Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies subject area. His current research focuses on ageing and dying in migratory contexts. Eva Soom Ammann is lecturer and senior researcher in Nursing at the Health Division of Bern University of Applied Sciences. Her research is in the fields of Medical Anthropology, Migration Studies, Public Health and Health Care.