Translocal Ageing in the Global East Bulgaria’s Abandoned Elderly Deljana Iossifova Translocal Ageing in the Global East Deljana Iossifova Translocal Ageing in the Global East Bulgaria’s Abandoned Elderly Deljana Iossifova Urban Studies University of Manchester Manchester, UK ISBN 978-3-030-60822-4 ISBN 978-3-030-60823-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60823-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. 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The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland A cknowledgements Many people have helped to develop this book over the past five or so years. First and foremost, my thanks are due to the older people in Bulgaria who agreed to share their time, life histories and everyday lives as partici- pants in the research. Many thanks to the University of Manchester for the small grant that allowed me to do the project in the first place; the extraordinarily talented Elena Balabanska, who worked with me in the field; Alan Lewis, who pro- vided helpful insights at the start of the project; Evgeny Bely and the devoted social workers who allowed me to be part of their communities for a short while; and the generous Ginka Hadjieva, who introduced me to many of the older people whose lives are the subject of this book. Thanks to colleagues at the Antwerp Urban Studies Institute and Stijn Oosterlynck, in particular, for stimulating conversations during the early stages of research. My special thanks are due to the inspirational Clara Greed, Anna Plyushteva and Tim Schwanen who read the full manuscript and offered very helpful critical feedback and advice. The exceptionally brilliant Qi Liu and Yahya Gamal provided comments that helped me see the forest for the trees. Thanks also to the remarkable Sarah Marie Hall, as well as Debapriya Chakrabarti and Joe Shaw, who all commented on drafts of the chapters. Thanks to Ali Browne—for being fabulous; introducing me, probably unknowingly, to the most interesting of literatures; and, of course, for letting us stay in her house during the pandemic so that we had room to breathe, work and play. v vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The book was commissioned by Palgrave’s Holly Tyler and seen through to publication by Joshua Pitt—I am grateful to both for their patience and unbroken support and understanding. Thanks also to Sophie Li in Shanghai. Thank you to my family. Thank you to Alma for keeping me company throughout this journey, even before she was born; and to Amaya for smil- ing and laughing, as she so often does, to brighten up dark Manchester days. Most of all, thank you to my mother. Without her, this book would have never materialised. She was part of the project in more ways than I can list here, introducing me to friends and acquaintances during the ini- tial stages of this research; offering insights into her life and experiences under state socialism and after; and serving as a critical friend as I worked through my interpretations of the material. So that I had space to think and write, she helped looking after her granddaughters in the most fervent and generous of ways, teaching them, in the process, how to be fierce and fearless just like her. This book is for her. c ontents 1 I ntroduction: Ageing in Bulgaria 1 2 Lives in Broad Strokes: Navigating Transitions, Disruptions and Uncertainty 35 3 Doing Everyday Life: Patterns, Resources and Adaptive Mechanisms 63 4 Dislocating ‘Ageing in Place’: From Multi- local to Transnational 99 5 Trajectories of Ageing: Learning (from) the Global East 129 Index 143 vii l f ist of igures Fig. 1.1 The human ecosystem framework (based on Machlis et al. 1997) 14 Fig. 1.2 Population dynamics Sofia (Town) and the Village, 2002–2019. (Source: NSI 2020) 20 Fig. 1.3 A typical house in the Village. (Photograph: Iossifova, 2016) 21 Fig. 1.4 Typical 1940s housing block in Zapaden Park, Sofia. (Photo: Iossifova, January 2016) 23 Fig. 1.5 Aerial photograph of Sofia, showing the locations of the case study areas: (a) Zapaden Park; (b) Vazrazhdane; and (c) Lozenets. The concentric rings show the expansion of the city before 1944 (darker) and during state socialism (lighter). Aerial photograph derived from Google Maps in August 2020, alteration by Iossifova. (Imagery ©2020 TerraMetrics, Map data ©2020) 24 Fig. 3.1 A morning gathering of elderly men in the communal park, part of their socialist-era housing complex. (Photograph: Iossifova, March 2016) 70 Fig. 3.2 One of Sofia’s local pensioners’ clubs (right). The path to the entrance is covered in snow. (Photograph: Iossifova, January 2016) 71 Fig. 3.3 Lyubomir’s garden at the edge of the Village. (Photograph: Iossifova, July 2016) 75 Fig. 3.4 Portraits—the television set in the homes of older people in Bulgaria. (Photographs: Balabanska, 2016) 78 ix x LIST OF FIGUrES Fig. 3.5 Left: rositsa’s balance sheet, detailing her every expense in May 2016. For instance, 10.00 BGN milk; 12.20 BGN TV subscription; 8.20 BGN groceries; 46.06 BGN medication; 41.95 BGN medication; 3.15 BGN filo pastry and bread; 27.70 BGN water; 20.36 BGN electricity. right: the menu of the private food delivery service, offering four meal options for every day of the week, with meals costing between 0.80 and 2.90 BGN. (Photographs: Iossifova, July 2016) 82 Fig. 3.6 Lyubomir (87) still goes hiking every weekend to collect herbs, seen here drying on a newspaper in his home. (Photograph: Iossifova, July 2016) 86 Fig. 3.7 Tsvetelina’s living/bedroom—the ‘through-room’ which her adult live-in sons have to pass to get to their bedrooms. (Photograph: Balabanska, July 2016) 87 Fig. 3.8 Panelki—Bulgaria’s interpretation of prefabricated housing. (Photograph: Iossifova, March 2016) 90 Fig. 3.9 The room with the heat source is usually the only occupied room in the house. Here, the wood-burning stove in Tsvetanka’s kitchen/living room/bedroom. (Photograph: Iossifova, July 2016) 93 Fig. 4.1 Stairs leading to/from a metro station in Sofia. Lifts have been provided or are being retrofitted according to EU regulations, but many are dysfunctional, leaving people with mobility issues challenged. (Photograph: Iossifova, March 2016) 106 Fig. 4.2 ‘The square’ at the centre of the Village. ‘The bus’ is seen waiting for passengers. (Photograph: Iossifova, July 2016) 108 Fig. 4.3 One of the entrances to an apartment building in Sofia; this entrance is boarded up to block access to the building’s stairwell. Many of the apartments in the building are no longer occupied. (Photograph: Iossifova, March 2016) 111 Fig. 4.4 A table set for afternoon tea during summer in the Village. It includes a choice of ‘banitsa’ (filo pastry) and cake and the ubiquitous home-made jam. Milk and eggs are usually bought from local farmers or even the product of own cows or hens. During winter, the choice is often reduced to the bare minimum. (Photograph: Iossifova, July 2016) 114 CHAPTER 1 Introduction: Ageing in Bulgaria Abstract In this chapter, Iossifova offers a brief introduction to Bulgaria’s recent history and the political and socioeconomic transitions that have led to the main challenges facing the country today: a rapidly shrinking and ageing population due to the unprecedented outmigration of younger generations in search of better livelihoods. Iossifova reviews the recent literature on ageing in human geography and related disciplines, including notions of ‘ageing in place’, age-relationality and the frameworks of inter- sectionality, intergenerationality and the lifecourse. She introduces the human ecosystem framework and discusses the grounded theory approach taken, including interviews, observation and autoethnography. She then moves on to present the case study areas in Sofia and the Village in the Bulgarian Balkans. She closes in outlining the structure of the book. Keywords Bulgaria • Ageing population • Human ecosystem framework • ‘Ageing in place’ • Age-relationality • Global East • Post-socialism I grew up in Sofia. I was the youngest member of a household which, at that time, consisted of my father, mother, older brother and maternal grandmother. We lived in a one-bedroom apartment: my brother and I slept in the bedroom, my parents on a sofa bed in the living room and my grandmother in the kitchen. My parents would leave for work and my © The Author(s) 2020 1 D. Iossifova, Translocal Ageing in the Global East, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60823-1_1