Från socialbidrag till äldreförsörjningsstöd. : En reform ur äldre invandrares perspektiv

Sammanfattning: In 2003 the Swedish parliament decided to incorporate maintenance support for the elderly within the framework of the state social insurance system. Maintenance support for the elderly entails that individuals who, due to too short a period of residence in Sweden, do not qualify themselves for a full guarantee pension and thus have the right to receive benefits after completion of an income test. A large proportion of these people previously received individually incometested social benefits. Maintenance support for the elderly and how it is perceived by the elderly is the focus of the study. The overall aim of the study is to gain knowledge about what it means for immigrants who moved in later life to be the subject of a transfer from a selective benefit system to one where more general principles apply. More specifically the aim concerns what it means for their possibilities for gaining access to social rights and what it means for their relationship with the Swedish welfare state. The study’s empirical material consists of two parts. The first part contains register data from the social services register of the National Board of Health and Social Welfare and the social insurance register of the Swedish Social Insurance Board. The second consists of interviews with eleven foreign-born elderly persons who previously received social benefits and now receive maintenance support for the elderly. The analysis of the register data indicates that one-fifth of the target group actually includes people born in Sweden while the rest are immigrants arriving in Sweden in later life. For most of those in this latter group the maintenance support is their only source of financial support while it is a supplement for the Swedish-born elderly recipients. The results show that of those, who previously received social benefits and where the maintenance support is their only source of financial support, about onefifth received a smaller amount of benefit after the reform. The interview study indicates the existence of a gap between what the respondents express as needs of more individual considerations both in terms of the contact with the administrating authority and the maintenance support’s monetary content and how the elderly perceive that these needs are provided for. In order to try to understand this gap the result was analysed by using a number of major theoretical concepts such as universalism, stigma and shame, and social citizenship, public identity and recognition. The conclusions of the study is that a comprehension of the gap can be found in the standardised design and administration of the maintenance support and in the socio-economic context that immigrants coming to Sweden in later life find themselves in.