J Cross Cult Gerontol (2012) 27:201216 DOI 10.

1007/s10823-012-9175-0 ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Individualism, Collectivism and Ethnic Identity: Cultural Assumptions in Accounting for Caregiving Behaviour in Britain
Rosalind Willis

Published online: 7 August 2012 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

Abstract Britain is experiencing the ageing of a large number of minority ethnic groups for the first time in its history, due to the post-war migration of people from the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent. Stereotypes about a high level of provision of informal caregiving among minority ethnic groups are common in Britain, as in the US, despite quantitative studies refuting this assumption. This paper reports on a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with older people from five different ethnic groups about their conceptualisation of their ethnic identity, and their attributions of motivations of caregiving within their own ethnic group and in other groups. It is argued that ethnic identity becomes salient after migration and becoming a part of an ethnic minority group in the new country. Therefore, White British people who have never migrated do not have a great sense of ethnic identity. Further, a strong sense of ethnic identity is linked with identifying with the collective rather than the individual, which explains why the White British participants gave an individualist account of their motivations for informal care, whereas the minority ethnic participants gave a collectivist account of their motivations of care. Crucially, members of all ethnic groups were providing or receiving informal care, so it was the attribution and not the behaviour which differed. Keywords Collectivism . Culture . Ethnic identity . Ethnicity . Individualism . Informal care

Introduction This paper presents the results of a comparative qualitative study into the motivations for providing informal care as reported by older people from different ethnic groups in Britain. This country is experiencing unprecedented population ageing of the minority ethnic groups that migrated to Britain in the decades after the Second World War. In 2001 there were 0.2million people aged 65 and over from visible minority ethnic groups in England (2.8 %
R. Willis (*) Centre for Research on Ageing, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ, United Kingdom e-mail: r.m.willis@soton.ac.uk

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of the population aged 65 and over), but this population is expected to reach 2.7million (20 % of the population aged 65 and over) by 2051 (Lievesley 2010). Subdividing by ethnic group, using figures from the 2001 census of Great Britain, we see that the White Irish group had the oldest age structure in the population with 25 % aged 65 or over, compared with 17 % of the White British (ONS 2007). The age structure of the Asian and Black groups in 2001 reflects the staggered timing of migration of these groups, with the Black Caribbean group (11 % aged 65 and over) migrating earlier than the Indian group (7 %), which in turn migrated earlier than the Pakistani (4 %) and Bangladeshi (3 %) groups (Evandrou 2000; ONS 2007). This burgeoning minority ethnic older population has prompted discussions of the future care of this population (Blakemore 2000). Some studies have focused on the willingness of minority ethnic families to provide informal care, reporting that there is a strong commitment to provide informal care (Ahmed and Rees Jones 2008), as has also been found in the US (Dilworth-Anderson et al. 2002). Various reasons are given for this, including a perceived unsuitability of formal services (Butt and O'Neill 2004) and a cultural imperative to provide informal care (Ahmed and Rees Jones 2008). This paper focuses on the question of whether care provision is seen as culturally determined by different ethnic groups in Britain, including Black British, Mauritian, South Asian, White British and White Irish older people. Collectivist versus individualist caregiving systems The collectivist/individualist dichotomy has been used to classify people providing care to elderly family members according to their system of caregiving (Pyke and Bengtson 1996). Collectivism is a cultural value in which the extended family is the central concept, and the needs of an individual family member are subordinate to a sense of family responsibilities (Reher 1998). Collectivist families typically exhibit closeness and interdependence. In contrast, the cultural value of individualism promotes the needs of the nuclear family over the extended family, and key features are loose relationships, autonomy and independence (Reher 1998). According to Pyke and Bengtson (1996), collectivists willingly provide informal care out of affection for their family members whereas individualists are less willing to provide informal care and do so out of a sense of necessity. Which cultures? The cultural values of collectivism and individualism have been associated with specific cultures and countries. This is related to the concept of modern and traditional cultures, deriving from modernisation theory (Aboderin 2004). Crude divisions between modern and traditional cultures have been made, for example positioning the developed world as modern and the developing world as traditional. A similar classification places Northern & Western Europe as modern and Eastern, Central & Southern Europe as traditional (Reher 1998). In support of this Hofstedes classic work (1980) concluded that Britain is one of the most individualistic countries and Pakistan is the least, while India had among the median scores. Triandis (1995) has argued that North American culture is individualist while Asian Indian culture is collectivist. However, migration means that there can be great ethnic and cultural diversity within a single country. Within the USA, for example, Hispanics or Latinos and African Americans are usually associated with collectivist or familistic cultural norms while the White population is more usually associated with individualistic cultural norms when it comes to family care (Gallagher-Thompson 2006). It is important, though, to recognise that

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adherence to cultural values can vary within a country, within an ethnic or cultural group and even within a single family. Another factor that may influence adherence to cultural values among migrants is acculturation: the process of adapting to the host culture, which may include a shift from collectivism to individualism over time. However, acculturation is a value-laden concept and it could be argued that maintaining cultural distinctiveness is an equally valid response to migration (Lakey 2003). Do cultural values influence caregiving behaviour? Ethnic group differences in the association between culture and caregiving have been reported in US studies, for example between African American and White carers (Dilworth-Anderson et al. 2005). This study administered a scale measuring extent of agreement with cultural justifications for caregiving to carers from the two ethnic groups. Scale items included it is my duty to provide care to elderly dependent family members, and it is what my people have always done (Dilworth-Anderson et al. 2005, p. S258). The African American carers scored more strongly than the White carers on the cultural justifications for caregiving scale. Crucially, all of the participants were currently providing care, and so this scale was not used to predict the likelihood of providing care; instead it discriminated a difference in how the two groups accounted for their caregiving behaviour. It could be concluded that the same behaviour is exhibited by both ethnic groups but the difference between them is how they account for that behaviour. In other words, African American carers report that it is their culture that motivates them to provide care, whereas the White carers did not. A possible explanation for this returns to the collectivist and individualist dichotomy. Triandis (1995) argued that, when attributing causes of behaviour, collectivists are likely to refer to external causes whereas individualists are more likely to refer to internal causes such as personality. Turning to the British context, studies on ethnic minority groups in Britain have also found strongly expressed cultural justifications for caregiving. For example, one study of South Asian older people reported that this group held an expectation that their family members would provide care for them in later life (Jewson et al. 2003). The reason given for this expectation was that it was our tradition to look after elders - it is in our blood (Jewson et al. 2003, p. 7). This kind of adherence to a cultural justification for caregiving has been termed a traditional caregiver ideology, which can have benefits for the ability of carers to cope with the demands of caring (Lawrence et al. 2008). A study of South Asian and Black Caribbean carers in Britain concluded that both of these groups used cultural scripts to account for informal care, and that the purpose of this was to reinforce their ethnic identity (Adamson and Donovan 2005). As these migrant groups were in the ethnic minority in Britain, reinforcing their ethnic identity became an important biographical task for them. One way to achieve this was to use cultural justifications for caregiving behaviour. An interesting aspect of this cultural script was the demonstration of how their own cultural values were different from the ethnic majority - the White British. The minority carers believed that White British people do not provide care to their family members, and that doing so only comes from traditional cultural values (Adamson and Donovan 2005). Indeed, the idea that White British people provide little informal care to family members while minority ethnic groups are paragons of filial responsibility is a common assumption in Britain, although it has been challenged in some literature referring to it as the look after their own assumption (Atkin and Rollings 1996) and refuted by recent quantitative

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work (Willis 2009). Adamson and Donovan (2005) argue that the tendency of minority groups to support this assumption is partly responsible for its longevity. This cultural biography and ethnic identity argument necessitates a turn to the concept of ethnic identity theory. Ethnic identity theory In Phinneys ethnic identity theory (1989, 1992) there are three possible stages of ethnic identity development: unexamined, moratorium, and achieved. The unexamined stage is typified by little questioning of ones ethnicity. The moratorium stage is characterised by high exploration of ethnicity, but no firm commitment to an ethnic identity. The person in the achieved stage has completed their exploration of ethnicity and has become committed to an ethnic identity. Developing Phinneys work, Syed and Azmitia (2008) argued that young adults move through the three statuses (unexamined, moratorium, achieved) as a result of their experiences and the people they come into contact with. Syed and Azmitia (2008) found that the salience of ethnicity was highest in Asian American and Latino University students (as signified by their achieved status), and lowest in White and Mixed ethnicity students (as signified by their unexamined status). This raises the idea that ethnic identity is most important to those who are minorities, which reflects their greater likelihood of encountering the other - the ethnic majority. A question which results from this research is whether White people consider themselves to have an ethnic identity at all. Phinney (1989) reported that White American high school students could not be reliably coded with an ethnic identity status and they interpreted the word ethnicity to refer only to minority students. Similarly, Lewis (1998) argues that the way in which the word ethnicity is understood in Britain pertains to the cultural practices of the other , not of the White British majority. Perhaps this is explainable using ethnic identity theory; if a person belongs to the majority group they consider their own group practices and attitudes to be the norm. Therefore, they are less likely to go through an ethnic identity development process, and thus hold an unexamined status. Returning to the findings of Adamson and Donovan (2005) discussed earlier, what purpose does drawing on cultural biographies to account for caregiving behaviour serve among ethnic minority carers? According to Triandis (1995) it is the typical collectivist thought process. According to Adamson and Donovan (2005) it is the migrants way of preserving their ethnic identity which otherwise would be at risk of modification in the new country. Syed and Azmitias (2008) work allows us to speculate that the White British group do not need to reinforce their ethnic identity as they are in the ethnic majority and so a sense of ethnicity is not as salient to their identity. This, then, could explain the differences in cultural justifications of caregiving reported in both the US and UK studies. This study The research question of this study is: how do older people from different ethnic groups in Britain perceive their ethnic identity and how is this related to their accounts of informal care? In this paper I argue that ethnic identity development is related to life experiences, and that migrants have a more explored ethnic identity than non-migrant White British people. I also argue that the exploration of ethnic identity has raised the awareness of cultural values and collective orientations among these migrants, and that this is related to the way they account for providing and receiving informal care.

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Methods The aim of this study was to carry out a strategic comparison between ethnic groups, and therefore purposive sampling of members of different ethnic groups was conducted (Mason 2002; Ritchie and Lewis 2003). Older people were the focus of this study because informal care is of particular relevance to their stage in the lifecourse. Therefore, only people aged 60 or over were recruited. Participants were all recruited in London, England. Recruitment locations were a variety of services for older people run by charities, including lunch clubs, day centres, housing services and advice centres. Two of these sites were culturally specific services, one for older Irish people and one for older South Asian people. The other sites were not culturally specific. Additional detail about the recruitment sites is not given so as to preserve anonymity of the participants. The participants were all involved with charity-run services of some kind. Therefore this sample is a particular group of older people who experience social interaction with other older people, and are in contact with services so have at least some of their needs met. This study, therefore, does not include older people who could be considered isolated because they are not in contact with services. The sample consisted of six men and 13 women. All were aged between 60 and 90 years. Some were completely mobile, while others used walking aids such as a stick, crutches or a frame. Five were currently married, two were separated, one was never married and eleven were widowed. Six participants were White Irish, five were White British, five were South Asian, two were Mauritian and one was Black British. The way in which participants described their own ethnic identity is explored in the results section. All of the White British participants had been born in Britain, and all of the other participants were migrants to Britain. Individual in-depth interviews were carried out with all participants. In the case of the South Asian interviews all of the participants could speak some English and the interviews were conducted mainly in English. However, an interpreter who worked at the culturally specific Asian service was present in all interviews and translated when required. The interviews were semi-structured and included questions on the participants ethnic identity using the census categories as a prompt, what the participants considered had influenced their opinions about providing informal care, whether culture and ethnicity influenced informal care, and whether they had any opinions about the care provided by other ethnic groups in comparison to their own. Ethical approval was given by the University ethics committee for this study. The researcher made contact with the chief executives and managers of all the services in the first instance and gained agreement to recruit at the sites. The researcher was introduced to potential participants at each site by a member of staff, and then was able to describe the project to individual service users. The exception to this was in the culturally specific Asian service, where the manager liaised with the service users in their own language (mainly Urdu) and identified potential participants on behalf of the researcher. The researcher is White Irish, a native English speaker and a migrant to Britain. As such I was an insider at the culturally specific Irish service, an outsider at the culturally specific Asian service, and a semi-insider at the non-specific services. Although some have argued that matching the ethnic group of the researcher to the participant is conductive to recruitment and rapport, others argue that a researcher from a different ethnic group is nave to the participants culture and participants will therefore describe their experiences in more detail than they would to someone from the same group who they may assume will understand things left unsaid (Aitken and Burman 1999; Edwards 1990). Being Irish certainly provided

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some common ground for engaging with service users at the White Irish service, but it did not seem to be a barrier at the other services. Not being able to speak Urdu was a barrier at the culturally specific Asian service and more participants may have been recruited there if the researcher shared a language other than English with them. The interviews were transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis, with the principles of open coding, constant comparison and negative case analysis (Mason 2002; Ritchie and Lewis 2003). The NVivo 7 qualitative data handling package was used to aid storage, categorisation and retrieval of data (QSR 2006). The transcripts were categorised into chunks of text of similar meaning and given codes as brief descriptions of their meaning. Both literal and interpretive codes were used, which are descriptive and more explanatory codes respectively (Mason 2002). The literal code is a description of what is contained in a piece of text, while the interpretive code is a deeper level where the researcher interprets the text, for example the possible social rules behind the way the incident is played out. The codes were organised into a coding tree, grouping together codes of similar meaning into broader themes. Linkages in the data between ethnicity and themes were actively sought, being the main aim of this research.

Results Participant experiences of receiving care or support Participants from all ethnic groups had received informal help from family members or friends. The most common types of help received were help with shopping, transport and house cleaning. Four South Asian, four White British and two White Irish participants received help from their children, including help with cooking, cleaning and shopping. Three of the South Asian participants received help from social services; two with housework and shopping, and the third received personal care after an injury. One South Asian and one White British participant said that their children accompanied them to medical appointments. Two of the White Irish participants received personal care from social services, and a third received personal care from her sister-in-law, e.g. help with cutting toenails. Participants from all ethnic groups spoke about the benefit of the information and advice they receive from other members of their day centre or lunch club. Participants from all ethnic groups also reported that neighbours could be called upon for help, but the White British participants who had lived in the same area for a long time reported that some families had moved away and they no longer knew all their neighbours. Identifying own ethnic group The participants were asked to choose their own ethnic group category using the list from the 2001 census as a prompt to start the discussion. This enabled a discussion of whether participants identified with any of the categories, and what their ethnic identity meant to them. The ethnic group categories on the list were: Bangladeshi, Black African, Black Caribbean, Chinese, Indian, Mixed, Pakistani, White British, White Irish, Another group (please specify). There are recognised difficulties with the way ethnicity has been measured in the census (Aspinall 2000; Kertzer and Arel 2002), and as the following discussion shows the participants sometimes chose different terms for themselves from those the census form would use to categorise them.

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Although the Irish participants were quick to select White Irish, not everyone could find a category on the list they identified with. For example, although the Black participant had been born in the Caribbean, she preferred the term Black British to Black Caribbean, and one of the participants from the culturally specific Asian service self-identified as British Indian. In both cases they said it was because they held British passports. In this example the participant was familiar with the census categories and she had thought about where she might fit within them. She decided that her own ethnic identity did not fit within the categories as given, so her strategy was to choose the other option and then write in her preferred identity: Mauritian. I: Now I would like you to look at this list and could you choose which of these best describes your ethnic group? M1: I dont really use that because I just put Mauritius. You know where they say other , yeah, I just put Mauritius. Mauritian. [Mauritian, female, age 6064] The participants from the culturally specific Asian service when presented with the list of categories did not select any of the census options. Instead, they chose new categories including Punjabi, Gujarati, Indian-Asian and British Indian as mentioned above. Two of these participants then went on to explain what the self-identified category meant in terms of religious affiliation. I: How would you describe your ethnic group? [pause] Ive got a list. Translator: [Is explaining what ethnic group means and is giving examples of groups from the list. Indian, Pakistani] A5: Punjabi. I: What does it mean to you to be Punjabi? A5: Well, thats my religion, I love my religion. Cause Im a very religious person, I like my religion. So, thats what it means. I: So what religion do you belong to? A5: Sikh, Sikh. [Punjabi, female, age 7074] One interesting aspect of this quote is that the translator did not use the word Punjabi, and the participant spontaneously offered it. The participant did not identify with the census categories, which are derived from nationality (Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi), and instead chose an identifier which indicates the region she is from and also has strong religious connotations. One of the White minority ethnic groups in Britain was included in this study, the White Irish. Although it might be thought that as they are an invisible minority ethnic identity may not be as important to them, the Irish participants did emphasise their cultural background and distinctiveness from the White British. I: Youve mentioned the Irish culture a couple of times could you describe that to me? WI6: I suppose its obviously the music side of it and all that kind of thing. That is a big thing and it brings people together, brings back happy memories of bygone days. [White Irish, male, age 6569] Getting the White British participants to talk about their ethnicity was another story altogether. A common response was that the participants had not really thought about their ethnic identity. This participant seems to only reluctantly accept the category of White British, and then she cannot discuss what this identity might mean.

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I: I would like you to look at this list and tell me which of these ethnic groups you think you belong to? WB3: I suppose its White British. I: Ok thank you. Could you tell me how important being British is to you? WB3: Never really thought of it. You are what you are and thats it. I wouldnt know how to explain that. [White British, female, age 8084] It seems that in this participants mind a person just is a certain ethnicity and thats it. It is not a concept that needs exploring, and she cannot conceptualise anything further. In contrast, the next participant chooses the White British category without any hesitation. However, when prompted she cannot expand on this identity. I: Could you look at this list and tell me which of these describes your ethnic group? WB4: White British. I: Ok could you briefly describe to me what being White British means to you? WB4: [Long pause] I dont know. Im just a person. [White British, female, age 6569] Saying that she is just a person indicates that she does not see ethnicity as a useful way of distinguishing herself as a person, and that she equates being White British to a state of normality. This raises the question of whether the fact she lives as part of the ethnic majority is responsible for this. From the participants discussions of ethnicity in the interviews, the idea was formed that the White British participants had never needed to think about their ethnic identity because they had lived all their lives in the same country as part of the ethnic majority. In contrast, all of the other participants were migrants to Britain and had become ethnic minorities when they settled here. As such, the difference between their upbringings and cultures and the British culture would have been starkly apparent. It is likely that each participant would have gone through a process of comparing their automatic thoughts and behaviours with the expectations of British society. The White British participants, on the other hand, have never needed to do this. As a result, this paper contends that ethnic identity is less salient to the White British sample than it is to those participants who are in ethnic minorities in Britain. This has implications for how participants talk about the impact of ethnicity and culture on informal care. Accounting for caregiving Participants were asked to describe their, or their family members, motivations for providing informal care, and were prompted to consider whether ethnicity or culture had any influence. One of the Asian participants spoke about the help she receives from her son. She identified her sons ethnic identity (Indian) as the reason he provides this help. According to this description, the position of the relationship between son and parents in her culture means that there was an imperative for her son to provide help. A3: But now I am disabled so he has to look after me and Indian boysthey always help their mother and their fathermy son is good. Our Asian people are good I feel. [Gujarati, female, aged 6064]

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In referring to Indian boys and our Asian people, this account closely ties helping behaviour to a group cultural imperative shared with other Asians. Another of the Asian participants explained that the reason she believed Asian families provided more care than White British families, was because they were born like that. This is very similar to the account given in the research by Jewson et al. (2003) of helping behaviour being in our blood. It also suggests that people of other ethnic identities could not aspire to the same standards of caring behaviour because one has to be born into it. A5: Thats how they were born. Its nature help one of another. [Punjabi, female, aged 7074] The Asian male participant reported feeling very independent and that he did not need much help. This participant had received help from social services in the past when he was recovering from an operation. The implication here was that he did not currently need or want help from social services; however, he accepted help from his daughters as a matter of course. A2: You know, I need, because I am an independent man, I believe in less and less help from other people so until now I can manage very well so I dont, I need some support but not much, some support I get from my daughters. I: So what do they do for you? A2: Cleaning sometime, washing. [Indian-Asian, male, 8084] Although identifying himself as independent, an identity which did not seem to be threatened by receiving help from his daughters, this participant was not entirely an individualist. He drew on a biography of home and our culture to demonstrate that the collective way of living in India that he grew up with (multi-generational households) was a great facilitator of support. He said that multigenerational living is more difficult to achieve in Britain, and so there was a sense of change, of adaptation to the circumstances of the new country. What is evoked here is not acculturation, where a migrant gradually takes on the culture of the host country; rather it is a reluctant adaptation to the limitations of the new environment. A2: Because we have our culture we used to live together, even two, three, four brothers, in India we live together always, joint family. But here circumstances are different, you know, so firstly houses are very small, you cant live together, you need four, five bedrooms, six bedrooms, so it is people cant afford. [Indian-Asian, male, 8084] Among other migrant participants a biography of home and culture was also discernable in the way they accounted for informal care. One Mauritian participant reported that she believed that in Britain older people were simply put into care homes, whereas in her own culture they had been brought up to provide informal care. M1: Like in England they just put people in homes, you know, I dont understand that because at home most of us women stay at home we look after the children and elders. No-one has to tell you that, we were bought up like that, we were just following what our great, great, great grandparents have been doing for years. [Mauritian, female, age 7074]

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There is a sense of culture-clash in this quote; the respondent does not understand why people in England choose to place their elders into care homes. When she grew up in Mauritius there was an unspoken rule that caring for your elders was the right thing to do. The migrant participants said that the obligation to look after ones parents was an aspect of their culture. However, the White British participants also described the help they had received from their children, but did not relate it to cultural values. WB2: Yeah, as I say with regards to my own family, if Ive been in hospital, or want help at home, whatever, they come [from] as far away as [city]. They come. No ifs or buts. Theyve always given me help. [White British, male, age 8084] There was an unquestioning response from family members to any call for help in this mans life. He also spoke about helping others, such as neighbours, and when asked what motivated him to do that he was not able to pinpoint a reason other than it comes natural. This is similar to the quote from the Punjabi female participant who said that Asian people help one another because of nature . However, the White British male is discussing his individual motivations, and he does not link these to any group orientation. It is his nature, not the nature of all British people. WB2: Well, everything I do comes natural so I dont think of it like that. If people wants helping, whatever, Ill give them a hand, whatever and I dont want no return for it. I dont want paying, or anything like that. If I can help, I will. [White British, male, age 8084] The group orientation of ethnic identity was not limited to visible minorities. An Irish participant reflected on the difference between her own people, the Irish, and the British in terms of informal care. The Irish came out favourably in this comparison. I: So you said that things in Ireland, everyone was very supportive? WI1: Oh yes, extremely. I: So do you think that in England people dont think in the same way? WI1: Oh no. It was a different, yes definitely. I was young anyway I suppose. I didnt think people cared even for their elderly when I came here. It didnt seem the same. I: Could you give me an example of that? WI1: When people had their mother, they wouldnt bother to visit them, I used to think it was awful really. Because we could only get home maybe twice a year to visit our family in Ireland, but you know theyd have a mother and familythey were married but they wouldnt bother, you know, to go and see them. [White Irish, female, age 7074] This Irish participant and uses the word we to invoke a group explanation for the behaviour of the Irish and her identification with this group, suggesting a collectivist orientation. Earlier quotes from Mauritian and Asian participants also used the words we, us or our to identify with the group. In contrast, the White British participants did not use a group orientation to account for their motivations for providing help. Instead, they focused on explanations related to their own personality and life experience: an individualist orientation.

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WB4: I dont know. I think its, Im passionate about my family. Yeah, Im passionate. I love my two children with a passion and my grandchildren and I tell them that, you know, and when we phone I say bye, see ya, love you I: So youve obviously got a very close family? WB4: Very close. My granddaughters come hereyou know, they treat this like their homeYouve either got loyalty for your family, youve got passion for your family, you know that silly saying Id kill for whatever ? I would. Id rather die than my kids and Ive got that side family orientation if you can say such a thing, you know. I: What do you think causes that? WB4: Maybe because my mum and dad split up when I was young, made me more family orientated when I got my children, made me think I would never leave my children, you know. [White British, female, age 6569] This participant is strongly family oriented and describes the closeness of her family, and attributes it to the experience of her own parents separating when she was a child. This is a very personal, individualist explanation. This participant provided informal care to her father, grandmothers, uncles and aunts. Her explanation for doing so again drew on an individualist orientation rather than a group orientation. WB4: But Im just one of them people, I just help. I looked after my Dad with cancer in later years I looked after my Mum, I looked after my Nan, I looked after my Dads brothers, sisters, maybe because I was more central, what Im saying is that these people didnt have any children, I was the eldest niece, and just took on that role of doing. [White British, female, age 6569] Another White British participant did not have a close family, and again gave an individual-level explanation for her lack of caregiving rather than drawing on a group narrative. This account recalls the nuclear-family orientation of individualism. I: Do you think that children have an obligation to help their parents? WB5: No, not really, I dont think so. I: Why do you think that? WB5: I dont know, I never asked my mum for help when I was young. We all got on with it ourselves. I: Did she ask you for help at any point? WB5: No, never did, you know, once we got married and that, that was it. You made your bed, you lie on it she said. [White British, female, age 7579] Although this participant did not provide informal care to her family members, she did report providing more practical support to her friends and neighbours. She used to be a seamstress, and has made curtains for her friends. However, she again gave an individual account of what motivated her to do this: she liked the feeling it gave her. WB5: Ive got a friend, I used to do all her decorating for her, make curtains, you know, so comes in handy. I: So why do you do that sort of thing for other people? WB5: I dont know. I just like doing it. [White British, female, age 7579]

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In these interviews participants all spoke about helping or caregiving behaviour, but they accounted for it in different ways. The ethnic minority participants drew on a group cultural explanation, and the White British participants drew on an individualist personal explanation. One of the Asian participants discussed the expectation within her culture that sons will help parents, and another said that it was nature that Asian people should provide a great deal of help. Culture was again drawn on in the back home theme, where multigenerational living was the norm and there was an unspoken understanding that older parents were cared for informally. Care is gendered in some of these accounts; sons look after parents in the Gujarati account; women look after children and elders in the Mauritian account. There was no such collective or cultural explanation in the White British accounts. Support may be provided unquestioningly when needed, but the reasons for doing so were personal or individual, for example drawing on ones own life experiences. Some White British participants could not account for helping behaviour, resorting to I dont know, which echoes the earlier discussion of ethnic identity. These White British participants did not seem to have a group orientation or collective biography to explain their motivations.

Discussion In this study older people from both ethnic minority groups and the ethnic majority in London were interviewed about their ethnic identity, their experiences of informal care and their motivations for providing or not providing informal care. A link can be made between the way the participants spoke about their ethnic identity and whether they used a group or individual explanation for informal caregiving behaviour. The tendency of the participants to draw on collectivist explanations or individualist explanations relates to their descriptions of their ethnic identities. Individualist and collectivist orientations are linked to sense of self (Coon and Kemmelmeier 2001). The grouporientation is stronger among collectivists, whereas the self-orientation is stronger among individualists. In the present study there was a noticeable difference in how participants described their ethnic identity, depending on the ethnic group they belonged to. For example, when prompted to elaborate on what White British meant to them, participants responded with never really thought of it and Im just a person. This is in line with their individualist explanations for informal support behaviour. The minority ethnic participants, on the other hand, spoke at more length about their ethnic and cultural background. In some cases they related their thought processes when filling in a census type questionnaire and many rejected the census categories when given the choice, which demonstrates the difficulties and sensitivities around reducing ethnic identity to a few categories in the census (Fanshawe and Sriskandarajah 2010; Kertzer and Arel 2002). Many of the minority ethnic participants drew on collectivist explanations of their supportive attitudes and behaviour. I argue that their fluency in choosing an ethnic identifier, and their subsequent discussion of what the label meant for them, is part of their collectivist descriptions. The ability to identify with an ethnic identity lends itself to descriptions of the collective us. As the White British participants struggled to identify what their ethnic identity meant for them, they were less inclined to describe themselves as part of a collective. Instead, their descriptions were more individually-oriented. One aspect of ethnic identity theory is that ethnic identity becomes salient through experiences of being in a minority (Syed and Azmitia 2008). For migrants, who became ethnic minorities when they came to Britain, ethnic identity and culture became part of their biographies and shaped the way they make sense of their world. In contrast, the White

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British participants were not migrants. They live in a country where the majority share their culture. It is possible that the process of migration to a new country and becoming an ethnic minority contributed to the tendency of migrant participants to draw on collectivist explanations. However, since people from the same countries who had stayed at home and had not migrated were not studied, this contention cannot be confirmed with the present findings. It would be interesting to study White British people who have emigrated to other countries to see if they have a similarly enhanced sense of ethnic identity. The data presented here allow a return to the question of whether White people in a majority White country hold an ethnic identity, raised earlier in relation to the studies of ethnic identity in the US (Phinney 1989). In this paper the White British participants selected, some reluctantly, the White British ethnic group category as belonging to themselves, but they could not elaborate on what it meant. In contrast, the White Irish participants were eager to select the White Irish ethnic group category and could elaborate on the meaning of their culture. I have argued that this is due to their experience of migrating to a country where they have become an ethnic minority. This could also be related to the relative recency of the White Irish category in the census. An ethnicity question was asked in a British census for the first time in 1991 (Bosveld et al. 2006). There was a single White category and Irish people were therefore combined with all other White groups to become an invisible minority. The lobbying of Irish voluntary groups and recommendations by the Commission for Racial Equality led to the inclusion of the White Irish category in the 2001 census (AGIY 2006; CRE 1997; O'Keeffe 2006). The White Irish participants in the present study might therefore feel that ticking the White Irish box reinforces a hard-won sense of cultural distinctiveness and ethnic identity in a country where they would otherwise be invisible. The discussion by one participant of the relationship between being Punjabi and Sikh demonstrates the multi-dimensional aspect of ethnic identity. The ethnic categories from the census list gave national identities (Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi), but instead this participant described a region, Punjab, which was divided during the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. Not only did she choose this regional identifier, but she also elaborated on it in terms of her religious identity. Religion is not incorporated into the British census ethnic categories, but is in fact the only voluntary question in the census, and therefore the two concepts are seen as separate. In contrast, the responses of the participants in this study indicate that they perceived ethnic identity to be composed of at least one of country of birth, region, passport entitlement, religion and skin colour. This is similar to the compound definition of ethnicity given by Modood and colleagues, who said that ethnicity was a multi-faceted phenomenon based on physical appearance, subjective identification, cultural and religious affiliation, stereotyping and social exclusion (Modood et al. 1997, p. 13). In this study, people from minority ethnic groups drew on a cultural biography, a narrative of home and a collectivist voice of we and our to describe caregiving behaviour. In contrast, the White British participants referred to their own life experience or individual nature as a motivation, while others were unable to pinpoint a motivation. These findings are similar to those of Dilworth-Anderson et al. (2005) where participants were all caregivers, but the African Americans attributed their motivations to culture, whereas the White caregivers did not. Therefore, I argue that the minority ethnic participants used their collectivist orientation to describe their motivation for behaviour, as well as to explain their ethnic identity. Drawing on the cultural biography fulfils the function of preserving cultural distinctiveness in the face of living as part of a minority (Adamson and Donovan 2005). It may also help to minimise the psychic threat of acculturation, evoked in the account of the Indian-Asian man. A further strategy for protecting cultural distinctiveness is to compare

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ones own group favourably with the majority, as White Irish, Mauritian and Asian participants did. This discourse helps to justify maintaining cultural values in the face of anticipated acculturation. A further protective aspect of the cultural justification for caregiving is that carers who hold a traditional caregiver ideology might be less stressed than other carers (Lawrence et al. 2008). This is thought to be due to a culturally-based expectation that caregiving is a normal part of the lifecourse (Adamson and Donovan 2005). I argue that studies which have shown that minority ethnic groups hold cultural values in favour of intergenerational support (Ahmed and Rees Jones 2008; Jewson et al. 2003; Katbamna et al. 1998) have tapped into the cultural scripts of those groups. The present study showed that White British participants did not use a cultural biography to account for their motivations or behaviour. They adhered to the individualistic norm, even though their experiences revealed that they gave and received the same supportive acts as the minority ethnic groups. I am not saying that cultural values do not encourage supportive behaviour; rather that support also occurs among groups without these strong professed cultural values. In other words, rather than shaping behaviour itself, the values of collectivism and individualism shape peoples accounts of their behaviour. Many of the minority ethnic participants attributed their behaviour to their cultures, while the White British attributed it to their own personality or upbringing. This tendency of collectivists to attribute causes of behaviour to the external while individualists attribute causes of behaviour to the internal was referred to earlier in the discussion of Triandis (1995). Further support for this contention comes from the recent findings of a quantitative study that there are relatively few differences in informal support provision in later life between the ethnic groups in Britain (Willis 2009). There are limitations of this study due to its methodology. First, in common with many qualitative studies, the small sample size makes generalization difficult. Second, as mentioned earlier the participants were identified through voluntary services, so they are not representative of the socially isolated who may report different experiences and accounts of caregiving. Third, the interviews with the South Asians were not conducted in their first language. I attempted to compensate for this by using an interpreter when necessary, but the interviews may have yielded more material if I had shared a language with these participants. Nonetheless, this study has demonstrated similar findings to some British, and US, research on caregiving and race/ethnicity. This study has implications for social care practice. The collectivist orientation of the minority ethnic participants in this study could be drawn on by service providers, for example by involving the wider family in assessments and decisions about care, and not just the primary caregiver . Secondly, if a minority ethnic client does not have any informal care available, there might be an emotional difficulty reconciling this with the cultural expectation (Lawrence et al. 2008) and therefore, cognitive dissonance might need to be addressed. Finally, it is not safe to assume that informal care is only provided when there is a strong cultural justification for caregiving; this study has shown that it is the discourse that differs rather than the behaviour. In conclusion, I argue that professed cultural values may not equate to greater levels of informal care than among those who do not hold a strong cultural justification for caregiving. Therefore, formal social and voluntary services ought not to assume that their input is not required or wanted by minority ethnic older people (Murray and Brown 1998). Finally, this study provides support for the contention of Adamson and Donovan (2005) that the tendency to draw on collectivist or individualist accounts could contribute to the persistence of the look after their own assumption.

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Acknowledgements Thank you to the 19 participants who kindly gave their time to be interviewed for this study. The author would like to gratefully acknowledge the funding of the Kings College London Graduate School, the British Federation for Women Graduates and the Gilchrist Educational Trust. The author also thanks Dr Karen Glaser and Dr Debora Price at Kings College London for supervising the doctoral work this paper is based on.

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