An intersectional theoretical framework for exploring racialized older immigrant women’s subjectivities

Abstract

Summary Today, racialized older women’s international migration is increasingly accelerated, cyclical and transnational, illustrating the transcendence of lives across time and space. At the same time, immigration regimes regulate and restrict these seemingly unfettered mobilities using neoliberal, gendered and ageist policies that favor (younger) skilled immigration. This article addresses the question of how social work can use intersectionality perspectives to theorize racialized older immigrant women’s lives which are stretched across multiple time(s) and space(s) yet confined within highly regulated multi-tiered immigration systems. Findings This article outlines a theoretical framework grounded specifically within intersectional feminist, post-structural, and transnational aging perspectives. The framework embraces the temporality, spatiality, and transnationality of gendered, aging and migrant lives and reconsiders their agency as a performed subjectivity bound by multiple forces of institutionalized regimes. Applications This theoretical framework moves social work inquiry to a richer understanding of the migratory realities of diverse aging lives that are simultaneously in-motion and regulated within structural constraints.

Life-Course Perspective on Immigrant Loneliness: A Conceptual Framework for Intergenerational Loneliness Trajectories

“…The majority of research has focused on immigrant mental health (see Leong et al, 2014; Nguyen & Lee, 2012) rather than immigrants’ feelings of loneliness. In contrast, related immigrant loneliness studies employed other theoretical frameworks, such as interconnectedness theory (see Zhao, 2020) and intersectionality (see Syed, 2022). Further exploration of these factors will shed light on a better understanding of feelings and the transmission of loneliness among immigrants.…”

Who cares first? A MAIHDA analysis of intersectional inequalities in the age of caregiving onset using European longitudinal data

“…Such disparities in the timing of caregiving onset are illustrative of sex/gender as context, where a gendered life-course determines the impacts of social roles and shapes differential caregiving pathways, opportunities, and risks (Kim, 2023). Regarding migration background, older nonwestern immigrant women tend to have earlier transitions to caregiving than their non-migrant counterparts (Syed, 2022;Zhou, 2013). This variance in caregiving onset should be accounted for by considering life-course timings within intersectional and transnational feminist perspectives (Syed, 2022).…”

“…Regarding migration background, older nonwestern immigrant women tend to have earlier transitions to caregiving than their non-migrant counterparts (Syed, 2022;Zhou, 2013). This variance in caregiving onset should be accounted for by considering life-course timings within intersectional and transnational feminist perspectives (Syed, 2022). Further, differences in SES prior to family caregiving are associated with divergent onset timings, where individuals with lower education, lower social class and less skilled occupations become caregivers at earlier life phases (Carmichael & Ercolani, 2016;Moen & DePasquale, 2017).…”

Language and technological inclusion among immigrant low-income Latina mothers: A feminist action research intervention

“…Finally, the concept of intersectionality is a feminist view that asserts that women's lived experiences are not based on one identity; rather, they are recognized as multidimensional (Crenshaw, 1989). This is key to understanding social inclusion among low-income Latinas in the United States, as their intersection of race, ethnicity, gender, and immigrant status, among other identities, shapes their life opportunities and inclusion (Syed, 2022). The first purpose of this study is to present social inclusion as an alternative to social exclusion.…”