Lonely ageing in a foreign land: Social isolation and loneliness among older Asian migrants in New Zealand

Abstract

Ageing does not reduce people's need to connect with family members, friends, and acquaintances, and neither does migration. For those older migrants living in a foreign land, connectedness with others plays a particularly important role in achieving a sense of belonging and sustaining their health and well‐being. This paper explores the issues of social isolation and loneliness among older Asian migrants in New Zealand. Data were collected from in‐depth semi‐structured interviews with Chinese‐ or Korean‐speaking migrants aged between 75 and 84 years (n = 10: all females), and from three focus groups consisting of Chinese‐ and Korean‐speaking migrants (n = 10: 7 females, 3 males) and Chinese professionals (n = 5: 3 females, 2 males) between June 2016 and December 2016. The qualitative data obtained were analysed applying a thematic analysis approach using NVivo software for group analysis by a multidisciplinary research team. The findings from the study show that older Asian migrants experienced high levels of isolation and loneliness at least at some points in their migrant lives. Most participants in this study were living alone or with only their spouse, and this living arrangement was likely to provide fertile ground for isolation and loneliness to grow in the context of later‐life migration. It was also observed that their lonely ageing ironically resulted from their efforts to preserve family relationships through avoiding being a burden, while allowing them a sort of space to maintain now barely connected lives. The participants revealed multiple ways of coping with lonely and isolated experiences in their limited social network, and these individual strategies allow us to make suggestions about how best to reduce older migrants’ social isolation and loneliness in the New Zealand context and beyond.

Social connectedness: what matters to older people?

“…When thinking about designing interventions for diverse populations, policy makers need to consider how enablers of social connectedness for some (especially the culturally hegemonic group) can result in social exclusion for others (Weldrick and Grenier, 2018). Late-life migration also plays an important role in inhibiting social connection to the wider community, although a critical factor appears to be English proficiency rather than ethnicity per se (Park et al ., 2019). Making English-language courses widely available and free would help improve this.…”

“…Nevertheless, we observed differences within our Pacific and Asian late-life migrants. The former tended to overwhelmingly live with their families and feel connected to them (although they may feel cut off from having friends), while the latter chose not to live with family in order to not burden them (Park, 2019). Our findings thus help to provide additional insight into the findings of Jamieson et al (2017) that Pacific and Asian elders can feel lonely even when living with family.…”

“…For example, a recent systematic review highlighted the way that cultural differences play a role in shaping older people's needs (Bruggencate et al ., 2018). The degree to which Asian adult children provide social support for their parents in contrast to their Western peers is a commonly cited cultural variant (Chen et al ., 2014), although recent research has begun to emphasise the independence of older Asians from their families, especially in contexts of migration (Shin, 2014; Park et al ., 2019). Other work highlights the importance of structural factors, such as access to public transport (Emlet and Moceri, 2012; Gardner, 2014), access to financial resources (Ibrahim et al ., 2013) or features of the built and natural environment, which have the potential to support or create barriers to social connectedness (Scharf and de Jong Gierveld, 2008; Rantakokko et al ., 2014).…”

Older Chinese migrants in coronavirus pandemic: exploring risk and protective factors to increased loneliness

“…Extant social network research has pointed out that face-to-face contact remains older adults’ preferred mode of contact (Hutto and Bell 2014 ; Jung et al 2017 ). Reduced in-person contact due to lockdown and social distancing measures is likely to increase loneliness, particularly among older migrants (Harroui et al 2020 ), as they are more dependent on their immediate family, such as adult children, for social support (Park et al 2018 ; Schoenmakers et al 2017 ). Accordingly, we propose the first hypothesis:…”

“…“Being busy” is often mentioned by older adults as a way of dealing with loneliness emotionally (Kharicha et al 2018 ). Distractions from loneliness can be active indoor and outdoor activities, such as at-home exercising and gardening, or more passive activities like watching television (Kharicha et al 2018 ; Park et al 2018 ). Accordingly, we propose the following hypothesis:…”