Racialization Without Racism in Scholarship on Old Age

Abstract

Population aging and international migration have propelled the aging of ethno-cultural minorities to the forefront of social scientific inquiries. Examining how scholarship on old age makes sense of ethnicity and race has become relevant. Based on a scoping review of peer-reviewed articles published between 1998 and 2017 (n = 336), the present article asks whether the notions of racialization and racism inform this scholarship and argues that a racism-sensitive research agenda is needed.

The enduring effects of racism on health: Understanding direct and indirect effects over time

“…Indeed, ethnic inequalities in socio-economic circumstances are directly related to ethnic inequalities in health ( Nazroo, 2001 ). However, policy and academic debates around ethnic inequalities focus almost entirely on socio-economic factors, and largely ignore the underlying processes of structural, institutional and interpersonal racism (see Nazroo & Bécares, 2021 ; Torres, 2020 ). Findings from this study not only cement the evidence on the harm of racial discrimination on health over time, but also bring to light the central role of racism in reduced socio-economic positions for people from minoritised ethnic groups.…”

“…Overall, the evidence shows that socio-economic inequalities make a substantial contribution to ethnic inequalities in health ( Nazroo, 2001 ). However, most academic and policy discourses on ethnic inequalities rarely make explicit that the underlying cause of socio-economic disadvantage is racism and discrimination (see Nazroo & Bécares, 2020 ; Torres, 2020 ).…”

Aging and undocumented: The sociology of aging meets immigration status

“…Whether undocumented immigrants are indigenous or not and racialized as such may also constrain their healthcare access options because of fear of being identified as undocumented; this may place some undocumented immigrants in circumstances where other coethnic networks leverage their power over them by asking for large amounts of money to drive them to get medicine if individuals cannot obtain a driver's license (Cervantes & Menjívar, 2020; Gómez Cervantes, 2019). Systems of racism and being racialized matter for health outcomes (Torres, 2020), but relatively less of this literature has focused specifically on older‐age immigrants' experiences.…”

Experiences of Civic Participation Among Older African American and Latinx Immigrant Adults in the Context of an Ageist and Racist Society

“…A recent scoping review found that from 429 studies only 1.7% considered experiences of ethnoracial minorities, immigrants (1.1%), and none considered the intersectionality of multiple systems of inequality in the context of this phenomenon (Serrat et al, 2019). By focusing research on the experience of White Americans and colonial structures of civic participation, the literature has erased the civic contributions of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and immigrants from the global south that occur outside of these formalized spaces (Torres, 2020).…”