“Think positive and don’t die alone” - Foreign-born, South Asian older adults’ perceptions on healthy aging

Abstract

South Asians are the largest and fastest-growing racialized group in Canada, yet there are limited data on various aspects of health and well-being within this population. This includes the South Asian older adults’ ethnoculturally informed perceptions of ageing. The study aimed to understand how social and cultural forces impact the meaning assigned to healthy ageing amongst older South Asians in Canada. We recruited with purposeful and snowball sampling strategies in Southern Ontario. We conducted in-depth focus group and individual interviews ( n = 19) in five South Asian languages, employing a multilingual and cross-cultural qualitative approach. In our analysis, we identified three central themes: (a) taking care of body (b) taking care of mind and heart and (c) healthy ageing through the integration of mind and body. Our study demonstrates that older immigrants are a diverse and heterogeneous population and that their conception of healthy ageing is strongly influenced by their country of origin. This study also demonstrates how racialized foreign-born older adults might provide distinctive perspectives on the ageing process and on social theories of ageing due to their simultaneous immersion in and belonging to global majority and global minority cultures. This research also adds to the limited body of literature on the theories of ageing, despite migration trends, still has a white-centric lens.

Exploring older migrants’ meaning-making of ‘happiness’: “ The main thing is health. Young people might say otherwise.”

“…To explore such questions, researchers should be mindful of cultural variances in older migrants’ meaning-making of happiness as its meaning is culture-dependent and can vary across cultures, individuals, and nations (Diener et al, 2018 ; Oishi & Gilbert, 2016 ; Shin et al, 2018 ). Research shows that migrants use their culture of origin as a reference to reflect on what healthy and successful ageing means to them (Chowdhury et al, 2023 ; Torres, 2007 ). This shows the possible influence of migration background on the meaning-making of “happiness”.…”

“…Moreover, given the often lengthy period older migrants have spent in the country of settlement, one might argue that their meaning-making of happiness is also influenced by the culture of the receiving country, adding to the complexity of older migrants’ happiness. For example, Chowdhury et al ( 2023 ) show that older migrants’ perspective on the ageing process is influenced by their dual belonging to multiple cultures. Therefore, we argue that it is crucial to map older migrants’ individual meaning-making of happiness to comprehend their happiness.…”