Migration and Migrancy As Points of Departure for Research on Aging and Old Age

Over the past few decades, the number of people who are aging as migrants, and that have migrated in old age, has increased. Although research on older ethno-racialized minorities is relevant to the realities that these populations face, there is a need to focus specifically on the social position that is migrancy, and the implications that this position has to the ways in which aging and old age is experienced in different parts of the world, and by different migrant groups. The impact that having a migratory life course has on people’s experiences of old age is, in other words, a topic that has received considerably little attention, which is why this session brings attention to this topic. At the core of this session lies therefore an interest in bringing together social scientists who conduct research on older migrants in order to explore, among others, if different groups of older migrants face different challenges, if age upon migration makes a difference to older migrants’ experiences of aging and old age, if migrancy as a social position impacts their lives in any way, and if so how, and whether the racialization of older migrants plays out in different ways depending on the ethno-racial tensions that particular countries and/or contexts have been known to experience.