School of Public Health Sciences, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada.
Department of Family Practice, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
Int J Qual Stud Health Well-being. 2023 Dec;18(1):2253576. doi: 10.1080/17482631.2023.2253576.
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 ( = 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.
南亚裔是加拿大最大且增长最快的少数族裔群体,但关于该群体健康和福祉的各个方面的数据有限。这包括南亚老年群体对老龄化的族裔文化认知。本研究旨在了解社会和文化力量如何影响加拿大南亚老年群体对健康老龄化的认知。我们在安大略省南部采用有针对性和滚雪球的抽样策略进行招募。我们使用多语言和跨文化的定性方法,以五种南亚语言进行了深入的焦点小组和个人访谈(=19)。在分析中,我们确定了三个核心主题:(a)照顾身体,(b)照顾思想和心灵,(c)通过身心融合实现健康老龄化。我们的研究表明,老年移民是一个多样化和异质化的群体,他们对健康老龄化的概念受到原籍国的强烈影响。这项研究还表明,由于同时融入和属于全球多数文化和少数族裔文化,种族化的外国出生老年群体可能会对老龄化过程和社会老龄化理论提供独特的观点。尽管移民趋势,但这项研究也增加了关于老龄化理论的有限文献,该理论仍然以白人为中心。