Aging & Social Change: Tenth Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

Achieving health, social inclusion, and continued participation with aging can be challenged by processes of migration, particularly when these occur in later life. Immigration during late life (at age 55+ years), may cause a loss of meaningful social relationships and identity, intergenerational conflicts, difficulty accessing resources in the wider community and isolation, which can negatively affect well-being and quality of life. In addition, late life immigrants often leave behind deeply familiar occupations, which are meaningful activities individuals engage in to fulfil their own expectations and interests, such as gardening or volunteering, with resulting negative implications for well-being. This ethnographic study will address the following questions: How do late life Muslim immigrants negotiate and enact their identities through everyday occupations in place? How do contextual features such as community supports facilitate or hinder occupational engagement and negotiation of identity in place? Part one of this study involves 8-10 late life Muslim immigrants in four data collection sessions each: one narrative interview, one follow-up interview, one go-along interview, and one mapping exercise. Part two involves in-depth semi-structured interviews with five community representatives from diverse organizations in the study context. Data analysis is conducted using the holistic content approach and an inductive approach to reasoning. Findings from this study reveal novel insights on important aspects of participants’ lived experiences, such as transitioning from work to retirement, experiencing aging in a new country, and challenges they face when engaging in occupations and enacting identity in place.