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Expanding the gerontological imagination on ethnicity: conceptual and theoretical perspectives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 December 2014

SANDRA TORRES
SANDRA TORRES*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, Uppsala University, Sweden.
*
Address for correspondence: Sandra Torres, Department of Sociology, Uppsala University, Box 624, 751 26 Uppsala, Sweden E-mail: sandra.torres@soc.uu.se
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Abstract

The globalisation of international migration has increased the ethnic diversity of most ageing populations across the Western world. This has implications for gerontological research, policy and practice, and puts our understandings of ethnicity to the test. This paper presents the different perspectives that inform ethnicity scholarship (the essentialist/primordial perspective, the structuralist/circumstantialist perspective and social constructionism) and suggests that the way in which we regard ethnicity has implications for how gerontological research is designed, how policies for old age are formulated and how gerontological practice is shaped. Through a review of contemporary gerontological research on ethnicity published in some of gerontology's main journals, the paper discusses some of the trends observed and concludes that most research seems to be informed by essentialism and structuralism. This suggests that the gerontological imagination on ethnicity has yet to be informed by the latest developments in ethnicity scholarship. The paper therefore urges gerontologists to broaden their understanding of ethnicity and suggests that much could be gained if we were to let the social constructionist perspective on ethnicity and the notion of intersectionality be sources of inspiration for the gerontological imagination on ethnicity.

Keywords

ethnicitycultureethnic ‘Otherness’intersectionalitygerontologyageingold age
Type
Articles
Information
Ageing & Society , Volume 35 , Issue 5 , May 2015 , pp. 935 - 960
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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