Rethinking Intergenerational Living as the Ideal Form of Senior Care: Life Course Research with Immigrant Families in Toronto

Alexa Carson’s journal article reports on findings from her dissertation research into care arrangements among senior immigrants in Toronto, Canada. Despite the greater prevalence of intergenerational living among immigrants, Alexa’s research found that these arrangements are not always by choice. For various reasons, some immigrant seniors prefer living independently. Moreover, those families that would like to live in multigenerational households face challenges in finding appropriate housing.

Alexa is a PhD Candidate in Sociology at the University of Toronto. She worked for several years as a Research Assistant on the Care Economies in Context project.

Citation

Carson, A. Rethinking Intergenerational Living as the Ideal Form of Senior Care: Life Course Research with Immigrant Families in Toronto. Anthropology & Aging 2024, 45 (no 2), https://doi.org/10.5195/aa.2024.504

Abstract

Canada’s care systems are ill-equipped to support its aging population, and this crisis intertwines with an acute shortage of affordable housing. Immigrants to Canada have a higher propensity to cohabitate multi-generationally, an arrangement that is sometimes romanticized as an ideal form of senior care. This article contributes to scholarship exploring intergenerational cohabitation as a practice of care, using life course research to consider how class and migration timing shape experiences of intergenerational living and senior care. Based on 19 in-depth interviews with immigrant seniors from Latin America and the Caribbean (n=10) and family caregivers (n=9) living in the Greater Toronto Area, this study uncovers two central findings. First, intergenerational living should not be viewed as an ideal form of senior care since (1a) some seniors resist intergenerational living, preferring independence and downtown residence nearer to culturally relevant communities and (1b) cohabitation does not always provide sufficient or better care. Second, access to smooth multigenerational cohabitation is inequitable, as housing arrangements are structured by class and migration timing, with middle-class families who have been in Canada longer facing fewer barriers to positive experiences of intergenerational living, compared to more recent migrants with lower incomes. This article challenges culturally essentializing assumptions about immigrant intergenerational cohabitation and argues that access to affordable housing is a senior care issue.