Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-r5zm4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-29T08:03:53.740Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Me? At this age?”: A narrative analysis of older South Asian Muslim immigrant women’s subjectivity-formations in migration arrangements

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2023

Manaal Syed Open the ORCID record for Manaal Syed [Opens in a new window]
Manaal Syed*
Affiliation:
Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
*
Corresponding author. Email: msyed.msw@gmail.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Critical and feminist ageing scholarship has drawn attention to how dominant discourses of ageing negatively impact older women's identities and social lives. While research intersecting migration and ageing has broadly focused on older immigrants' settlement experiences, very little is known about the discursive influences over older immigrant women's sense of agency and social relations. To address this knowledge gap, this study explores the subjectivity-formations of older South Asian Muslim women engaged in transnational migration. Narrative and discourse analysis principles were used to conduct and analyse life story-based interviews with 15 South Asian Muslim older women who recently migrated to Toronto, Canada. Findings indicate that participant subjectivity-formations are shaped by: (a) discourses of ageing; (b) socio-cultural–religious discourses; and (c) discourses of transnational migration. In response, participants engaged in dynamic strategies including conforming, negotiating, creating alternative narratives and/or resisting these discourses to organise their lives. These findings reinforce the continued need to trace the governmentality of structural conditions over ageing migrant women's lives and their responsive strategies to manage these impacts.

Keywords

racialisationolder migrantsSouth Asian womenMuslim womendiscourses
Type
Article
Information
Ageing & Society , First View , pp. 1 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aggarwal, P and Das Gupta, T (2013) Grandmothering at work: conversations with Sikh Punjabi grandmothers in Toronto. South Asian Diaspora 5, 77–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ahmed, S (2004) Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Allen, C (2015) ‘People hate you because of the way you dress’: understanding the invisible experiences of veiled British Muslim women victims of Islamophobia. International Review of Victimology 21, 287–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andrews, M (1991) Lifetimes of Commitment: Ageing, Politics and Psychology. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baldassar, L and Merla, L (2014)Transnational Families, Migration and Kin-work: Understanding Mobility and Absence in Family Life. London and New York: Routledge Transnationalism Series.Google Scholar
Bamberg, M (1997) Positioning between structure and performance. Journal of Narrative and Life History 7, 335–342.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bannerji, H (1997) Geography lessons: on being an insider/outsider to the Canadian nation. In Roman, LG and Eyre, L (eds), Dangerous Territories: Struggles for Difference and Quality in Education. New York, NY: Routledge, pp. 23–41.Google Scholar
Biggs, S and Powell, JL (2001) A Foucauldian analysis of old age and the power of social welfare. Journal of Aging & Social Policy 12, 93–112.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brotman, S, Ferrer, I and Koehn, S (2019) Situating the life story narratives of aging immigrants within a structural context: the intersectional life course perspective as research praxis. Qualitative Research 20, 465–484.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burnard, P (1991) A method of analysing interview transcripts in qualitative research. Nurse Education Today 11, 461–466.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Butler, J (1993) Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’. New York, NY: Routledge Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Calasanti, T and King, N (2015) Intersectionality and age. In Twigg, J and Martin, W (eds). Routledge Handbook of Cultural Gerontology. New York, NY: Routledge, pp. 193–200.Google Scholar
Calasanti, TM and Zajicek, AM (1993) A socialist-feminist approach to aging: embracing diversity. Journal of Aging Studies 7, 117–131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen, X and Thorpe, SX (2015) Temporary families? The parent and grandparent sponsorship program and the neoliberal regime of immigration governance in Canada. Migration, Mobility, & Displacement 1, 80–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clandinin, DJ and Connelly, FM (2000) Narrative Inquiry: Experience and Story in Qualitative Research. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.Google Scholar
Clark, PG (1993) Moral discourse and public policy in aging: framing problems, seeking solutions, and ‘public ethics’. Canadian Journal on Aging/La Revue canadienne du vieillissement 12, 485–508.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cole, AL and Knowles, JG (2001) Lives in Context: The Art of Life History Research. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.Google Scholar
Conradson, D and McKay, D (2007) Translocal subjectivities: mobility, connection, emotion. Mobilities 2, 167–174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crenshaw, K (1991) Mapping the margins: intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review 43, 1241–1299.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Creswell, JW (2003) Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative and Mixed Methods Approaches, 2nd Edn. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Denzin, NK and Lincoln, YS (eds) (2011) The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Estes, CL (1979) The Aging Enterprise. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.Google Scholar
Estes, CL, Biggs, S and Phillipson, C (2003) Social Theory, Social Policy and Ageing: A Critical Introduction. Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Fairclough, N (1995) Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. London: Addison Wesley Longman.Google Scholar
Faist, T (1998) Transnational social spaces out of international migration: evolution, significance and future prospects. Archives européennes de sociologie 39, 213–247.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferrer, I, Grenier, A, Brotman, S and Koehn, S (2017) Understanding the experiences of racialized older people through an intersectional life course perspective. Journal of Aging Studies 41, 10–17.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Foucault, M (1980) Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977. Brighton: The Harvester Press.Google Scholar
Freixas, A, Luque, B and Reina, A (2012) Critical feminist gerontology: in the back room of research. Journal of Women & Aging 24, 44–58.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gee, E and Gutman, G (2000) The Overselling of Population Ageing: Apocalyptic Demography, Intergenerational Challenges, and Social Policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Goodson, IF (2012) Developing Narrative Theory: Life Histories and Personal Representation. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodson, I and Gill, S (2011) Narrative Pedagogy: Life History and Learning. New York, NY: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Government of Canada (2019) Sponsor Your Parents and Grandparents: Check if You're Eligible. Available at https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/immigrate-canada/family-sponsorship/sponsor-parents-grandparents/eligibility.html.Google Scholar
Gubrium, JF and Holstein, JA (2007) Constructionist perspectives on the life course. Sociology Compass 1, 335–352.Google Scholar
Hagestad, GO and Settersten, RA Jr (2015) Subjective aging and new complexities of the life course. Annual Review of Gerontology and Geriatrics 35, 29–53.Google Scholar
Hall, S (2001) Foucault: power, knowledge and discourse. In Wetherell, M, Taylor, S and Yates, SJ (eds), Discourse Theory and Practice: A Reader. London: Sage, pp. 72–81.Google Scholar
Hall, C and White, S (2005) Looking inside the professional practice: discourse, narrative and ethnographic approaches to social work and counseling. Qualitative Social Work 4, 379–390.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haque, E (2010) Homegrown, Muslim and other: tolerance, secularism and the limits of multiculturalism. Social Identities 16, 79–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harvey, D (2007) A Brief History of Neoliberalism. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hoodfar, H (1997) The veil in their minds and on our heads: veiling practices and Muslim women. In Lowe, L and Lloyd, D (eds), The Politics of Culture in the Shadow of Capital. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 248–279.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hooyman, N, Browne, CV, Ray, R and Richardson, V (2002) Feminist gerontology and the life course. Gerontology & Geriatrics Education 22, 3–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horn, V, Schweppe, C and Um, S (2015) Transnational Aging – Current Insights and Future Challenges. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horsti, K and Pellander, S (2015) Conditions of cultural citizenship: intersections of gender, race and age in public debates on family migration. Citizenship Studies 19, 751–767.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunter, A (2016) Emotional or instrumental? Narratives of home among North and West African seniors in France. In Walsh K and Näre L (eds), Transnational Migration and Home in Older Age. New York, NY: Routledge, pp. 75–86.Google Scholar
Isin, EF and Siemiatycki, M (2002) Making space for mosques: struggles for urban citizenship in diasporic Toronto. In Razack, S (ed). Race, Space, and the Law: Unmapping a White Settler Society. Toronto, ON: Between the Lines, pp. 185–209.Google Scholar
Karl, U and Torres, S (eds) (2015) Ageing in Contexts of Migration, Vol. 132. New York, NY: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katz, S (1997) Disciplining Old Age: The Formation of Gerontological Knowledge. Charlottesville, VA: UPV.Google Scholar
Kaur, S, Bhalla, A, Kumari, S and Singh, A (2019) Assessment of functional status and daily life problems faced by elderly in a North Indian city. Psychogeriatrics 19, 419–425.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lai, WL and Bai, X (2016) Social work with diverse older adults. In Al-Krenawi A, Graham JR and Habibov N (eds), Diversity and Social Work in Canada. Toronto, ON: Oxford University Press, pp. 345–372.Google Scholar
Lamb, S (2002) Intimacy in a transnational era: the remaking of aging among Indian Americans. Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 11, 299–330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liang, J and Luo, B (2012) Toward a discourse shift in social gerontology: from successful aging to harmonious aging. Journal of Aging Studies 26, 327–334.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mahmood, S (2011) Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Mandell, N, King, K, Preston, V, Weiser, N, Kim, A and Luxton, M (2015) Transnational family exchanges in senior Canadian immigrant families. In Man, G and Cohen, R (eds), Engendering Transnational Voices: Studies in Family, Work, and Identity. Waterloo, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, pp. 75–96.Google Scholar
Mandell, N, Borras, J and Phonepraseuth, J (2018) Recent Canadian Immigrant Seniors: Settlement Experiences and Services: A Knowledge Synthesis Report. Ottawa: IRCC.Google Scholar
Markowitz, F and Stefansson, AH (eds) (2020) Homecomings: Unsettling paths of return. Oxford, UK: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
McCall, L (2005) The complexity of intersectionality. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 30, 1771–1800.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCoy, J, Kirova, A and Knight, WA (2016) Gauging social integration among Canadian Muslims: a sense of belonging in an age of anxiety. Canadian Ethnic Studies 48, 21–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mohanty, CT (2003) ‘Under western eyes’ revisited: feminist solidarity through anti-capitalist struggles. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28, 499–535.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Näre, L, Walsh, K and Baldassar, L (2017) Ageing in transnational contexts: transforming everyday practices and identities in later life. Identities 24, 515–523.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Neborak, J (2014) Family reunification?: A critical analysis of citizenship and immigration Canada's 2013 reforms to the family class. Centre for Immigration and Settlement, Ryerson University, pp. 1–21.Google Scholar
Ojermark, A (2007) Presenting life histories: a literature review and annotated bibliography. Chronic Poverty Research Centre, United Kingdom. Working Paper 101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ong, A (1995) Making the biopolitical subject: Cambodian immigrants, refugee medicine and cultural citizenship in California. Social Science & Medicine 40, 1243–1257.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ong, A (2006) Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Ontario Ministry of Finance (2019) Ontario Demographic Quarterly: Highlights of Second Quarter 2019. Available at https://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/economy/demographics/quarterly/dhiq2.html.Google Scholar
Phillipson, C (2001) Social welfare, aging, and globalization in a post-industrial society. In Powell JL and Hendricks J (eds), The Welfare State in Post-Industrial Society. New York, NY: Springer, pp. 57–70.Google Scholar
Portes, A (1999) Conclusions: toward a new world – the origins and effects of transnational activities. Ethnic and Racial Studies 22, 464–477.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Praznik, J and Shields, J (2018) An Anatomy of Settlement Services in Canada: A Guide. Toronto, ON: CERIS Publications.Google Scholar
Razack, S (2004) Imperilled Muslim women, dangerous Muslim men and civilized Europeans: legal and social responses to forced marriages. Feminist Legal Studies 1, 129–174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Razack, S, Thobani, S and Smith, M (eds) (2010) States of Race: Critical Race Feminism for the 21st Century. Toronto, ON: Between the Lines.Google Scholar
Rice, JJ and Prince, MJ (2013) Changing Politics of Canadian Social Policy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Rinaldo, R (2014) Pious and critical: Muslim women activists and the question of agency. Gender & Society 28, 824–846.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Root, J, Gates-Gasse, E, Shields, J and Bauder, H (2014) Discounting immigrant families: neoliberalism and the framing of Canadian immigration policy change. Centre for Immigration and Settlement, Ryerson University, Working Paper 1014/7.Google Scholar
Rudman, DL (2015) Embodying positive aging and neoliberal rationality: talking about the aging body within narratives of retirement. Journal of Aging Studies 34, 10–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Said, E (1978) Orientalism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Salari, S (2002) Invisible in aging research: Arab Americans, Middle Eastern immigrants, and Muslims in the United States. The Gerontologist 42, 580–588.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Salem, S (2013) Feminist critique and Islamic feminism: the question of intersectionality. The Postcolonialist 1, 1–8.Google Scholar
Salma, J and Salami, B (2019) Growing old is not for the weak of heart: social isolation and loneliness in Muslim immigrant older adults in Canada. Health & Social Care in the Community 28, 615–623.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sandelowski, M (1991) Telling stories: narrative approaches in qualitative research. Image: The Journal of Nursing Scholarship 23, 161–166.Google ScholarPubMed
Santos, HP Jr, Black, AM and Sandelowski, M (2015) Timing of translation in cross-language qualitative research. Qualitative Health Research 25, 134–144.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Scharf, T and Keating, NC (2012) From Exclusion to Inclusion in Old Age: A Global Challenge. Bristol, UK: Policy Press.Google Scholar
Schwartz, SJ, Luyckx, K and Vignoles, VL (eds) (2011) Handbook of Identity Theory and Research. New York, NY: Springer Science & Business Media.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schweppe, C and Sharma, N (2015) Borders–transborders–no borders: problematizing the ‘figure of the migrant’. Transnational Social Review 5, 2–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simon-Kumar, R (2015) Neoliberalism and the new race politics of migration policy: changing profiles of the desirable migrant in New Zealand. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 41, 1172–1191.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Singh, A (2007) ‘Names can wait’: the misnaming of the South Asian diaspora in theory and practice. South Asian Review 28, 21–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Statistics Canada, (2011) National Household Survey. Census Profile – Age and Sex and Religion. Available at http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/datasets/Index-eng.cfm.Google Scholar
Statistics Canada (2017 a) Data Tables, 2016 Census. Admission Category and Applicant Type (46), Period of Immigration (7), Age (12) and Sex (3) for the Immigrant Population Who Landed Between 1980 and 2016, in Private Households of Canada, Provinces and Territories, 2016 Census – 25% Sample Data. Available at www.statscan.gc.ca.Google Scholar
Statistics Canada (2017 b) 2017 Annual Report to Parliament on Immigration. Available at https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/corporate/publications-manuals/annual-report-parliament-immigration-2017.html.Google Scholar
Syed, M (2022) An intersectional theoretical framework for exploring racialized older immigrant women's subjectivities. Journal of Social Work 22, 440–459.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taras, R (2012) Xenophobia and Islamophobia in Europe. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tastsoglou, E and Dobrowolsky, A (2017) Gender and care relationships in transnational families: implications for citizenship and belonging. Canadian Ethnic Studies 49, 111–131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thobani, S (2007) Exalted Subjects: Studies in the Making of Race and Nation in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Torres, S (2015) Expanding the gerontological imagination on ethnicity: conceptual and theoretical perspectives. Ageing & Society 35, 935–960.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Türegün, A, Bhuyan, R, Mandell, N and Shields, J (2018) State of the Art in Research on, and Services for, Immigrant Women, Youth and Seniors Knowledge Synthesis Report. CERIS. Available at http://ceris.ca/IWYS/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/IWYS-Knowledge-Synthesis-Report-Composite-report-Sept-2018.pdf.Google Scholar
Uteng, TP and Cresswell, T (eds) (2008) Gendered Mobilities. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Van Dyk, S (2014) The appraisal of difference: critical gerontology and the active-ageing-paradigm. Journal of Aging Studies 31, 93–103.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vertovec, S (2001) Transnationalism and identity. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 27, 573–582.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wiebe, S (2009) Producing bodies and borders: a review of immigrant medical examinations in Canada. Surveillance & Society 6, 128–141.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolgemuth, JR (2014) Analyzing for critical resistance in narrative research. Qualitative Research 14, 586–602.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yeates, N (2012) Global care chains: a state-of-the-art review and future directions in care transnationalization research. Global Networks 12, 135–154.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zine, J (2002) Muslim women and the politics of representation. American Journal of Islam and Society 19, 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar