Aging in place in a mobile world: New media and older people’s support networks

This Focus Topic brings together an analysis of cross-cutting fields of critical importance for the future: aging, migrant transnationalism, and new media. While each of these fields has prompted vast literatures, their intersections remain surprisingly under-acknowledged. Yet, it is at these intersections that a significant social transformation is currently underway that requires attention from researchers, policy makers, and service providers engaging with older populations. It is now common knowledge that population aging is a significant and growing issue for many developed nations around the world, raising important questions about how to best accommodate the needs and opportunities of large numbers of older people, comprising a larger proportion of the population (Ezeh, Bongaarts, & Mberu, 2012; Lutz, Sanderson, & Scherbov, 2008). One common response to this issue by policy makers has been to explore strategies to promote and support “aging in place,” by improving the ability of older people to remain living independently in their own homes and local communities, regardless of age, income, or ability level (Hillcoat-Nalletamby & Ogg, 2014; Vasunilashorn et al., 2012). Studies of aging in place have demonstrated the benefits that can be gained from facilitating people’s engagement in their local neighborhoods and communities, including the prevention of social isolation that might result from reduced physical mobility. This has the advantage of reducing the costs of aged care and fulfilling the goals and aims of many older people to remain in their own homes, especially those living in western countries. However, the emphasis on what services and facilities are required in local neighborhoods or communities to support healthy aging in place tends to overlook the increasing role of migration, mobility, and new media in the lives of older people. It is now clear that more and more people are living “mobile lives” (Elliott & Urry, 2010) as a result of international and intra-national, permanent and temporary forms of migration and movement. Indeed, many of the developed nations that are experiencing population aging also have large – and aging – migrant populations. Aged migrants include both people who arrived in countries of settlement as young adults in the twentieth century as well as those relocating to establish new lives in their retirement in the twenty-first century. For these populations, “aging in place” is not a simple formula. It is not always clear in which “place” older migrants are willing or able to live as they age. While many elderly migrants