Toward equitable dementia care for older migrants: a new conceptual framework
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Abstract
Belgium, like the rest of Europe, has a growing population of older migrants living with dementia. Culturally sensitive care is widely endorsed as the dominant approach to creating accessible care; however, our qualitative research with older labor migrants and their caregivers of Italian, Moroccan, and Turkish descent challenges this premise. This approach reduces complex, intersecting care needs, shaped by socio-economic position, migration histories, religion, and family dynamics, to an essentialist notion of cultural otherness. In doing so, it obscures the role of systemic exclusionary mechanisms, such as assumed neutrality, intersectional otherness, and racialization that obstruct access to quality care. Drawing on intersectionality and decolonial frameworks, this paper develops a new conceptual framework for equitable dementia care. It positions care inequities as structurally produced across interconnected levels and calls for equally layered responses. In doing so, it opens pathways toward more equitable futures of care for minoritized and racialized aging populations.
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