Living Arrangements of South Asian Immigrant Seniors in Edmonton, Canada: An Assessment of the Economic, Cultural, Health, and Availability of Kin Explanations

Abstract

Immigrants from Asian countries who are living in Canada are more likely to live with extended families than Canadian-born seniors. This article focuses on the living arrangements of 161 South Asian immigrant seniors in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and examines the relative importance of various factors that influence living arrangements. Demographic characteristics were associated with living arrangements; seniors who immigrated when they were young and were married were the most likely to live independently. Logistic regression analyses suggest that economic and cultural factors were more important than health and availability of kin factors in explaining living arrangements, after controlling for demographic and immigration variables.

KEYWORDS:

• aging immigrant
• migrant elder
• South Asian immigrant
• living arrangements

Acknowledgments

This study was initiated by Dr. Gita Das, the Indo-Canadian Women's Association in Edmonton, Canada, and Dr. Baha Abu-Laban, then Director of the Prairie Centre of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Integration (PCERII) at the University of Alberta. The PCERII, which had been renamed the Prairie Metropolis Centre, provided funding and the Population Research Laboratory at the University of Alberta conducted the interviews. The authors acknowledge the assistance of many individuals in the immigrant settlement field and the South Asian community, in particular, Dr. Nayanika Kumar and Dr. Gita Das of the Indo-Canadian Women's Association of Edmonton. The authors thank Liz White for the management of this project. Dr. Sharon McIrvin Abu-Laban, now professor emeritus in the Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta, contributed extensively to the development of this project. The authors also thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on the earlier draft of this article