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Johan Leman, 13 April 2023

In the recent publication  ‘Ongehoord en Ongezien’ (translation: ‘Unheard and Unseen’), 2023, there are 2 interesting articles on older people with a migrant background. There is Saloua Berdai Chaouni’s article on “Inclusive rights for elderly people in a diverse society” and another one by Hakki Demirkapu on “Healthy ageing with a migrant background”.

Some facts:

Statbel figures (2021) show that in 2020, 39.3% of Brussels residents of foreign background will be over-65s. In Flanders, the figure is only 6.9% and in Wallonia 18%. This should prompt Brussels policy makers to think about this. Of those over-65s, speaking across the whole of Belgium, about half have Belgian nationality and the other half do not.

What problems arise?

Among those people and their family members, the following questions arise:

– Return to the country of origin or not, or partly yes and partly no?

– Has the care to be taken up by the family or by professional caregivers? But are those professionals prepared for it?

On top of that, the over-65s are not a homogeneous group.

Important questions also arise on the care provision side:

– Language barrier

– Socioeconomic status, where in the case of low socioeconomic status, one would expect less disease knowledge (resulting in greater non-compliance), and less health literacy (i.e. less ability to follow all kinds of prescriptions).

In addition, one knows that in some communities there can be interference from belief in some supernatural spirits and sometimes a high reliance on herbs and alternative therapies.

Finally, of course, one should not overculturalise either. Some issues like dementia occur in every community.

Brussels would probably do well to take stock of all such issues and have a transparent and timely debate on them and discuss avenues for the future. Some avenues already exist, such as intercultural mediation as Foyer and others have been offering for years, and Brussels is doing better than the other Regions in this respect, but the fact that we are moving towards the 40% who will be over 65 should perhaps lead to a little more attention. After all, shouldn’t this lead to a reflection also on digitalisation, public transport, mobility, housing?

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