Saloua Berdai Chaouni
Last November, ENIEC members and friends from across Europe gathered for an engaging online meeting on How to ensure and strengthen the involvement of older ethnic minorities in research? The discussion opened with Shirley Ramdas (SOMNL) and Mehmet Uygun (SGAN) sharing their experiences as community leaders facilitating the involvement of older migrants in academic research. I was invited to reflect on their insights, and this text builds upon that reflection.
Shirley and Mehmet’s testimonies painted a clear picture of the often unconsidered ways in which research institutions engage with older migrants as participants—and with community leaders as intermediaries. They highlighted the growing research fatigue among older migrants, a direct result of instrumentalized approaches that treat them as mere subjects. Too often, they are approached for input on research topics that feel disconnected from their lived realities, or they are left wondering why, suddenly, their perspectives are sought out for the tenth ongoing study on palliative care. The problem extends beyond the subject matter; research questions and forms are often misaligned with their communication styles, and interactions lack the fundamental groundwork of relationship-building. In response, Shirley emphasized the importance of starting with a simple yet meaningful question: “How are you doing?”—especially in a time when many older migrants experience increased feelings of insecurity due to shifting political climates in the Netherlands.
What decolonial scholars would call an “extractive approach” and “knowledge extraction” is also evident in how research institutions engage with these community leaders, treating them as gatekeepers who exist solely to grant access to so-called ‘difficult-to-reach’ populations. They are often contacted at the final stages of a research project, expected to ‘deliver’ groups of older migrants, raising fundamental concerns about equal partnership in such collaborations. Their labor—recruiting, motivating, translating, mediating and educating—is rarely acknowledged, let alone compensated. Instead, these skills and networks are viewed as natural extensions of their ethnic background, rendering them invisible as forms of expertise.
These experiences are widely shared by racialized scholars, intermediaries, and ethnic-minority organizations, highlighting broader systemic issues in research. They are repeatedly called upon to perform unpaid and unacknowledged labor in the name of diversity and inclusion, driven by a persistent underlying expectation: their ethnic background is assumed to grant them automatic expertise, yet their contributions are frequently undervalued, unrecognized, or taken for granted.
This expectation is also harmful as it manifests the mechanism of racialization. In this case, expertise and knowledge are inferiorized, reduced to an essentialized personal identity rather than recognized as professional contributions. In a broader context of social inequities and unequal power mechanisms, both community leaders and racialized academics engage in significant shadow work to foster inclusion and improve the position of marginalized communities. But does this shadow work actually lead to real inclusion? Does it genuinely improve conditions for marginalized groups? And if so, at what cost? The cost of invisible labor, the unpaid time invested in developing these skills, and the emotional, psychological, and physical toll of being essentialized and racialized.
On the other hand, investing in inclusive and equitable decolonial research is essential to improving the quality of knowledge we produce. As Sandra Torres, a renowned gerontologist, has established, our knowledge of migrantized, racialized, and minoritized older persons is deeply biased—and a fundamental reason for this bias is how we conduct research on this topic. Even the research that is labelled as participatory or inclusive can contribute to this bias and reproduction of inequities. Therefore, at a time when inclusive and participatory research with underrepresented and underserved populations is gaining prominence, it is crucial to remain collectively reflexive and critical of research practices. Current debates on power imbalances in (participatory) research are important and must remain at the forefront. The research community should be more ambitious than ever in its efforts to avoid reproducing inequalities and to do no harm. This work begins at the very foundation of any study—with the research question itself. What drives this question? Whose interest does it capture and serve? Who benefits from this research? How does it serve older migrants and other marginalized, racialized groups? Moreover, it is critical to recognize these communities as knowers, not subjects. We, as researchers, rely on their knowledge. True engagement becomes possible when participants see that their contributions are valued—and when they receive tangible benefits in return. This requires another way of “doing research” with space for justice-driven epistemologies (Read more: Berdai Chaouni et al., 2021).
However, achieving truly inclusive research requires structural changes that extend beyond the efforts of individual researchers. For instance, funding mechanisms must be reformed. Current funding structures, shaped by broader power dynamics and institutional priorities, often leave little room for methodological approaches that meaningfully and ethically engage marginalized communities. Without these necessary shifts, research risks reinforcing the very inequities it aims to challenge.
In other words, if we are truly committed to inclusive and impactful research, we must move beyond extractive practices and towards genuine co-creation—where knowledge is not only gathered from communities but built with them, in ways that value their expertise, avoid the reproduction of inequities, and contribute to epistemic and social justice.
Berdai Chaouni, S., Claeys, A., Van den Broecke, J., De Donder, L. (2021) Doing research on the intersection of ethnicity and old age: Key insights from decolonial frameworks. Journal of Aging Studies. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2020.100909.
