Ethnic disparities in later-life loneliness - Interventions for emplaced social support

This PhD will address the dearth in understanding of the experiences of older ethnic minorities in the UK. The project will investigate how emplaced social support can ameliorate ethnic penalties in health in later life. Substantively, this project is novel in taking a scalar approach to social support, and, contrary to much academic literature and policy perspectives on ethnicity and place, adopting the theoretical proposition of the benefits of co-ethnic mixing for health (following, for example, Becares et al 2009). The project is methodologically innovative in its integrated mixed methods approach and combined use of existing surveys (ELSA) and new quantitative data (Evidence for Equality National Survey), with qualitative data collection.
The PhD will address 4 research questions: How can social support be conceptualised as emplaced and multiscalar? How can emplaced, multiscalar social support be operationalised with survey data? How is experience of emplaced social support patterned by age and ethnicity? How, and in what ways, can emplaced social support ameliorate social isolation in later life; how might this be particular for older ethnic minorities?
This project will focus on a time - the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic and its immediate aftermath - when vulnerabilities have been exaggerated and lives disrupted. The project will connect with two distinct features of this period: the exacerbation of inequalities, including by age and ethnicity, and the localisation of lives.
In addition to the conceptual and methodological innovations of this project, it will have relevance for policy and practice concerned with managing loneliness in later life. In providing new evidence of experience of older ethnic minorities it will also have relevance for broader housing and community cohesion policy arenas, with potential to ameliorate the stark and persistent ethnic inequalities in the UK (Byrne et al 2020).