Methodological Reflections for Qualitative Research with Older Migrants: Focusing on Chinese-heritage Grandparents in New Zealand

Older migrants often constitute a hard-to-reach demographic group for researchers, particularly those who are ethnolinguistic minorities with limited host country language competence. Acknowledging the heterogeneous profiles of older people and their particular life histories, in this article we discuss the methodological challenges in conducting qualitative research with older Chinese migrants. We report on our experience during data collection (recruitment, implementation, and termination) using various methods (questionnaires, interviews, and go-alongs) with 22 participants, as part of a broader project that focused on older migrants’ experience of daily-life language challenges and coping strategies in New Zealand. Successful recruitment relied heavily on trust-building that was facilitated by gatekeepers, given older migrants’ vulnerability to fraud. Pre-talks were used to deepen trust and negotiate practical age-related issues. During research implementation, we demonstrate the benefits of collaborative questionnaire completion, dialogical interviews, and of enabling participants to co-construct the go-along procedure. We emphasize the importance of practical and psychological acknowledgement of participants’ contribution and discuss forms of meeting participants’ expectations for ongoing contact without encouraging dependency. We observed limited evidence of post-research abandonment among participants. We close with recommendations for recruiting this demographic group aimed at future researchers.