Language-friendliness as minority governance: Finnish-speaking older people’s experiences of age-friendly policy in Sweden

• Older people belonging to a national minority perceive language friendliness as a central dimension of the age-friendly city policy prononounced by the World Health Organization (WHO). • For older city residents, being able to speak their language that is considered as a heritage language and protected by legislation is not only a right but a factor contributing to their feeling of inclusion and sense of wellbeing. • To successfully fulfill the age-friendly features of a city, municipalities need to develop active ways of facilitating the articulation of older people’s viewpoints and voice. National minorities are ageing, and their linguistic and cultural rights are becoming an urgency for local policies. This paper examines the policy concept of language-friendliness in the context of national-minority older people. An analysis is conducted on the experiences of Finnish-speaking older people regarding their relationship with city governance communication and citizen policies in the second-largest city in Sweden. Gothenburg, part of the Finnish-language administrative area along with 65 other Swedish municipalities, was the first Swedish city to join the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Age-friendly Cities and Communities (AFCC) network in 2016. Accordingly, the Age-Friendly Gothenburg Policy for 2016–2024 set out goals to make the city age-appropriate in the six domains identified by WHO: communication and information, health services, outdoor spaces, housing, transportation, as well as social participation and inclusion. These domains were critically examined through the lenses of minority-language community with a mixed-method design: first, an online questionnaire with open-ended responses ( N =27) in parallel to a majority-directed survey ( N =817), second, focus group interviews with Finnish-speaking representatives of the national minority at retirement age ( N =18), and, third, in-depth interviews with administrative area employees ( N =3). The results indicate that there are structural obstacles for applying linguistically and culturally responsive services for the older people. Based on the thematic analysis, language-friendliness is conceptualized as a linguistically congruent cross-sectoral policy framework. Finally, some methodological issues specific of national-minority older people are raised.