Awareness of ageism while researching multiple minority discrimination: a discourse and grounded theory analysis revisiting own qualitative research

Abstract

The concept awareness, proposed years ago to study contexts of interaction and processes of identity between nursing care personnel and dying patients, may form a methodological and theoretical basis to study ageism. Moreover, awareness is proposed here to be revisited as a core category referring to basic social processes and discursive axes underling various phenomena such as racism, sexism, or ageism. My aim in this article is a retrospective research storytelling circa the case of aging immigrants as people who have experienced multiple minority discrimination. A discourse and grounded theory analysis were used to reanalyze a selection of qualitative material gathered over the course of two sets of research projects on xenophobia (2006–2012) and multiple discrimination (2013–2019). Becoming aware of ageism in the case of aging immigrants and the researcher himself serves as an exercise of methodological, self-reflexive, qualitative, and embodied enquiry for a better understanding of sociological ageism.