Rethinking Mobile Ethnography: Spatial and Social Experiences of Older Migrants

ABSTRACT

Europe's ageing population includes a growing number of older migrants whose experiences of ageing in place require methods that capture mobility, place, and social participation. Mobile ethnography, particularly walking/go‐along interviews, offers valuable opportunities to examine how older migrants engage with everyday environments. Yet existing mobile research with older migrants has often focused on participants able to take part in walking interviews, leaving less attention to how mobile ethnography can be applied with migrants in advanced age and with different mobility conditions. Drawing on fieldwork with migrants from Turkey in Germany, nearly all aged 70 and above, this paper develops a more flexible understanding of mobility within mobile ethnography. It shows how engagement with place can be explored through walking, but also through familiar community settings, shorter movements, narrated routes, remembered places, supported mobility, and repeated everyday routines. The paper offers a more inclusive methodological approach for research with ageing migrant populations.