Ageing non-heterosexual migrants: Towards global sexual citizenship

This paper focuses on ageing non-heterosexual migrants, an understudied group, in order to contribute to two emerging strands of research literature in ageing studies: ageing migrants and non-heterosexual ageing. This paper draws on the narrative of a 60-year-old partnered gay man, Oliver, who is originally from the UK and had lived in Hong Kong for more than 20 years at the time of the interview. Oliver's experiences as an ageing non-heterosexual migrant embody both privilege and vulnerability. For him, white privilege acts as a shield against homophobia and ageism. However, although he feels cultural and social belonging to Hong Kong, his same-sex relationship is not legally recognised in Hong Kong. This produces anxiety about future care and end-of-life concerns for him and his Asian partner, as he decides between staying in Hong Kong and returning home to the UK for greater legal recognition of his same-sex relationship. Such findings highlight diversity among ageing migrants, and coexistence of privilege and vulnerability in the lives of non-heterosexuals who age outside of their country of origin. This paper also contributes to the literature on non-heterosexual ageing by adding an understudied diasporic perspective, and on sexual migration by highlighting the life course perspective to show that sexual minority migrants' experience is stratified by age. This paper argues that global sexual citizenship is an increasingly relevant theoretical concept in an era of unequal sexual rights development around the world. Social policies have largely overlooked the later life concerns of ageing non-heterosexual migrants, where a lack of legal recognition of their same-sex relationship has them left without policy protection.