When: 25/03/2026, 11:00-12:00
Where: Raadzaal, Pleinlaan 5, room 4.21 on the fourth floor (in-person only)
Free entry, no registration required.
About the seminar's topic:
The study presented during the Seminar examines whether and how the Photo Elicitation Interview (PEI) method facilitates conversations with older Turkish migrants about loneliness and perceived needs when feeling lonely across the life course. Employing semi-structured PEI’s with older Turkish migrants in the Netherlands (n=20), thematic analysis revealed the method proved particularly valuable for gaining insight into how older migrants experience, interpret, and articulate loneliness in their everyday lives. Using images allowed respondents to project emotions and articulate experiences of loneliness that might remain inaccessible in conventional interviews. The method not only generated substantive insights into the situational, relational, and gendered dimensions of loneliness, but additionally created a conversational space in which participants appeared to feel emotionally safe and engaged. As such, PEI holds promise not only as a research tool, but also as a supportive approach for exploring complex and potentially stigmatized experiences such as loneliness among older migrant populations.
About the speaker:
Tineke Fokkema is a Senior Researcher at the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI-KNAW), in the Families & Generations group, and endowed professor Ageing, Families and Migration at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. Within IMISCOE, she is also coordinator of the Standing Committee ‘Older Migrants’. She is an internationally regarded specialist on ageing, intergenerational solidarity, migration, and their intersection. In 2014-2018 she was involved in the ERC Research project ‘Families in Context’ led by Prof. dr P.A. Dykstra, focusing on the social implications of growing old in a migration context. Fokkema has extensive experience with analyzing large-scale cross-national surveys (e.g. SHARE, GGS, TIES) and has done fieldwork among older migrants in Italy and Morocco. Fokkema holds a PhD in Economics from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and has published in leading academic journals (e.g. The Journals of Gerontology, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Population, Space and Place, European Journal of Ageing, and Ageing and Society). More
