Aging in NationhoodEveryday Nationalism and Belonging among Seniors in Old-Age Homes in Québec

Scholars of aging and nationalism rarely engage with each another. To remedy this gap, I examine how ethnonationalism becomes a resource for navigating the precarity of aging. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in two private senior residences in a region of Québec, I show how financially privileged Québécois seniors enact nationhood through everyday cultural practices. I introduce the concept of “aging in nationhood” to describe how seniors draw on ethnonationalist identities to foster comfort, community, and meaning at an age of decline—often with exclusionary effects. Seniors who do not—or cannot—assimilate into majority culture experience social isolation. By linking nationalism and aging, I show how seniors reproduce the nation, shaping their well-being and the boundaries of belonging. While grounded in Québec, this concept offers new insight for thinking about how dominant-group seniors mobilize ethnonationalism as a source of membership and exclusion in white aging societies across the Atlantic.