(1) Background: With an increasingly diversifying ageing population, it is important to understand what ‘ageing well’ means to older adults with a migration background. Given older adults’ preference to age in place and declining mobility, housing is a significant place in later life. Therefore, this paper explores the influence of housing, migration, and age on older migrants’ subjective wellbeing, with attention to immaterial aspects such as a sense of home as well. (2) Methods: In-depth interviews with older migrants from various ethnicities (N = 22) were conducted. The data collection and analysis were led by an inductive and deductive approach through thematic analysis. (3) Results: The results point to the dynamic nature of age(ing) and the role of migration background in the subjective wellbeing of older migrants. The need for preserving one’s housing situation and environmental mastery in later life is highlighted. Furthermore, the relation and mutual influence of subjective wellbeing and sense of home is uncovered. (4) Conclusions: This study highlights the intersection of age, migration, and housing to the subjective wellbeing and sense of home of older migrants. In addition, influences on older migrants’ subjective wellbeing concern both a material (i.e., housing) and immaterial (i.e., sense of home, age, migration) base.

1. Housing and the neighbourhood are considered significant places for older adults’ (60+) well-being (Mulliner, Riley, and Maliene 2020), especially as they tend to spend more time inside their ho...

As our ageing population is growing and diversifying, it is important to gain insight into the well-being of older migrants. However, the meanings of happiness can vary cross-culturally. Therefore, prior to exploring older migrants' happiness, their meaning-making of "happiness" should be explored. This way, cultural or individual variations can be considered when analysing older migrants' happiness. Not only migration background but also age could influence the meaning of well-being. For example, the meaning of well-being can change as people grow older. Therefore, both migration background and age are considered in exploring older migrants' meaning-making of happiness. To do so, in-depth interviews with older migrants (n = 22) from various ethnicities were conducted in which their meaning-making of happiness was questioned via a semi-structured interview guide. After analysing the results via thematic analysis, three overarching themes are discussed: (1) happiness associations, (2) happiness-pursuing strategies, and (3) happiness obstructions. The analysis then further focuses on the role of migration background and ageing on the meaning-making of happiness. Participants' meaning-making of happiness seems strongly imbued with age-related references. On the contrary, the impact of migration background is rather limited. To explain this difference, the value of incorporating participants' life course experiences emerged.

Set in an architectural design educational context, this paper contributes to tackling the current weak spot of grasping and including future users' socio-spatial experiences in the early design stages, by tailoring ethnography to this particular field of architectural design. To capture below-the-surface experiences, we bring together ethnographic research methods and architectural design, steered by the Design-Based Research (DBR) theoretical framework (Euler, 2014), fostering an educational learning aim and providing a handhold for the fuzzy front end of the architectural design process, enabling young designers to collect rich, below-the-surface user data. We first conducted a literature review in ethnography to explore how current techniques should be tailored to the specifics of the architectural design context. Next, we empirically tested these tailored techniques for three consecutive rounds in the educational design context of a master seminar. The seminar’s participating master students in (interior) architecture developed and executed three ethnographic studies to capture below-the-surface user experiences in three different spatial and social contexts, exploring three different design challenges. These iterations led to (i) the design principle of ‘seismographic imaging’, an approach characterized by applying a well-balanced mix of tailored ethnographic techniques to capture and interpret rich, below-the-surface user experiences. Reflecting on the benefits and challenges thereof resulted in (ii) the development of a design tool, the “ethnogram”, which can be introduced in the architectural design studio, to aid design students in developing a well-balanced mix of tailored ethnographic techniques considering a specific spatial context, target group and design challenge, and necessary to render designerly rich user data. That way, this paper fulfills an identified need for methodological educational strategies regarding the collection and integration of user experiences in the early design stages of an architectural design process in an educational context and contributes to the theoretical understanding of the possibilities of the DBR model.