De Donder, Liesbeth

The number of older Moroccan migrants reaching the age of high risk for dementia is increasing in Belgium. Yet no study has been performed to explore how Moroccan families facing dementia experience and manage the condition. The study employed a qualitative design using semi-structured interviews with 12 informal and 13 formal caregivers to answer this research question.

Background: Due to its labour migration history, Belgium is confronted with an increasingly older population of people of Moroccan background who have been diagnosed with dementia. These migrants came to the country during the labour migration wave of the nineteen-sixties and seventies to work in mines and other industries and they are now ageing.

Frail, older care recipients are often thought of as individuals with a decreased mastery of everyday life skills. Various authors have proposed to acknowledge a relational dimension of mastery, defined as the ability to maintain control over one's life with the help of others. This study explores how frail, older adults experience relational aspects of mastery and the role of their informal caregivers in maintaining these aspects of mastery over the care process.