COVID-19 and multi-generational households: Reflections on the experience of a diverse urban community in Wales

Over the last year, statistics on COVID-19 have highlighted the higher number of infections and deaths in some Black, Asian, and other minority ethnic (BAME) groups. Data suggest that differences remain after accounting for underlying conditions (Fox and Monahan, 2020). The reasons are likely due to structural inequalities that shape people's lives and disproportionately disadvantage particular groups of people. One risk factor that the Office of National Statistics (ONS) has identified is older people living in multi-generational house-holds. Someone over 70 is much more likely to be living in a house with a mix of generations if their ethnicity is identified as Bangladeshi (56%) or Pakistani (35%) (Fox and Monahan, 2020). For Indian households it is still relatively high at 13%, whereas for those who identify themselves as 'white' this goes down to around 2%. People over 70 are more likely to become severely ill or die from COVID-19 and living with people from three generations or more increases their risk of exposure to the virus (Ogbonna, 2020). However, there is scant literature on the experiences of older people living in multi-generational households during the pandemic. In the UK, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Indian domestic settings are home to people with very different life experiences. For many older people in these households, they grew up in environments, often rural, where change was slow. They now find themselves in Britain in a time of accelerated change. This is a challenging process for the generation of older people now living in the UK. Their children have grown up Indian, Pakistani, or Bangladeshi, often subsequently British citizens, and progressed into adulthood in a maelstrom of trans-continental physical and cultural change, which subsequent generations have been born into, and they know no differently.