Beyond ‘Culturally Sensitive Care’: Reimagining Dementia Care for Families with Migration Backgrounds

People with migration backgrounds (PwM) and their loved ones living with dementia often encounter multiple disparities for appropriate care and support. Simultaneously, care professionals may feel inadequately prepared to address the needs of PwM effectively. As a response to these concerns, research and practice have increasingly emphasized the importance of culturally sensitive care. These efforts center on understanding the cultural norms and beliefs of migrant communities and developing professional strategies tailored to these cultural factors. However, while cultural factors clearly play a role in the care experiences of PwM, the emphasis on culture in research and practice has drawn criticism from various scholars. In our contribution to this debate, we highlight the shortcomings of the concept of culturally sensitive care within the context of dementia and propose a perspective that responds to these shortcomings. We present the following arguments: (1) The prevailing discourse, which treats culture and culturally sensitive care as fixed concepts and relies on separate tools for addressing the needs of PwM, fails to offer comprehensive guidance for inclusive care. (2) Instead of attributing care-related obstacles to cultural differences, we must shift our focus to understanding individual experiences of inequality as well as the systemic structures that perpetuate inequality. (3) To address the diverse needs of PwM and the challenges of ongoing diversity within Western societies, dementia care services should embrace diversity as the norm rather than an exception requiring separate tools. This requires a paradigm shift in which professionals are trained to navigate relationships in ways that minimize reliance on rigid (ethnic and cultural) categorizations.