Ageing Alone and Well-being: Ethnographic Insights from Older Adults in Northern Thailand.

The article examines the complex realities of older adults living alone, whether by personal choice, the loss of a spouse or family members, or through divorce, in both urban and rural Chiang Mai, Thailand. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork, 15 individuals were interviewed. This article will challenge dominant narratives that conflate living alone with loneliness, social isolation, and vulnerability. Instead, this article uses the lens of relational living to highlight how older persons living alone actively shape their everyday lives through daily routines and informal social networks to maintain their well-being. This study finds that older individuals navigate solo living through diverse forms of informal care networks shaped by class, gender, disability, and place. These networks, often composed of neighbours, former coworkers, monks, friends, and community members, substitute for absent familial support and challenge dominant models of care that prioritise either family or formal institutions. Rather than viewing living alone as a condition of abandonment, older adults actively co-produce well-being through relational practices embedded in Thai cultural norms, including Buddhist ethics and everyday reciprocity. The article contributes to debates on ageing, care, and social infrastructure by demonstrating how informal care can sustain autonomy and dignity in later life, even amid structural precarity and limited state support. It calls for a broader conceptualisation of ageing that incorporates local informal systems of care, interdependence, and moral responsibility.