Abstract
As queer communities age, many confront a paradox, having survived exclusion, stigma, pandemics, and social upheaval, they often enter later life with extraordinary resilience while facing heightened vulnerability. Ageing queer people are disproportionately affected by social isolation, estrangement from biological families, economic insecurity, housing precarity, and care systems that continue to benefit heteronormative and biologically defined family structures. Yet alongside these vulnerabilities exists a powerful legacy of resistance, mutual aid, and community-making, a fire sustained through decades of collective survival and care.

For many queer elders, chosen kinship networks have long functioned as vital sources of emotional, social, and practical support. Friends, partners, former partners, neighbours, and community members often assume roles traditionally associated with family, creating webs of belonging that challenge conventional understandings of care and dependency. Despite their significance, these networks frequently remain unrecognized within legal, policy, and institutional frameworks governing ageing and care.

This paper argues for the recognition and strengthening of kinship networks as critical infrastructures of support for ageing Queer Trans populations. Rather than locating care within individual households or formal institutions alone, kinship networks offer relational models grounded in reciprocity, interdependence, and collective responsibility. They acknowledge diverse forms of intimacy and belonging while creating pathways for support across generations and life stages.

By centring the experiences of ageing queer people, this discussion highlights the need to move beyond narrow definitions of family and toward more inclusive understandings of social connection and care. Supporting kinship networks is not only a response to vulnerability but also an affirmation of the enduring creativity, resilience, and relational labour through which queer communities have sustained themselves. In recognizing these networks as legitimate and valuable social formations, we can imagine more just, caring, and affirming futures for Queer Trans ageing.