Bridging the “dual isolated islands”: A qualitative study on intergenerational co-housing and mutual support between migrant youth and empty-nest older adults in China

Amid the concurrent acceleration of global urbanization and population ageing, social isolation among migrant youth and emotional deprivation among empty-nest older adults collectively form a complex “dual isolated islands” challenge to sustainable public welfare enhancement. The existing market-oriented housing allocation system and family-and-institution-centred older adult care system struggle to address young people's insufficient housing accessibility and gaps in older adult care services, while the lack of a systematic community support network depletes cities' adaptive resilience to demographic structure transformation. Taking Hangzhou District B Civil Affairs Bureau's “I Love Family” youth-older adult cohousing practice as a case, this study uses qualitative methods based on the “Structure-Relation-Function (SRF)” framework to explore how the YOA model facilitates the circulation of material resources, social capital and service efficiency through structural embedding, relational evolution and functional regeneration of the “space-society-governance” three-dimensional lifeline. Findings show its dual-track mechanism (“young people in older adult care institutions” and “precise community pairing/home visits”) achieves intergenerational resource matching and two-way empowerment. Theoretically, it breaks the traditional supply–demand perspective on older adult care; practically, it offers megacities a systematic solution and provides Chinese references for UN Sustainable Development Goal 11.