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What risks and insecurities do older people face in a time of both increased longevity and widening inequality? This edited collection develops an exciting new approach to understanding the changing cultural, economic and social circumstances facing different groups of older people. Exploring a range of topics, the chapters provide a critical review of the concept of precarity, highlighting the experiences of ageing that occur within the context of societal changes tied to declining social protection. Drawing together insights from leading voices across a range of disciplines, the book underscores the pressing need to address inequality across the life course and into later life.

Policy Press

Ageing in a Global Context

Precarity and Ageing: Understanding Insecurity and Risk in Later Life

Torres, Sandra

Winner of the Richard Kalish Innovative Publication Award 2021. Part of the Ageing in a Global Context series, this book proposes a new research agenda for scholarship that focuses on ethnicity, race and old age. It argues that in a time of increased international migration, population ageing and ethno-cultural diversity, scholarly imagination must be expanded as current research frameworks are becoming obsolete. By bringing attention to the way that ethnicity and race have been addressed in research on ageing and old age, with a focus on health inequalities, health and social care, intergenerational relationships and caregiving, the book proposes how research can be developed in an ethnicity astute and diversity informed manner.

Ethnicity and Old Age: Expanding our Imagination

Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. With an increasingly diverse ageing population, we need to expand our understanding of how social divisions intersect to affect outcomes in later life. This edited collection examines ageing, gender, and sexualities from multidisciplinary and geographically diverse perspectives and looks at how these factors combine with other social divisions to affect experiences of ageing. It draws on theory and empirical data to provide both conceptual knowledge and clear ‘real-world’ illustrations. The book includes section introductions to guide the reader through the debates and ideas and a glossary offering clear definitions of key terms and concepts.

Intersections of Ageing, Gender and Sexualities: Multidisciplinary International Perspectives

Applying interdisciplinary perspectives about everyday life to vital issues in the lives of older people, this book maps together the often taken-for-granted aspects of what it means to age in an ageist society. Part of the Ageing in a Global Context series, the two parts address the materialities and the embodiments of everyday life respectively. Topics covered include household possessions, public and private spaces, older drivers, media representations, dementia care, health-tracking, dress and sexuality. This focus on micro-sociological conditions allows us to rethink key questions which have shaped debates in the social aspects of ageing. International contributions, including from the UK, USA, Sweden and Canada, provide a critical guide to inform thinking and planning our ageing futures.

Ageing in Everyday Life: Materialities and Embodiments

As the drive towards creating age-friendly cities grows, this important book provides a comprehensive survey of theories and policies aimed at improving the quality of life of older people living in urban areas. In this book, part of the Ageing in a Global Context series, leading international researchers critically assess the problems and the potential of designing age-friendly environments. The book considers the different ways in which cities are responding to population ageing, the different strategies for developing age-friendly communities, and the extent to which older people themselves can be involved in the co-production of age-friendly policies and practices. The book includes a manifesto for the age-friendly movement, focused around tackling social inequality and promoting community empowerment.

Age-Friendly Cities and Communities: A Global Perspective

Nations that are raising retirement ages appear to work on the assumption that there is appropriate employment available for people who are expected to retire later. 'Gender, ageing and extended working life' challenges both this narrative, and the gender-neutral way the expectation for extending working lives is presented in most policy-making circles. The international contributors to this book - part of the Ageing in a Global Context series - apply life-course approaches to understanding evolving definitions of work and retirement. They consider the range of transitions from paid work to retirement that are potentially different for women and men in different family circumstances and occupational locations, and offer solutions governments should consider to enable them to evaluate existing policies. Based on evidence from Australia, Germany, Ireland, Portugal, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States, this is essential reading for researchers and students, and for policymakers who formulate and implement employment and pensions policy at national and international levels.

Gender, Ageing and Extended Working Life: Cross-National Perspectives

Öberg, Peter

Bildtgård, Torbjörn

To begin new relationships in later life is increasingly common in large parts of the Western world. This timely book addresses the gap in knowledge about late life repartnering and provides a comprehensive map of the changing landscape of late life intimacy. Part of the Ageing in a Global Context series, the book examines the changing structural conditions of intimacy and ageing in late modernity. How do longer lives, changing norms and new technologies affect older people’s relationship careers, their attitudes to repartnering and in the formation of new relationships? Which forms do these new unions take? What does a new intimate relationship offer older men and women and what are the consequences for social integration? What is the role and meaning of sex? By introducing a gains-perspective the book challenges stereotypes of old age as a period of loss and decline. It also challenges the image of older people as conservative, and instead presents them as an avant-garde that often experiment with new ways of being together.

Intimacy and Ageing: New Relationships in Later Life

This collection of in-depth ethnographic analysis examines the impact of local and global transformations on the care, or lack of care, older people receive in Sub-Saharan Africa. This volume provides the pan-African evidence and analysis needed to move forward debates about how to address the long term care needs of this vulnerable population. Case studies from different regions of the continent (southern, central, east and west Africa) examine formal and informal care, including inter- and intra-generational care, retirement homes, care in the context of poverty, HIV/AIDS and migration.