Ageing in transnational contexts: transforming everyday practices and identities in later life

ABSTRACT

This Special Issue on ‘Ageing in Transnational Contexts: Transforming Everyday Practices and Identities in Later Life’ extends our understanding of how ageing is experienced in transnational contexts. It focuses on how everyday lives and identities in older age are being negotiated by individuals who have migration histories or who are affected by the mobilities of others in their lives. In the introduction, we situate our approach within an emerging strand of research investigating the inter-related processes of ageing and transnational migration. We also present the seven empirical case studies that constitute the issue and discuss their collective contribution for the research field.     

Intentions and strategies among elderly people: Coping in everyday life

Many studies of the elderly adopt a provider perspective, focusing on social policy, organizations, and professional groups. Less is known about how the elderly manage when they eventually need help in everyday living. This study examined the everyday behavior and strategies of the elderly through conducting semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 22 people over age 65. The intentions and strategies found revealed that the elderly managed or coped in active, adaptive, and passive ways, ranged along a continuum from actively maintaining their independence to passively depending on others.     

Young people,social media and connective action: from organisational maintenance to everyday political talk

Social media is pervasive in the lives of young people, and this paper critically analyses how politically engaged young people integrate social media use into their existing organisations and political communications. This qualitative research project studied how young people from a broad range of existing political and civic groups use social media for sharing information, mobilisation and, increasingly, as a means to redefine political action and political spaces. Twelve in-person focus groups were conducted in Australia, the USA and the UK with matched affinity groups based on university campuses. The groups were of four types: party political group, issue-based group, identity-based group and social group. Our focus group findings suggest that this in-depth approach to understanding young people's political engagement reveals important group-based differences emerging in young people's citizenship norms: between the dutiful allegiance to formal politics and a more personalised, self-actualising preference for online, discursive forms of political engagement and organising. The ways in which political information is broadcast, shared and talked about on social media by engaged young people demonstrate the importance of communicative forms of action for the future of political engagement and connective action.     

Housing,memory and everyday life in contemporary Britain

With specific reference to public policy and the housing market in post-Second World War Britain, this article explores the relationship between housing, memory and everyday life. It argues that the house owes its cultural and emotional power to its capacity to separate itself ideologically from what Marc Augé calls the ‘non-places’ of everyday life. The extent to which houses have come to be seen as refuges from the non-place requires a great deal of symbolic work to conceal their sameness and everydayness. The association of the house with nostalgia, in particular, represents a denial of what Henri Lefebvre sees as the ‘residuality’ of the everyday, its capacity to lag behind the more dramatic transformations of modernity. In order to explore these questions, the article focuses on different types of housing in contemporary Britain, which are all based on a serial repetition and collectivity that are often denied. It examines: how the demolished terraced house and the surviving slum reveal the broader structures of everyday life in a way that the refurbished middle-class town house, alternating between a commodified past and a self-promoting futurism, specifically conceals; how the high-rise estates represent the most visible manifestation of the residuality of the everyday; and how new suburban houses are built in ‘timeless’ vernacular styles and sold as well-equipped interiors for exclusively privatized use, in a way that obscures their links to systems of mass production and consumption. The article concludes that the cultural economy of houses denies the reality of uneven development, and the ways in which our carefully refurbished homes are achieved at the expense of other everyday spaces.     

The time and space of everyday life

This article argues that everyday life is related to all social relations and activities, including both the ‘official’ practices that are codified and normalized and the ‘unofficial’ practices and articulations of experience. Indeed, everyday day life is seen as the single plane of immanence in which these two forms of practice and articulation interrelate and affect one another. The lived experience of everyday life is multidimensional, composed of various social fields of practice that are articulated, codified and normalized to different degrees and in different ways (either officially or unofficially). Moving through these fields in daily life, we are aware of passing through different zones of time and space. There are aspects of everyday relations and practices more open to government, institutionalization, and official codification, while others are more resistant and provide the basis for opposition and social movements. Everyday life is a mixture of diverse and differentially produced and articulated forms, each combining time and space in a unique way. What we refer to as ‘institutions’ associated with the state or the economy are attempts to fix social practice in time and space – to contain it in specific geographical sites and codify it in official discourses. The relations and practices more often associated with everyday life – such as friendship, love, comradeship and relations of communication – are more fluid, open and dispersed across time and space. However, the two should not be uncoupled in social analysis, as they are necessarily interrelated in processes of social and political change. This is especially so in contemporary capitalism or, as Lefebvre called it, the ‘bureaucratic society of controlled consumption’.     

Learning to be Palestinian in Athens: constructing national identities in diaspora

In this article I focus on constructions of diasporic national identities and the nation as active and strategic processes using the case study of Palestinians in Athens. I seek, thereby, to contribute to debates on national identity, the nation and long‐distance nationalism, particularly in relation to those in diaspora with a collective cause to advocate. I explore how first‐ and second‐generation Palestinians in Athens construct and narrate Palestinian national identities, the homeland and political unity. I argue that the need to ‘choose’ to be Palestinian, often for political reasons, highlights that the nation is not a ‘given’ entity. This can be a difficult process for those in diaspora to deal with, as there may be tensions between constructions of political unity and attachment to the homeland and feelings of ambivalence and in‐between‐ness that may be seen as politically counterproductive. However, I stress that ‘messy’ and contradictory narratives and spatialities of diasporic national identities that come about as a result of cross‐border or transnational (dis)connections do not necessarily lead to apathy and, therefore, can be important.     

Young people leaving care in England,Northern Ireland,and Ireland

This paper explores the transitions of young people, aged 16-18, leaving state care in England, Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland. It is based substantially upon the findings from collaborative research which developed in stages between 1991 and 1999 - and is still ongoing. Four substantive areas are discussed. First, the legal framework of the three jurisdictions: the Children Act 1989, the Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1995 and the Child Care Act 1991; second, the research context within the three child care systems; third, the findings from the three related projects; and, finally, the key themes and issues arising from the research studies.     

Issues of collaboration,representation, meaning and emotions: utilising participant-led visual diaries to capture the everyday lives of people in mid to later life

In recent years there has been an increasing use of visual methods in ageing research. There are, however, limited reflections and critical explorations of the implications of using visual methods in research with people in mid to later life. This paper examines key methodological complexities when researching the daily lives of people as they grow older and the possibilities and limitations of using participant-generated visual diaries. The paper will draw on our experiences of an empirical study, which included a sample of 62 women and men aged 50 years and over with different daily routines. Participant-led photography was drawn upon as a means to create visual diaries, followed by in-depth, photo-elicitation interviews. The paper will critically reflect on the use of visual methods for researching the daily lives of people in mid to later life, as well as suggesting some wider tensions within visual methods that warrant attention. First, we explore the extent to which photography facilitates a ‘collaborative’ research process; second, complexities around capturing the ‘everydayness’ of daily routines are explored; third, the representation and presentation of ‘self’ by participants within their images and interview narratives is examined; and, finally, we highlight particular emotional considerations in visualising daily life.     

Men's discursive constructions of balance in everyday life

Fathers' involvement in paid and unpaid activities and the notion of the ideal father is evolving in contemporary Western society. Little is known about how fathers construct balance in everyday life and what ideologies underpin these constructions. We explored balance using qualitative interviews with 15 men in dual-income heterosexual partnerships who had young children. Phenomenographic and critical discourse analyses generated two key constructions of balance: managing life and participating in a mix of activities. The first construction highlighted the subject position of the Ideal Father, which embraced the ideologies of the ideal father and the model paid worker. According to this construction, fathers attained balance by ensuring the family's financial security, participating in family life, and serving the greater good of the family by meeting its needs. The second construction reflected the Contented Man position, which was informed by the ideology of occupational justice. It emphasized that men achieved balance by engaging in diverse experiences, enjoying the freedom to spend time alone, and meeting personal needs. The tensions that arise among these three ideologies (ideal father, model paid worker, and occupational justice) can impede men's attainment of balance, which has implications for health and social policies and services.     

Thematization in everyday life: a critical approach

This paper presents an examination of some of the ways in which social criticism can be developed on the basis of the analysis of everyday life in modern societies. An attempt is made to combine the results of phenomenological (Schutz), ethnomethodological (Garfinkel), and dialectical (Kosik) approaches to the everyday world as the world-taken-for-granted, with the study, founded on semiological theory, of social images and the ideological elements implicit in them. At the centre of the discussion lies the mechanism of thematization by which the subjects assign predicates to persons, objects and events in a given social context.     

Nations, national identities and human agency: putting people back into nations

This article stresses the necessity of more detailed considerations of social action and human agency in sociological theorising on national identity. It argues that, as much as other sociological categories such as 'class', 'gender', 'race', categories of 'nation' and 'national identity' are of important practical use in giving order to the social world. The article is primarily intended as a critique of a good deal of the sociological work in this area, and suggests the need to more systematically consider how individuals actively organise and account for ideas of nation and national identity. There is now a growing corpus of qualitative studies of national identity; what is needed now is to begin to work towards a general sociological theory of national identity.     

Homework: Routine,social aesthetics and the ambiguity of everyday life

Routine is a central feature of everyday life, yet its peculiar rhythms, and the range of experiences associated with it, are often neglected within cultural studies and sociology. Simmel’s attempt to provide a sociological aesthetics is seen as a project that needs reanimating for the study of everyday life routines. This does not mean, however, that Simmel is the only, or the best, guide to the aesthetic dimensions of everyday routine life. In an attempt to provide some co-ordinates for instigating a socio-aesthetic approach to routine, this paper discusses a number of writers who couple aesthetics and the everyday, and who might provide frameworks for the study of experiential aspects of routine life. It also suggests that an inverted reading of John Dewey could provide socio-aesthetic study with the ‘formless’ forms required to bring everyday background routines into the foreground. The socio-aesthetic study of cooking undertaken by Luce Giard provides an example of the complexity of such an approach. Lastly the article looks briefly at new directions for ‘everyday life aesthetics’, more specifically at Henri Lefebvre’s unfinished project of rhythmanalysis.     

Young people leaving care in Scotland

This paper presents the findings from the first national study of young people leaving care in Scotland. The research involved a policy study of all 32 social work departments and a survey of 107 young people from three authorities, 61 of whom were followed up over a six month period. In exploring the implications for policy and practice, it suggests that although the law and national policy context have been strengthened, improving outcomes for young people leaving care will require responses to more enduring problems, as well as the development of more comprehensive local policies.     

Transforming everyday life: Islamism and social movement theory

The Islamist movement in Turkey bases its mobilization strategy on transforming everyday practices. Public challenges against the state do not form a central part of its repertoire. New Social Movement theory provides some tools for analyzing such an unconventional strategic choice. However, as Islamist mobilization also seeks to reshape the state in the long run, New Social Movement theory (with its focus on culture and society and its relative neglect of the state) needs to be complemented by more institutional analyses. A hegemonic account of mobilization, which incorporates tools from theories of everyday life and identity-formation, as well as from state-centered approaches, is offered as a way to grasp the complexity of Islamism.

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An immense and unexpected field of action: Webcams,surveillance and everyday life

The essay uses a quotation from Walter Benjamin to ask what ‘immense and unexpected field of action’ is revealed through the numerous web-cameras connected to the internet. The essay considers the subject of the webcam gaze to be that of everyday life in a society of surveillance and control. Drawing on Mark Andrejevic’s concept of digital enclosures and Michael H. Goldhaber’s argument that the Internet is an attention economy, the essay considers webcams and other means of online expression in the context of Gilles Deleuze’s notion of a society of control. In the end, the essay considers the webcam to reveal aspects of everyday life through senses of thisness, durée, awareness, embodiment and care, as everyday life is caught up in and constituted by intertwined networks of care and control.