Aging & Social Change: Twelfth Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

The ways in which older people engage civically has received the attention of both scholars and policy makers in recent decades. However, the focus tends to be on formal volunteering, overlooking the many other ways in which older people engage civically, such as informal helping behaviors or political engagement. Moreover, older people from under-researched communities, such as migrants born outside of Europe, or those living in socially disadvantaged communities, have seldom been the focus of research and policy initiatives. Drawing on the preliminary results of a cross-national study on exclusion from civic engagement (CIVEX) including five European countries, this paper explores barriers and enablers to multidimensional forms of civic engagement among older non-European migrants and older people living in socially disadvantaged urban communities in Belgium, Spain, and Sweden. Fifty in-depth interviews were conducted exploring older adults’ trajectories of civic engagement across the life-course, and barriers and enablers to different types of civic engagement. Results showed a range of barriers and enablers to civic engagement including personal, relational, organizational, and contextual aspects. Barriers and enablers showed similarities and variations according to the group interviewed, the type of civic engagement considered, and the country where the interviews were carried out. The study highlights the need for interventions to facilitate civic engagement amongst older migrants and older people in socially disadvantaged urban communities, which should simultaneously consider the specific circumstances in which some people from these groups find themselves, the multidimensionality of civic engagement, and the context in which such engagement occurs.

Presenters

Rodrigo Serrat
Lecturer, Cognition, Development, and Educational Psychology Department, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

Inma Peiró Milián
Predoc researcher, Social psychology, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain

Bas Dikmans
PhD researcher, Adult Educational Sciences, VUB Brussels, Brussels, Belgium

Karima Chacur-Kiss
PhD Student, Social Psychology, Department of Cognition, Development and Educational Psychology, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

Pernilla Ågård
Uppsala Universitet