Series: Ageing in a Global Context
Series Editors: Chris Phillipson, University of Manchester, UK, Toni Calasanti, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, USA and Thomas Scharf, Newcastle University, UK
Published in association with the British Society of Gerontology, this major series addresses broad cross-cutting issues around ageing in a global society. The books present innovative perspectives, reflecting a balance of topics across the global south and north, that will transform debate in this fast-moving field.
Ageing in a Global Context
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Associational membership implies belonging to or being affiliated with a formal group in any sector of society. Members of associations may be passive (for example, pay only a membership fee) or active (for example, undertake voluntary work or participate in meetings or other group events). This chapter focuses on passive members of associations, as well as members who actively participate or attend meetings or events in associations. Three main sections are addressed in this chapter. In the first section, theories on associational membership and discussion on the association between social capital and such membership are reviewed. In the second section the measurement of associational membership is examined, with a special focus on survey data collected in Europe; and in the third section drivers and barriers of associational membership in later life, as well as outcomes of membership are reviewed. The chapter concludes with a discussion and summary of the key topics presented, highlighting directions for future research.
Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
Older adults’ civic engagement has become a key concern in academic and policy debates in recent years. However, existing studies on this topic remain fragmented across various conceptual and methodological approaches.
This book provides a comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and multidimensional perspective on older adults’ civic engagement. It proposes a conceptual framework which understands civic engagement as a multidimensional concept encompassing a diversity of activities through which older adults contribute to their communities and wider society. Contributors explore the factors shaping older adults’ participation in various civic activities across the life course, considering their diversity in terms of social locations such as gender, health status, migrant background, socioeconomic background and residential arrangements.
By analysing past and current research, policy and practice, the book offers recommendations for future efforts to advance the field.
While research into civic engagement in later life has made considerable progress in the last 60 years, systematic conceptual development of the topic is lagging behind. In this chapter, we introduce a conceptual framework that focuses on four key features to understand civic engagement in later life. First, by considering the multidimensional nature of civic engagement, it proposes a typology of civic activities that highlights the different ways in which older adults contribute to their communities and wider society. Second, it focuses on factors at micro, meso and macro level that influence multidimensional civic engagement in later life. Third, it addresses the dynamic nature of civic engagement across the life course, thus revealing how life events and transitions at earlier life stages influence multidimensional civic engagement in later life. Finally, the chapter acknowledges older adults’ diversity to highlight the challenges and opportunities for civic engagement among older adults with marginalised and minoritised identities. On the whole, this chapter lays the conceptual foundations for subsequent chapters by introducing the multidimensionality of civic engagement, the key factors that influence engagement, the way in which engagement changes across the life course and how it varies for different groups of older adults.
Within the context of rapid digitalisation of societies, older people increasingly require digital skills to engage in civic activities. Despite a growing need to use digital technologies for civic purposes and increasing research on the digitalisation of civic life for younger people and adults, digital dimensions of the concept of civic engagement remain under-explored in gerontology. Digital civic engagement, or using digital tools for civic engagement activities, has become a central feature of societies that aspire to becoming more age-friendly. Expanding on the later life civic engagement framework that distinguishes between volunteering and political forms of civic engagement (Serrat et al, 2022; Serrat, this volume), we shed light on the complex entanglements of civic, social and technological factors that influence older adults’ motivations to engage digitally in civic spaces. We present a new technology-mediated trajectory that bridges volunteering and political forms of civic engagement in later life. Our revised conceptualisation contributes to understanding how older adults’ civic engagement and political participation might influence, and be influenced by, the use of digital technologies.
This chapter explores informal helping behaviours in later life as a significant dimension of civic engagement. Defined as the contribution to others without the participation or mediation of a formal institution, two broad areas will be highlighted: helping behaviours happening within the family and helping behaviours that occur outside the family context. Regarding the former, we will first examine those helping behaviours performed by older people in their role as grandparents. Second, we will investigate helping behaviours exhibited by older people as caregivers of a relative with a dependency. In relation to helping behaviours developed outside the family, we will consider helping actions that take place in the community, such as assisting neighbours and friends. In each case, we will delve into their benefits as well as their negative consequences and potential barriers that could hamper their development. As a conclusion, we will highlight the importance of making informal helping behaviours visible in later life, as well the challenges for social policies directed towards improving the quality of life of informal helpers.
Civic engagement in later life is largely influenced by the experiences and trajectories of participation that people have had across the life course. These life-course features can determine who engages civically in later life, in which activities, and what enablers and barriers to civic engagement are experienced by those who choose to (or abstain from) engage civically. Although all of this seems at first glance to be given, this life-course dimension of late-life civic engagement remains under-theorised in the gerontological literature and has yet to be explored empirically. This chapter introduces some of the angles of investigation associated with the life-course approach to ageing and old age and argues that they all offer us important vantage points from which we can make sense of civic engagement in later life. The chapter summarises the state of affairs of research on civic engagement across the life course and synthesises research evidence from childhood to old age. In doing this, it brings attention to the role that past experiences can play in shaping older adults’ civic behaviours.
The concluding chapter draws on the arguments presented by the authors who contributed to this book to summarise current trends in research on late-life civic engagement. It does so by reflecting on civic engagement in later life as a multidimensional, multidetermined, dynamic and diverse phenomenon. The chapter starts by arguing that the multidimensionality of civic engagement has yet to be fully considered. It also warns about the challenges of establishing clear-cut distinctions between civic activities and the risks of neglecting older adults’ own perspectives on what civic engagement entails in later life. Second, it advocates for further exploration of the mutual influences between features of meso- and macro-level contexts and older people’s civic engagement, as well as the dynamics of this engagement throughout their lives. Finally, it identifies trends in civic engagement with regard to the diversity of ageing populations and calls for tailored approaches that take diverse groups of older adults into account. The chapter identifies key challenges that future studies on civic engagement in later life should address to make progress in the field. It also reflects the diverse contributions to the book in highlighting the evidence-based policy and practice implications associated with promoting greater engagement in civic activities among older adults.
