Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Books: Research
This book examines some of the challenges facing older people, given a context of rising life expectancy, cuts to the welfare state, and widening economic and social inequalities. It explores precarity and ageing from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, critical perspectives, and contexts. Although cultural representations and policy discourses depict older people as a group healthier and more prosperous than ever, many older people experience ageing amid insecurities that emerge in later life or are carried forward as a consequence of earlier disadvantage. The collection of chapters develops a distinctive approach to understanding the changing cultural, economic and social circumstances that create precarity for different groups of older people. The aim of the book is to explore what insights the concept of precarity might bring to an understanding of ageing across the life course, especially in the context of the radical socio-political changes affecting the lives of older people. In doing so, it draws attention both to altered forms of ageing, but also to changing social and cultural contexts, and realities that challenge the assumption that older people will be protected by existing social programmes or whatever resources that can be marshalled privately.
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.
The chapter sets the foundation for the exploration of precarity and aging from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, critical perspectives, and contexts. It begins by outlining the concept of precarity and precariousness in fields such as geography and labour studies, examines how the concept has been applied to late life, and considers its relevance to the field of ageing. It establishes precarity as lens for drawing attention to insecurity and risk in later life. The chapter then poses a series of questions to guide reflection and ground the debates pursued by authors throughout the book, followed by a brief overview of the chapters ahead.
The profile of older adults in the Global North is changing rapidly with increasing proportions of foreign-born ageing populations. Despite their demographic significance, very little research has been conducted on the complex and varied experiences of ageing, risk, and insecurity in this group, particularly with regard to significant life course events such as migration. Using the conceptual lens of precarity, this chapter presents a nuanced analysis of risk and vulnerability in the context of ageing and migration. We begin with a brief overview of the key economic, psychosocial, and cultural markers of precarity in older immigrants. Next, we highlight the ‘politics of precarity’ inherent in the larger political economy of immigration and the invisibility of racialized older immigrants in health and social care policies. We conclude with a discussion on the challenges to understanding precarity in the context of migration, and provide suggestions for future research.
This chapter explores the potential for the development of critical approach to care based on the concepts of precarity and precariousness. Applying those concepts at the level of both theory and analysis, it is argued, serves to draw attention to both the socially constructed uncertainties of care provision conditioned by the labour market and corporate practices on the one hand, and the uncertainties of physical ageing and the ontological vulnerabilities that arise from our bodily existence on the other. Uncertainty also confronts those who provide care in either a paid or unpaid/informal capacity. The precarious conditions of work reflect the financial fragility of the economic supports and the changing and unequal markets that increasingly underpin the way care is provided to the increasing numbers of people who live extended lives today.
Over the last 15 years, frailty has emerged as one of the most powerful constructs in gerontology, geriatrics, and health care delivery. Yet the dominant portrayal and response to frailty tends to mask that frailty is experienced by older people and is historically situated. This chapter suggests that the lens of precarity can be used to focus on the risks and insecurities experienced by older people and convey complex understandings of need in late life. It outlines key lines of thinking with regards to frailty and sketches emerging work on precarity with regards to aging. It then points to two angles to reconsider ‘frailty’ in late life: the politics of frailty, and vulnerability as a means to resituate the response to ‘frail’ subjects. It follows this by outlining the contributions that can be made through an analysis of precarity and concludes with suggestions for theoretical and methodological development.
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.
This chapter presents the ways in which understandings of ethnicity and race have evolved, and what characterises the different perspectives on these social positions that are available (i.e. essentialism/ primordialism, structuralism/ circumstantialism and constructionism). In doing so, this chapter maps out what these different perspectives mean to how we make sense of the impact that ethnicity and race have in our lives, and explains why some scholars refer to ethnicity and race as background variables, while others regard them as social positions, locations or identification grounds. In doing so this chapter problematizes what previous research on the intersection of ethnicity/ race and ageing/ old age has shown as far as the understandings of ethnicity and race that inform this scholarship.
The introduction chapter introduces the concept of theorising and argues that time has come for scholarship on the intersection between ethnicity/ race and ageing/ old age to engage on a theorising exercise of its own. In doing so, this chapter sets the stage for the idea engaging in a scoping review of the last twenty years of research on this intersection makes sense at this point in time since we need to make sense of which understandings of ethnicity and race inform this scholarship. By arguing for why it is that our imagination needs to be expanded in this regard, this chapter identifies the scholarly fields that work on this intersection (i.e. social gerontology, ethno-gerontology and ethnicity/ race scholarship), and the ways in which these fields have become interested on the intersection in question. Last but not least (and as it is customary), this introduction chapter ends with a description of, and rationale for, how the book is structured.
This chapter focuses on the literature on ethnicity/ race and ageing/ old age that brings attention to issues related to health and social care. Just as it was the case in the previous chapter, this chapter exposes the main trends observed as far as what characterises the literature in focus. Besides being research on the North American context and focusing on very few ethnic minorities, this chapter discusses the fact that this literature takes for granted that ethnicity and race matter for older people’s health and social care service utilisation but does not, in fact, answers why this is the case. In addition, this chapter problematizes the fact that by focusing almost exclusively on older ethnic minorities’ experiences, the literature fails to bring attention to the views of those whose practices are important to the issues being discussed (i.e. health and social care staff). Noted is also that few of the studies reviewed take into account the attitudinal and/or behavioural patterns that are implicitly conveyed to pose a challenge to older ethnic minorities’ access and usage of health and social care services. Thus, by bringing attention to the areas that have received attention (i.e. access and usage/ attitudes, preferences and experiences/ the suitability of different programs, interventions and services and self-care practices), this chapter identifies the array of areas that remain unexplored.
