Friday, July 14, 2017
Turnbull Room (University of Glasgow)
Like other countries in Europe, Poland’s population is growing older, due to a combination of increasing life expectancies and decreasing birth rates. Such demographic change poses challenges for policymakers who often understand population aging to put strain on social-service, healthcare, and pension systems. In response, governments and civil society often emphasize “active aging,” a rubric encompassing a wide range of policies and programs meant to promote health, workforce participation, lifelong learning, and social engagement. These efforts can be quite popular among many older people in diverse contexts around the world where they are implemented. However, initiatives promoting “active aging” are often based on normative universalist understandings of aging and the life course that can omit historical and sociocultural specificity. This paper draws on twenty-two months of ethnographic fieldwork on aging in Poland to explore connections between post-socialist transformations and the politics of an aging society. In particular, it explores the fit between seemingly neoliberal ideals of personhood implied in “active aging” and older Poles’ experiences of “active aging.” This ethnographic data help in exploring macro-level questions such as: How might the current political climate shape pension and health care policy—and understandings and expectations of these policies? How could recent emigration transform the care of oldest generations? How will the aging of generations that came of age after socialism affect social policy? This paper will consider the promises and perils of demographic change from the perspective of the lived experiences of Poland’s oldest generations.
