COVID-19 and older adults’ relationship to time “We have more time to look at ourselves in the mirror”
Type de matériel :
43
Discourses aimed at supporting the active aging of older adults, particularly through their participation in recreational, voluntary, or civic activities, occupy a prominent place in the field of gerontological studies. However, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in Quebec, people aged 70 years and older were asked to suspend all activities outside of their homes. How did older people who were members of an associative or community organization experience the public health measures decreed by the government of Quebec as of March 2020? How did the pandemic impact their life course and daily lives? These are the two questions that this research project aimed to answer by mobilizing life course theory and by using a narrative approach to collect the stories of 52 older adults. The relationship to time and age emerges as a central theme in the qualitative thematic analysis. The results call into question representations emphasizing the vulnerability of older people during the COVID-19 pandemic. They shed light on how older adults create, from their living conditions and subjectivity, spaces of agency and resistance in relation to structural health-related constraints and, more broadly, various social prescriptions related to aging.
Réseaux sociaux