Lifecourse

Nas sociedades avançadas, a juventude constitui uma fase da vida marcada, socialmente, por condições estruturais particulares e formas culturais com um certo grau de especificidade. As mudanças profundas que estão a ocorrer nestas sociedades, tanto nas esferas económica e política como no espaço das relações familiares, interferem inevitavelmente nos modos como as jovens gerações vivem os seus quotidianos, protagonizam a transição para a vida adulta e equacionam o futuro. O estudo das condições e estilos de vida, das posições e disposições, dos espaços e tempos, dos trajectos e projectos, dos valores e práticas sociais que caracterizam a juventude tem, pois, constituído uma área de interessantes investigações e debates na sociologia portuguesa, correspondendo a um múltiplo propósito de analisar fenómenos relevantes da sociedade de hoje, mas também de perscrutar tendências para a sociedade de amanhã e propor políticas que as consubstanciem. As pesquisas sobre os jovens permitem, na verdade, perspectivar as mudanças sociais que se prefi-guram e uma melhor compreensão das características do mundo contempo-râneo. Os comportamentos e atitudes das gerações mais jovens constituem um barómetro susceptível de antecipar o que podem ser as configurações so-cietais futuras. O presente capítulo ensaia uma reflexão acerca do modo como a juven-tude é vivida no Portugal contemporâneo, com base em vários estudos nacio-nais e europeus em que esta equipa tem participado, 1 e dando conta também dos principais resultados de algumas outras pesquisas sociológicas que têm vindo a desenvolver-se, neste domínio, no nosso país. 239 1 Orientações dos jovens portugueses sobre o emprego e a família; Gender, parenthood and the changing European workplace: young adults negotiating the work-family boundary (Transitions), 2003-2005; Os jovens e o mercado de trabalho: caracterização, estran-gulamentos à integração efectiva na vida activa e a eficácia das políticas, 2004-2005; Tra-jectórias escolares e profissionais de jovens com baixas qualificações, 2007.

The subjective, lived elements of old age in physical activity promotion are central in defining how older people ascribe meaning to experiences of being active. Many such meanings are developed throughout the life course. From a longitudinal perspective, although continuity theory can be helpful in understanding older people’s sense of self and personal change, its focus on the individual can underplay the substantive influence of socio-cultural factors on the way age and ageing are understood. Using a figurational sociological framework, we illustrate how older peoples’ sense of self can be interdependent with how others define them, and how they define others. We offer recommendations about how this shift in perspective can empower older people to be active agents within figurations of physical activity promotion.

Grandparents are becoming an increasingly important source of childcare. However, caring for grandchildren may have negative health consequences particularly for grandparents with intensive commitments such as those with primary care responsibilities. To date most studies on this issue are based on cross-sectional data and do not take earlier life circumstances into account. Thus, it is not known whether (or to what extent) the relationship between grandparental childcare and health is due to cumulative advantage or disadvantage throughout the lifecourse or to the impact of grandchild care per se.

Employing data from waves 1-3 of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe we investigated the longitudinal relationship between grandparental childcare (i.e. intensive and non-intensive) and health once cumulative histories of advantage or disadvantage are taken into account. We used latent class analysis to categorise respondents according to childhood socio-economic and health conditions drawing on life history information. Experiences in adulthood (e.g. periods of ill health) were also captured. We created a latent continuous physical health variable based on self- and observer-measured indicators. OLS regression was used to explore the association between physical health at wave 2 and grandparental childcare at baseline, controlling for conditions in childhood and adulthood, and for health and socio-economic characteristics.

We found a positive longitudinal association between grandchild care and health even after earlier life health and socio-economic conditions were taken into account. However, this significant association was found only for grandmothers, and not grandfathers. Our results suggesting the health benefits of grandchild care are important given the widespread provision of grandparental childcare in Europe. However, further research on underlying mechanisms and causal pathways between grandchild care and grandparent health, as well as on gender differences in the pattern of association, is needed.

The nature of transitions across the lifecourse is changing, as are the ways in which these transitions are understood and investigated by social scientists. Much earlier debate on older adults’ transitions has tended to be rooted in accounts of relatively fixed social roles and age-based social stages. However, while we can detect some tendencies towards destandardization and restandardization of the lifecourse in later life, we can also see significant continuities in the influences of socio-economic position, gender, and ethnicity, as well as of generational position, that continue to affect people’s life chances, as well as the expectations and experiences of transition of older people. The paper examines the interplay of these complex and contradictory structural positions and cultural locations on transitions, and consider the ways in which older people use and understand learning, formally and informally, as a way of exercising agency and recreating meaning. It will draw on recent research into the life histories of adults in Scotland, a relatively small country with a typically European pattern of demographic change. The study was concerned with agency, identity, change and learning across the life course, and this paper will concentrate on the evidence relating to experiences of transition in later life. It will particularly focus on the idea of ‘educational generations’ as a key concept that helps us understand how adults use and interpret learning in later life.

Nas sociedades avançadas, a juventude constitui uma fase da vida marcada, socialmente, por condições estruturais particulares e formas culturais com um certo grau de especificidade. As mudanças profundas que estão a ocorrer nestas sociedades, tanto nas esferas económica e política como no espaço das relações familiares, interferem inevitavelmente nos modos como as jovens gerações vivem os seus quotidianos, protagonizam a transição para a vida adulta e equacionam o futuro.

In contrast to individual life-course projections, North-east African age organization enables male individuals to pass as a group of age-mates through a defined sequence of age grades. The Gadaa organization of the Boran of Kenya and Ethiopia combines this type of age-staging with a generational mode of recruitment. A son gets introduced to a specific set correlated to that of his father and subsequently changes his status every eight years as a member of his cohort. The son’s set always remains at an equal distance from his father’s set that synchronically ‘moves’, always some distance ahead, through the same life cycle. Such a filial ‘bond’, embedded as it is in the group’s socio-political organisation, can have affective values but it can also become a ‘fetter’ on personal decisions. The moment a member of the family fails to stick to the rules of timing for legitimate procreation the whole generational chain is brought out of step. Demographic surveys suggest that large numbers of people no longer match the ideal correlation of age and generation set membership, nominally having fallen out of the system. In spite of this, Gadaa organisation is still very much present among the Boran and is far from ‘extinction’. This article deals with the question of how an institutionalized aging and procreation ‘charter’ can work as a coherent framework in the face of the erosive forces of fission and individual non-compliance. On a deeper theoretical level, the study raises the question of why at all a society introduces such a highly elaborated and normatively sanctioned way of ‘collective aging’ and generational streamlining? Is there a need ‘to be in step’ with others?

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Étude comparative examinant les expériences d'établissement et d'intégration des familles immigrantes originaires de la Chine et de l'Afrique sub-saharienne dans la ville transfrontalière d'Ottawa-Gatineau (Canada) à travers les parcours de vie.

This issue of RDS features eight original articles and art which analyze how disability and aging appear in research, policy and everyday life. Contributors to this international collection use interdisciplinary perspectives to explore the complex relationship between disability and aging, and challenge disability and age related myths and misconceptions.