Introduction

There is considerable value in exploring our relationship with civil society through the lifecourse for a number of reasons. These include the direct relationship between age and civil society, the ability to consider the antecedents that shape our later involvement in civil society and how our relationship with civil society changes over time. Elder and Giele's (2009) framework for understanding the lifecourse (Figure 2.1) can be readily applied to our study of the relationship between individuals, families and social groups with civil society.

There have only been a few studies that have examined civic participation over the lifecourse using such a perspective. For example, Hogg (2016) used life-history interviews with 26 older-aged volunteers in England in order to examine the nature of their volunteering behaviour over their lifecourse. Using lifecourse maps Hogg investigated Davis Smith and Gay's (2005) categorisation of older volunteers into three main types: constant (volunteering over the lifecourse with the same or similar organisations); serial (volunteering over the lifecourse but intermittently and with different organisations); and trigger (those who begin to volunteer later in life). Using retrospective life-history interviews, Hogg was able to demonstrate how volunteering was often intertwined with other work and non-work roles, so that volunteering ‘should be understood as being highly situated within the rhythms and relations of everyday life’ (2016: 186). And, clearly, these rhythms and relations change through the lifecourse.

Lindsey and Mohan (2018) also produced similar maps of volunteering trajectories using data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS)/ Understanding Society (USoc) for more than 2,000 volunteers over 15 years (between 1996 and 2011). Their analysis highlighted the distinction between short-term volunteering (71 per cent of all volunteers) and long-term volunteering (29 per cent of volunteers). They were also able to demonstrate that over half of all voluntary ‘episodes’ reported by cohort members were undertaken by less than a third of those that had reported having ‘ever’ volunteered, what they describe as echoing the notion of a ‘civic core’ (Mohan and Bulloch 2012). However, in order to consider the interrelationships between volunteering and the lifecourse Lindsey and Mohan had to draw upon qualitative data from a different and smaller dataset, the Mass Observation Project.