Since the 2000s, migration within and into the European Economic Area (EEA) has increased significantly. Some migrants will retire in their destination countries. This makes questions about their retirement protection increasingly relevant for social policy. To address this, we examine past experience. Using the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we compared the pensions of post-1945 migrants, who settled in their host country, with non-migrants. We considered migrants who moved into and within the EEA, from poorer and richer countries. Where pensions were lower we sought to explain this in relation to the migration literature. As expected, we found some evidence that migrants’ pensions were lower, although significant variations were observed between EEA migrants and non-EEA migrants. However, surprisingly there were few indications that migrant pensions were lower because migrants as a whole were disadvantaged through late labour market entry or employment discrimination. Instead educational disadvantage mattered most, particularly for the highly educated: all highly educated migrants received lower rewards for their human capital than comparable non-migrants. Migrants who settled in countries with less-protective pension systems were also disadvantaged. Making retirement outcomes for migrants more equal would, thus, mean improving career opportunities for highly educated migrants and steps towards more-inclusive pension systems everywhere.

That older people should be consumers and active agents has dominated policy discourse across health, social care and housing that has a core care function. This discourse has some established and long-standing critics, such as Gilleard and Higgs, and yet the central question(s) a consumerist discourse raises remains surprisingly relevant today. The purpose of this forum article is to reconsider the viability of active agency amongst older people in the context of empirical research on information-giving across health, social care and housing that has been published since the paper by Gilleard and Higgs in 1998. Information-giving is the key consumer choice mechanism, and yet research is currently located in separate literatures. Giving these separate fields some coherence engages with and provides important empirical commentary. There is little or no evidence that information alone triggers active agency for older people in regard to their health, social care or housing. However, there is consistent evidence that discussion, deliberation and dialogue – or the practices associated with Habermas’ theory of communicative action – are desirable to older people in the context of active agency. More research is needed to demonstrate efficacy beyond communicative approaches being desirable.

Organisational priorities for health care focus on efficiency as the health and care needs of populations increase. But evidence suggests that excessive planning can be counterproductive, leading to resistance from staff and patients, particularly those living with cognitive impairment. The current paper adds to this debate reporting an Institutional Ethnography of staff delivering care for older patients with cognitive impairment on acute orthopaedic wards in three National Health Service hospitals in the United Kingdom. A key problematic identified in this study is the point of disjuncture seen between the actualities of staff experience and intentions of protocols and policies. We identified three forms of disjuncture typified as: ‘disruptions’, where sequenced care was interrupted by patient events; ‘discontinuities’, where divisions in professional culture, space or time interrupted sequenced tasks; and ‘dispersions’, where displaced objects or people interrupted sequenced care flow. Arguably disruption is an integral characteristic of care work; it follows that to enable staff to flourish, organisations need to confer staff the autonomy to address systemic disruptions rather than attempt to eradicate them. Ultimately, organisational representations of ‘good practice’ as readily joined up, impose a care standard ‘stereotype’ that obscures rather than clarifies the interactional problems encountered by staff.

Parker's review in the last issue has provided us with a number of questions concerning the relationship between case management services and the needs ofcarers (Parker, 1990a). Essentially, she makes three main points; the first is to question whether there is evidence that some case management services can improve outcomes for carers, the second is about experimental studies, and the third is to raise the question of the financial costs experienced by carers.

An overview of the experimental literature on ageing and cognition in the areas of sensation and perception, attention and performance, learning and memory, and intelligence and problem solving is provided. The review indicates definite deficits in most functions, and therefore provides a basis for understanding the origin of the stereotypes of the elderly as senile, obsolete, and useless. However, when viewed in a broad, integrated perspective, there seems to be grounds for a less pessimistic outlook than most people have. The most positive findings are some recent ones in the area of memory, which show that the elderly are able to make use of the knowledge they have accumulated over a lifetime to perform some tasks as good as or better than younger adults. Some researchers have begun to lay plans for the development of intervention programmes for the elderly, and we suggest some areas which may be profitable for further development. There are, however, some difficult motivational issues that need to be dealt with. It seems that many elderly persons claim to be functioning to their own satisfaction, from a cognitive perspective.

The paper reports on a study carried out in 1990 for the Department of Health looking at the development of local authority multi-purpose residential homes for elderly people in England and Wales. A national survey showed that one in five public sector residential homes for elderly people would soon be multi-purpose. This proportion could be expected to increase in the 1990S. Many of these homes had become the centre for virtually all the community support services for elderly people in the neighbourhood. Despite some obvious management advantages in making use of residential home facilities for older people in the community, there have to be serious reservations about a multi-purpose model. Case studies in six multi-purpose homes suggest that residents themselves may gain little or nothing from this arrangement. Few interact with elderly people from the neighbourhood in the day centre. So much activity on the premises meant that invasions of residents' privacy and space were common.

Subjective wellbeing was examined amongst 274 adults living with HIV in Australia and the United States of America. There were 164 adults aged 49 years and under, and 110 adults aged 50 years and over. Participants completed a composite questionnaire comprising the Personal Wellbeing Index-Adult (PWI-A), the HIV-Unsupportive Social Interactions Inventory (USII), and demographic and health-related items. Participants reported mean PWI-A scores of 54.7 points, considerably below the Western population normative range of 70–80 points. Older adults reported significantly greater subjective wellbeing compared to younger adults, but still below the normative range. Experiences of unsupportive social interactions were a significant predictor of reduced subjective wellbeing amongst all participants. Qualitative comments provided a greater understanding of the characteristics and psychological devices that enable some older adults to maintain and/or increase subjective wellbeing, even in the face of negative stressors such as unsupportive social interactions. This provides valuable information for service providers and clinicians as HIV increasingly becomes recognised as a disease affecting older adults in developed nations. Rather than positioning the ageing HIV-population as a potential burden, it is proposed that learning more about the coping mechanisms employed by older adults with HIV could prove beneficial for the HIV-population as a whole.

The aim of this paper is to review the social constructionist view of age and ageing that emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It begins with a general consideration of social constructionism as an epistemological framing of the world, before turning to its use in social gerontology. It considers two distinct social constructionist approaches treating later life as a social reality: (a) as a structural consequence of the rise of the modern state and its organisation of the labour market and (b) as a consequence of shifting cultural and social representations. Arguing that the earlier more structuralist accounts have gradually become overshadowed by concerns over age as identity, socially constructivist approaches now place as much emphasis upon the social representation of age as on its social-structural organisation. The paper then reviews the costs and benefits of social constructionism in general and its becoming a key part in the study of ageing. Its benefits arise from drawing attention to the salience of the cultural and the social in fashioning age and ageing and thereby advancing the sociology of later life. At the same time, social constructionist approaches to old age risk neglecting an other personal and social reality arising from corporeal decline and fear of the body-to-come. The paper concludes by noting how, whether approaching ageing and old age as natural kinds or as human kinds, adopting biological or sociological methodologies, all such methods privilege the externality of age – whether as a social or a biological fact. What is not captured by either is the problematic internality of age. What might be called the subjectivity of age will remain a topic for cultural representation, beyond the methods of both biological and social science.

Elder law is often approached in terms of a ‘body’ of law. In this article, I argue for a contextualised and externalised perspective on the ageing individual as the subject of elder law. Elder law relates to the implications of law as an institutionalisation of society seen through the lens of older persons. The aged subject is a contested and differentiated social construct to be studied in relation to an externalised social ‘problem’ and properly contextualised. Whereas the ageing individual in the context of labour law and anti-discrimination regulation turns out to be remarkably young, the specific history of LGBT persons in society comes to the fore in cases where age intersects with a ground such as sexual orientation. The ‘ageing’ worker must thus be understood in relation to work as the dominant distributive order in society, and in relation to institutions and developments associated with work. Due to the role of age as a traditional social stratifier, the prohibition against age discrimination has been given a weaker format than have prohibitions against other kinds of discrimination, and the ban on ageism has failed to achieve a clear legal status. Deficiencies in the measures taken against age discrimination are also evident in their incapacity to address situations where age intersects with other grounds, resulting in a compartmentalised application and interpretation of discrimination bans, leaving vulnerable sub-groups without protection. In sum, elder law is very much a field in process and – although arguing for the added value of a contextualised perspective – it may for the time being suffice to say that ‘elder law is what elder law researchers do’.

Social care to assist with the activities of daily living is a necessity for many older people; while informal care provided by family members can be a first step to meeting care needs, formal care provided by professionals is often needed or preferred by older people and their families. In England, the number of older people paying for formal care is set to rise, driven by an ageing population and the limited resources of local authorities. Little is known about how older people and their families experience the potentially disruptive processes of deciding upon, searching for and implementing such care, including the financial implications. This paper explores accounts of seeking self-funded social care in England, told by older people and their families in 39 qualitative interviews. These accounts, which we call ‘care chronicles’, include stories about the emergence of care needs and informal care-giving, the search for formal care, including interacting with new systems and agencies, and getting formal (paid) care, either as the recipient or an involved family member. Stories are analysed through the lens of biographical disruption, and analysis demonstrates that such disruptions can occur for older people and their families across the entirety of the care chronicle. Needing, seeking and getting care all have the potential to cause practical and symbolic disruptions; moreover, these disruptions can be cumulative and cyclical, as attempts to resolve or minimise one disruption can lead to new ones. While the concept of biographical disruption is a mainstay in medical sociology, it is less frequently applied to issues relating to social care, and most often takes embodiment as a key focus. This study is novel in its application of the concept to experiences of seeking self-funded care, and in its introduction of the concept of ‘care chronicles’, which invite a longer and broader view of biographical disruptions in the lives of older people with care needs and their families.

This exploratory descriptive study investigated barriers and enablers to the provision of leisure activities for people living in three Australian residential aged care facilities (RACFs) that operated under a household model of care. This research is unique in the international context, as few studies have explored the understandings and experiences of personal care attendants' (PCAs) perceptions of what impacts leisure provision for people living in RACFs. Qualitative data were collected from 17 PCAs via four focus groups. Barriers to leisure provision were identified as PCA–resident ratios, competing demands of the PCA role and a prioritisation of physical care tasks over leisure-related activities. The severity of residents' dementia (cognitive and functional deficits) as well as behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia were also framed as barriers to participation in and the provision of leisure. Participants identified enablers of leisure provision as related to perceptions of leisure, the experiential knowledge of staff, organisational support and resourcing. The study findings suggest that enhancing leisure provision for people living with dementia will require attention to system issues (i.e. staffing levels, ratios, PCA role demands) as well as PCA knowledge and capability to facilitate person-centred leisure.

Citizenship and dementia studies have, during the last 15 years, grown into a substantial body of research recognising the experiences and agentic powers of people living with dementia. This article aims to contribute to and extend this research field. We undertake the aim through a feminist posthumanist non-representational analysis of a diary written by a man with Alzheimer's disease to explore the diary's potential to enact citizenship. The first section of the article examines current approaches to democracy, citizenship and dementia, and advances the concept intra-active citizenship, an approach that extends the individual and understands citizenship as enacted in and through entanglements of human–more-than-human agents. The second section is a theory-informed analysis of the diary, in which events, relations, doings and affective resonances constitute the analytical categories. The third section discusses whether the diary and the writing of it might enact citizenship, and if so, what kind of citizenship. The article concludes with a reflection on how our posthumanist, non-representational approach might pave a new path for theorising and, hence, contribute to new understandings of dementia and citizenship.