Introduction

There has been a substantial increase in research dealing with the various forms of what has been termed ‘precarious employment’ (Arnold and Bongiovi, 2013; Campbell and Price, 2016; Kalleberg, 2018; Prosser, 2016; Vosko, 2010). Guy Standing's book The Precariat (2011) drew attention to what he saw as the precarious employment situation of older people (among other population groups), arguing that inadequate pension provision had led many to take new insecure jobs in later life. Standing conceptualized precarity as a labour outcome, related to individuals being in precarious employment, rather than older workers feeling precarious in a psychological sense. He argued (2011, p 59) that while some may be dissatisfied with being in precarious jobs (so-called ‘groaners’), others might be perfectly happy with this situation (‘grinners’).

This chapter contributes to debates on precarity among older workers in two ways. First, it develops the concept of ‘ontological precarity’ as a means of describing the individual experience of anxiety arising from the everyday experience of precarious work. This builds on the work of scholars such as Millar (2017) and Worth (2016), who focus on precarity as a lived experience rather than solely as a labour outcome. Second, it develops a new theoretical framework for understanding ontological precarity, which extends the scope of enquiry beyond individuals’ labour market position in order to take account of their broader circumstances (Campbell and Burgess, 2018).

We argue that for a significant proportion of older workers, the financial pressure to work for longer, combined with limited alternative employment prospects, gives rise to a heightened sense of precarity. To understand this, it is crucial to locate older workers’ experiences of precarity within the context of a shifting ‘welfare state’ landscape; this includes rising State Pension ages and attempts to extend working lives (Grenier et al, 2017; Lain and Loretto, 2016). It is also important to take into account the fact that pressures to work longer are related to a decline in the financial support within households, a key change in recent years being the rise in the number of older people living alone (Office for National Statistics, 2017).

The theoretical model presented in this chapter identifies three intersecting ‘domains’ of precarity: precarious employment, precarious welfare states and precarious households. We suggest that older workers’ sense of ontological precarity stems from feeling ‘trapped’ by the varying interactions of precarity in these three domains.

Introduction

Luhmann (1982, p 232) has asserted that the “evolution or modernization of society has often been described as a process of increasing system differentiation and pluralization”. One dimension of these dynamic processes is the acquisition and constant renegotiation of ‘boundary roles’. Boundary roles are those that have potential to transform social relations and cultural practices through drawing ideas and experiences across arenas (Luhmann, 1982, p 236). For example, the woman who engages in paid employment while retaining the main responsibility for domestic and caring work may be in such a role. Thus she may identify herself as a worker and a carer and as someone who must manage the boundaries of the public and private. This fluid or porous boundary has the potential to transform her sense of self and shift the perceptions of others. In this chapter, we discuss some of the key issues that frame women's health and well-being at mid-life to explore these ideas further. In particular, we concentrate on how health and well-being intersect with women's structural and familial circumstances, and their views and experiences of caring roles. We illustrate our arguments by drawing on a qualitative study of women in their fifties carried out by the authors.

Gilleard and Higgs comment that “times change and ageing too is changed by time”. They assert that the contemporary experience of ageing now encompasses a greater diversity in cohort, class and gendered relations than existed for previous generations and that these social and demographic changes “render less possible any common cultural position than can be popularly represented as ‘ageing’” (Gilleard and Higgs, 2000, p 8). One feature of this changing ageing process is that the fifties may be differentially experienced by social class and gender and reflect an increasingly complex and diverse experience of social and economic structures (Arber and Ginn, 1995; Benson, 1997; Sulkunen et al, 1997; Gilleard and Higgs, 2000). In these respects, changing experiences of ageing may challenge the boundaries between expectations of personal and social life at midlife and the often contradictory realities facing individuals.