Generationing relations in challenging times: Americans and Canadians in mid-life in the great recession

Generation has been argued to be a crossroads phenomenon, where multiple socio-economic influences intersect (Biggs, 2007). It has also been conceptualized as a process, something done or performed dynamically and relationally, rather than a category into which one falls (McDaniel, 2004). As a relational process, generationing builds our self-identities and our concepts of how the social order is expected to move forward. Here, we pose the question of how the multi-layered processes of generationing are affected by the shock of the 2008 + economic crisis in the United States and in Canada, two countries very differently touched by the crisis. The U.S. has suffered greatly with home foreclosures, bankruptcies, very high unemployment and poverty. Canada, by contrast, has had normal low levels of home foreclosures, few bankruptcies, and a lower level of unemployment. Our data are qualitative interviews conducted among those aged 45-64 in two classes (working class and middle class) in comparable medium-sized cities in the two countries, from fall 2008 when the economic crisis was beginning, to spring 2010. Our findings suggest that the shock of the economic crisis has deeply transformed generation, intergenerational relations and the processes and concepts of generationing, particularly in the United States.