Age Stereotypes in Appeals for Intergenerational Solidarity: Revealing the Paradox

Intergenerational solidarity has been a widely discussed normative concept in debates on global and health crises and is considered essential for addressing these challenges in the future. The COVID-19 pandemic can be seen as a case in point and a litmus test for the potential power of solidarity between generations during a crisis that affected age groups differently. Consequently, appeals for solidarity and representations of age(ing) were prevalent themes in the public media coverage. However, how these representations of age(ing) are precisely connected and negotiated in pleas for intergenerational solidarity still needs further exploration.

This paper addresses this gap and investigates how age as a category of identity and difference is inscribed in appeals for solidarity and how intergenerational relations are constructed in the public media discourse. Using qualitative content analysis for a text sample from German newspaper coverage from March 2020 to July 2021, we show that the representation of the young and the old in pleas for solidarity focuses on their physical well-being, social participation, and social justice. Regarding the construction of intergenerational relations, our analysis reveals a paradox which is explained with poststructuralist concepts: In appeals for intergenerational solidarity to avoid discrimination and foster cohesion, representations of age(ing) are (re)produced as binary oppositions, leading to a bisected construction of age through rhetoric othering.

In our conclusion, we are taking these findings as a starting point to consider how focusing on ageing as an anthropological trait and recognising the diversity within age groups and generations could help mitigate and deconstruct the paradox in appeals for intergenerational solidarity.