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Work and Entrepreneurship in Later Life
Work and Entrepreneurship in Later Life
Wednesday, 18 July 2018: 10:30-12:20
Location: 204 (MTCC NORTH BUILDING)
RC11 Sociology of Aging (host committee) Language: English
Aging work force is a central political and social matter. It is, however, surrounded by complexity. Population ageing and discourses on healthy ageing have led to many countries taking steps towards extending working life. At the same time work organisations are characterised by age normality which leads to discrimination and unemployment among older people. Policies to raise the retirement age are often based on homogenous representations of older people, which risk creating increased inequality and, above all, placing women with great responsibility for informal care and those with physically demanding jobs in an economically disadvantaged situation. Simultaneously, entrepreneurship is encouraged among older people and senior entrepreneurs are a growing group in many countries. The group is dominated by men, persons with access to financial capital and a higher education levels. This indicates that senior entrepreneurship is about wealthy people’s creation of new opportunities later in life. Economic recessions, however, contribute to an increase in new companies among older people who are unemployed, which suggests that entrepreneurship can also provide an alternative to paid work for those in a precarious position in the labour market. The underlying processes and the consequences of these differing conditions for entrepreneurship later in life need to be problematised and highlighted. This session looks at the labour market and work organisations from an age perspective and puts focus on challenges, opportunities and inequalities in relation to work and entrepreneurship in later life. We welcome both empirical and theoretical contributions.
Session Organizers:
Oral Presentations
Distributed Papers