Rethinking Intergenerational Care In Turbulent Times: Families, Institutions and Support In Later Life

Contemporary ageing societies face mounting pressures on care systems as populations grow older, family structures transform, and welfare states undergo sustained restructuring in turbulent times. While formal institutions remain central to the organisation of support in later life, much care for older adults continues to be provided informally by family members, friends and neighbours. This session invites sociological reflection on the social arrangements, inequalities and tensions that shape care in later life, with particular attention to the actors who provide it.

Informal caregivers constitute a heterogeneous population whose experiences are shaped by gender, class, ethnicity and age. Among them, young carers represent a largely invisible group: children, adolescents, and young adults who take on significant caring responsibilities for older relatives or other older adults with care needs, often at the expense of their own educational trajectories, social participation, and wellbeing. Comparative and global perspectives on this phenomenon remain underdeveloped, as are analyses of the structural conditions that produce, sustain or obscure young caring.

This session welcomes theoretical, empirical, comparative and methodological contributions addressing: the organisation of informal care across welfare regimes and cultural contexts; experiences of informal caregivers, including young carers and intergenerational care arrangements; gender and intersectional dimensions of unpaid care; relations between formal support systems and informal networks; policy approaches to recognition and support; and intergenerational solidarity, obligation and ambivalence in care relationships.