Grey areas: the housing experiences of older people
This is a qualitative study drawing on the experience of thirty-four individuals aged between 65 and 93 years. To capture the dynamism of older people’s housing experiences, I adopt a life course perspective on their post-50 housing pathways. To recognise the many influences of these trajectories, I...
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| Format: | Dissertation |
| Language: | English |
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ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
01-01-2004
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| Online Access: | Get full text |
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| Summary: | This is a qualitative study drawing on the experience of thirty-four individuals aged between 65 and 93 years. To capture the dynamism of older people’s housing experiences, I adopt a life course perspective on their post-50 housing pathways. To recognise the many influences of these trajectories, I pay particular attention to how the wider macro context interacts with the lives of individuals to shape their housing outcomes and prospects. Part one (chapters 3-5) of the thesis shows how cohort factors interact with the changing structural and policy context, to set the parameters of people’s housing ‘careers’. Housing tenure has changed in its form, function and meaning quite dramatically in the lifetime of study participants. Although owner-occupation is currently the housing norm – accommodating nearly 70% of households – the size, character and meaning of owner occupation as a housing outcome is quite different now than it was when most of the study participants turned 50. The first part of the thesis thus tells the story of the normalisation of home ownership and the residualisation of social renting from the point of view of those who have known something different and lived through the change. Part two (chapters 6-7) then considers the implications of these cohort effects for the use and meaning of home in the context of the various housing-relevant biographical events that punctuate people’s lives. I take two kinds of ‘biographical disruptions’ as examples. These are on the one hand the changing housing needs associated with the development of ill health and/or body impairments, and on the other hand, the emotional and practical challenge of bereavement. In this part of the thesis I show how individual biographies interact with cohort effects to shape the material and emotional geographies of home. |
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