Precarity in late life: Rethinking dementia as a ‘frailed’ old age

Abstract

Understandings and approaches to ageing that are organized around productivity, success, and active late life have contributed to views of dementia as an unsuccessful, failed or ‘frailed’ old age. Operating through dominant frameworks, socio-cultural constructs and organizational practices, the ‘frailties’ of the body and mind are often used to mark the boundaries of health and illness in late life, and shape responses accordingly. Our concern is that both the taken for granted and the ‘imagined’ can further marginalize persons who occupy the locations of dementia and disablement. This paper analyses the extent to which frailty and dementia are better understood in the context of new forms of insecurity affecting the life course. Drawing on understandings of ‘precarity’, we shift debates on the ‘fourth age’ away from age- or stage-based thinking, into a recognition of shared vulnerability and a responsibility for care. We argue that ‘precarity’ represents ‘new ageing’—in particular as one progresses to the upper extremes of the life course. Pairing our analysis with a consideration of inclusive forms of citizenship, we conclude with a call for a response that is grounded in an acknowledgement of fragility and limitation, and not the denial or distinction from it.