The ambiguities of self-governance: Russian middle-aged middle-class women's reflections on ageing

Enacting the babushka: older Russian women ‘doing’ age, gender and class by accepting the role of a stoic carer

This article contributes to the debates about age-based practices of distinction that produce stable notions about the subjectivities of members of social categories and the social consequences of such categorisations for the subject. In Russia, a strong expectation that grandmothers will prioritise helping their adult daughters with child care and housework over their careers and personal lives shaped the social position of the babushka, an unpaid family carer dependent on the state and her children. When women can no longer maintain meaningful post-pension-age employment, they see the babushka figure as the dominant option on which to model their identities. Drawing on 20 biographical interviews with women aged 60 and over, the article explores their tactics of performing their ‘gendered age’ in various classed ways. The babushka identity encompasses two broad strategies of self-presentation: taking control over one's life by emphasising that it is one's deliberate choice to live as a post-professional and post-sexual subject, and downplaying one's own needs while contributing to the wellbeing of others. The article shows that for older Russian women who face sexism, ageism and the stigmatisation of poverty, denying their vulnerability to systemic marginalisation is a familiar way of seeking recognition and maintaining their sense of self-worth. It advances the empirical exploration of the agentic component of vulnerability by revealing how the denial of (inter)dependence is presupposed by the conditions of subject-formation.

Age-related differences in valence and arousal of emotion concepts

Emotion concepts are representations that enable people to make sense of their own and others’ emotions. The present study, theoretically driven by the conceptual act theory, explores the overall spectrum of emotion concepts in older adults and compares them with the emotion concepts of younger adults. Data from 178 older adults (⩾55 years) and 176 younger adults (20–30 years) were collected using the Semantic Emotion Space Assessment task. The arousal and valence of 16 discrete emotions – anger, fear, sadness, happiness, disgust, hope, love, hate, contempt, guilt, compassion, shame, gratefulness, envy, disappointment, and jealousy – were rated by the participants on a graphic scale bar. The results show that (a) older and younger adults did not differ in the mean valence ratings of emotion concepts, which indicates that older adults do not differ from younger adults in the way they conceptualise how pleasant or unpleasant emotions are. Furthermore, (b) older men rated emotion concepts as more arousing than younger men, (c) older adults rated sadness, disgust, contempt, guilt, and compassion as more arousing and (d) jealousy as less arousing than younger adults. The results of the present study indicate that age-related differentiation of conceptual knowledge seems to proceed more in the way that individuals understand how arousing their subjective representations of emotions are rather than how pleasant they are.

Reversing retirement frontiers in the spaces of post-socialism: active ageing through migration for work

This paper reworks the notion of active ageing through analysis of a case which reverses the retirement-migration nexus – people in the post-socialist realm who approach retirement age and then migrate to begin a new working life. They are thereby introducing a new and complex arrangement to the general concept of ‘international retirement migration’. In the post-socialist world, new retirement migration frontiers emerge in the context of a severe weakening of welfare systems. I illustrate this case with data from long-term research with ageing Latvian migrant women to the United Kingdom and the Nordic countries. Even those whose old-age pensions are more or less adequate nevertheless seek temporary employment and new cultural experiences abroad. However, the dominant trend has been towards the pauperisation of older parents and those approaching retirement age due to the significant decline in state welfare. This case of many older-age Latvians who de facto cannot retire due to low disposable income reveals ‘reverse frontiers of retirement’: working as long as they can, pushing their personal geographical frontiers outward by emigrating for work and making national frontiers more porous through transnational practices. Conceptually and geographically, the research holds relevance for a wider discussion of trends and contextual factors in other post-Soviet and post-socialist countries with increasing diversities among retirees.