Themes

The strategies to conduct the research include organizing researchers and students to work within and across four themes, each co-led by teams of researchers addressing specific sub-questions:

Policies and Systems

What social, political and economic policies and systems best integrate and coordinate to meet needs and balance the rights of diverse groups of aging individuals, the spectrum of paid and unpaid carers, and broader communities across the case sites? How are gender and culture implicated? How is accountability for services that address diversity enacted? How, and to whom, are policy and decision makers held accountable?

Environments, Designs and Technologies

What universal and technological design elements are feasible, desirable and equitable for aging individuals and their carers, while encouraging and supporting inclusive social citizenship? How are gender and culture implicated? What type(s) of “community” are imagined through supports and technologies that aim to keep seniors at home? How does technology impact community, relational and leisure space for aging?

Approaches to Aging

What philosophical, cultural and gendered approaches to aging are most promising for individuals, families, and the spectrum of carers across communities? What are the pathways, choices and conditions available to people aging in different communities? How are intergenerational knowledges and stories impacted by being in urban spaces — off ‘the land’? How does the elasticity of space, contraction of space, and stretching of space impact families separated by distances and those forced to leave or relocate to urban environments? Who gets to be old, when and where? How are aging experiences shaped by intersecting forms of privilege?

Care Relationships: Conditions and Quality

What practices show promise in ameliorating living and working conditions to affect experiences of quality of life, work and care for aging individuals, as well as the range of paid/unpaid carers across settings? How do gender and notions of feminized work shape who does what? How can we understand the roles of multi-generational families and impacts of migration? How do people navigate transitions in spaces (home, community, institution) and places (jurisdictions)? How is quality care for seniors defined? How is age-friendliness impacted by permanent and temporary in-migration in later age? How do migrant care workers experience age-friendliness? How can we better understand safe spaces in aging and risk? What is ‘active’ aging in context? How do age-friendly initiatives address institutionalized and criminalized populations?