What the pandemic and its impact on the mobility and well-being of older people can teach us about age-friendly cities and communities.

From the start of the pandemic, questions were raised concerning how the pandemic could change or even transform relationships to our living environments. COVID-19 has had a disproportionate impact on the health and well-being of older people due to the increased risk of severity of the disease with both advancing age and associated co-morbidities. Restrictions on the movement of older people have also been more severe, with many countries imposing restrictions based on chronological age. In Portugal, confinement measures were targeted at older persons in terms of sheltering-at-home orders for those over 70. This paper looks at the impact of these restrictions on the lives of older people and asks what we can learn from the pandemic about the concept of age-friendly cities (WHO, 2007a). We look at the lived experience of older people to understand how their well-being and mobility were impacted during the crisis and its aftermath. The study was undertaken in four urban areas: Aveiro, Coimbra, Lisbon, and Faro. Data was collected using semi-structured interviews analysed using a process of thematic coding based on the eight pillars of the WHO's Age-Friendly City Checklist (WHO, 2007b). The results are discussed using conceptualisations from the new mobilities paradigm: existential mobility, connection and (im)mobility governance, offering new ways of thinking about age-friendliness in and out of crisis.

Vulnerability in context; hard numbers, tricky words and grey areas for gerontology.

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Portuguese government identified those aged 70 or more as a risk group, placing a special duty of protection on them to shelter-at-home. This paper asks how Portuguese municipalities, using Facebook posts, communicated the risk to older adults and to what extent ageist stereotypes were found in the language and frames employed. Over 3800 Facebook posts made by Portuguese municipalities concerning older adults and COVID-19 published between March and July 2020 were analyzed. Language counts for age-related words were used in a first round of content analysis followed by a process of thematic analysis. Findings indicate that the language used to address Portuguese older adults could be understood as ageist in terms of homogenizing older people as a fixed group. The communication of risk was often conflated with the vulnerability narrative already observed in the extant literature. However, context- and culture-specific themes of 'solidarity', 'inter-relatedness', 'duty of care' and 'support for those living in isolation' were also found. The study highlights the extent to which language, culture and context are intertwined with our understanding of age, aging and ageism. It provides a culturally-specific case study, which challenges both gerontological interpretations of vulnerability and neoliberal frames which focus responsibility on the individual regardless of age. We argue that these alternative frames echo the emerging discourse of mutual aid and solidarity, providing a wider context for addressing vulnerability in a health crisis.

The twin faces of ageism, glorification and abjection: A content analysis of age advocacy in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

While the government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have varied across the globe, there has been a unifying cry from academia and public health professionals warning of the detrimental effects of attaching our understanding of this new threat to our already ageist attitudes. What is inescapable is that COVID-19 has an age-related risk component and the latest data shows that risks start to rise for people from midlife onwards. As governance agencies, professional practice, and academia work towards assessing, communicating, and addressing this risk, we ask: are existing gerontological conceptualisations of ageism appropriate for this exceptional situation and what is being (re)produced in terms of an aged subjectivity? Following van Dyk's (2016) critique of gerontology's 'othering' through both 'glorification' (third age) and 'abjection' (fourth age), a content analysis of statements and policy documents issued in response to COVID-19 provides evidence of well-meaning and inadvertent ageism through homogenizing language, the abjection/glorification binary within 'old age', and the power binary constructed between age and an age-neutral midlife. The paper concludes with reflections on future directions for ageism research beyond COVID-19.