PRECARITY IN LATE LIFE: RETHINKING DEMENTIA AS A FRAILED OLD AGE

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. 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 whether taken for granted, or ‘imagined’, ideas that couple dementia and frailty can marginalize persons who occupy the locations of dementia and disablement. In this paper, we draw on the concept of ‘precarity’ to reconsider debates, and shift interpretations of the ‘fourth age’ away from age- or stage-based thinking into a recognition of the shared vulnerability and responsibilities for care. We conclude with a call to acknowledge the fragility and limitations which affect human lives, and argue that this recognition be grounded in an inclusive form of citizenship.