Constructing 'Otherness' in the neighbourhood: Que(e)rying older adults' experiences of and talk about socio-cultural change

Abstract

Drawing from 108 qualitative interviews with 38 participants from an ethnographic study investigating older adults' experiences of inclusion and exclusion in two increasingly socio-economically diverse neighbourhoods, this paper employs a queer approach to identify how older adults construct and narrate socio-cultural change in the neighbourhood, as well as complicate simplistic binary understandings of older adults invoked in ageing-in-place literature. Drawing on neoliberal, heteronormative and racialised discourses, older adult participants engaged in practices of 'Othering' to narrate who did and did not belong in the neighbourhood. Participants referenced three primary non-residents when narrating change in their neighbourhoods: the homeless resident, the temporary resident and the racialised resident. Participants generally 'Othered' these three types of 'residents' as non-(re)productive, i.e. as not contributing to the social fabric of the neighbourhood in normatively valued ways. However, even as participants engaged in practices of 'Othering', a form of exercising power, it was evident that some 'Othered' figures disproportionately affected older adults' sense of belonging to their neighbourhoods. We found that shifting socio-cultural dynamics related to class, race and age, especially as they relate to the temporary resident, posed the biggest challenges to older adults' feelings of belonging, and relationships, to place. Our findings indicate that an inundation of moneyed people and unconventional living arrangements can inadvertently threaten older adults' social spaces and networks, as well as further bound their possibilities for meeting the neoliberal and heteronormative expectations of 'successful ageing' by working against older adults' continued social participation and connectedness. In turn, this paper considers the ways in which older adults are exclusionary and excluded subjects.