Author: Małgorzata Malec-Rawiński
Stockholm University

Edition: Volume 61, Number 1, April 2021

Introduction: The aim of the article is to understand ageing as a process of lifelong learning through a whole variety of experiences, to consider what ageing in a biographical perspective means, and to investigate the process of biographical ageing within identity formation. The method of the project was based on the employment of in-depth narrative interviews with older Polish migrants now living in Sweden. The author argues that ageing is a natural process of the life cycle and is socially and culturally constructed and that consequently everyone experiences this process individually. One of the paper’s conclusions is that we do not age according to the numbers of years we live, but due to our life experience and the social-historical contexts in which we have lived. Furthermore, we age due to the biography we re/ construct while we are ageing during our life course. Ageing, from a biographical perspective, is a learning process in which people re/ construct their lives with social, educational and cultural contexts
and from which they draw from their experiences relating to social practices and historical events.

Keywords: biographical ageing, older migrants, life experiences, lifelong learning, identity formation, narrative gerontology

Share a copy of this abstract.

This article is part of AJAL, Volume 61:1. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.