About this Research Topic

Background

The sociology of ageing, disability, and health/illness are fields of research which have many crossovers, intersections and convergences, and these connections have been under-researched, which reflects the neglect of the sociology of ageing and disability in mainstream sociology more broadly. Although the pandemic has illuminated the experiences of older people and people with disabilities, disability and age have often been conflated, for instance, when calculating risk of infection and disease. Whilst there are some shared experiences of discrimination and precarity between older people and persons with disabilities, there are also important divergences in historical, political and theoretical underpinnings in these corpuses of work which need further exploration as does potential for conversations and/ or connection across distinct fields.

Although experiences of ageism and disablism are not understood universally, they have been intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic. The rationing of limited healthcare resources from ventilators to vaccines has been openly debated, particularly in relation to their allocation to older people, persons with disabilities, and/or those with chronic health conditions. The implementation of restrictions to movement and social interactions in many countries has also had a disproportionate effect on older and disabled groups, with many being disproportionately targeted, and their freedoms limited to protect them against those who are more likely to spread the virus. As groups amongst whom some people tend to already be sequestered from society, these practices have had cumulative long-term detrimental impacts on their mental, physical and social wellbeing and, arguably, on how both groups are represented in societies. Scholarship is responding to issues highlighted by the pandemic in the treatment and representation of older people and persons with disabilities, but this tends to focus either on older people or people with disabilities. Our goal is, instead, to move debates forward by seeking contributions that take both disability and ageing into account.

This Research Topic is calling for papers which discuss both the intersections and divergences of experiences and representations of both older people and disabled groups in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We are interested in receiving both empirical papers, those drawing on secondary data, and opinion pieces. The topics which are included in the scope of this call include: age discrimination; intergenerational ageism; disablism/ableism; intersectional analysis of age and disability experiences; approaches to age and disability which intersect with racism and/or sexism; novel sociological framings of ageing and/or disability; cross-cultural analysis of ageism and/or disablism; crip-time; issues arising from different conceptualisations of disability across disciplines and across the lifespan, the impact of social policy analyses of COVID-19 on older people, people with chronic health conditions and disabled people.

Keywords: Ageing, disability, COVID-19, pandemic, health, policy, ageism, disabilism, Chronic

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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