Older workers mobility practices : issues and limits in the french context”

Abstract

This article analyzes mobility practices of older
workers in four retirement homes. Age and older
workers management is legally supervised in the
French context and it aims at maintaining and
enhancing the employability of over fifty
employees. Efficient and prospective age management is the main issue of research in the scope
because many limits and perverse effects of “good
practices” and devices have been pointed out.
Therefore, understanding the inefficiency of age
management practices should be one of the main
research objective but few studies develop such fine
analysis of practices. Moreover, from an original
point of view, age management can be seen as a set
of mobility policies and practices. Our suggestion is
thus to explore mobility practices of seniors in order
to identify and understand their issues and limits.
Why is it that mobility practices of older workers are
not efficient to maintain their employability ?
Case studies and cognitive mapping used in this
exploratory research offers this detailed analysis of
practices and representations. We investigated and
confronted practices and circuits of representations
of interviewed actors (Direction and employees of
three age brackets) in four retirement homes. It
reveal : 1) no effect of the potential of mobility of
structures on actual practices ; 2) a critical point
derived from occupational wear leading to some difficulties for older workers to understand/support and
to get involved in mobility devices. Our purpose is
to propose a framework to understand issues and
limits of mobility practices of older workers and to
enhance their efficiency.