Titre

6.1.2 Training through fieldwork: Life-course and Gender

Description

Programme leaders:

Aline CHAMAHIAN, Université d’Aix-Marseille (AMU)
Francesca ZALTRON, University of Oriental Piemonte (UPO)
Virginie VINEL, University of Strasbourg (Unistra)

Scientific Rationale

All societies today are undergoing major transformations both in terms of age categorization—that is, how society classifies and names groups born at similar times—and in terms of the expectations, experiences, and demands associated with these categories. In particular, the global expansion of schooling has led to the emergence of categories of children and young people whose main activity is no longer work but the "profession of student.". With increased life expectancy, the number of people over the age of 70 is also growing on the continents covered by this study. The transition to adulthood varies considerably, depending on the age at which schooling is compulsory, the availability of paid work or employment, the type of housing, but also on norms relating to family formation and parenthood. Globalization has thus profoundly changed the course of life, but social age structures have not been standardized, let alone public policies based on age. Furthermore, these changes vary greatly according to income, social class (up to what age a child/young person goes to school, or when he/she is forced to work), gender (the differences between girls and boys remain significant), health status, and disability.

The research area explicitly adopts an intersectional approach, attentive to the intertwining of age, gender, social class, health status, and disability. As such, it maintains close links with the work carried out in WP4, particularly around vulnerability and health policies and material bodies and cultures, in order to jointly grasp the institutional, social, and embodied dimensions of contemporary transformations of age.

Methods and approaches

The research carried out under this program is based on fieldwork, depending on the possibilities offered by each country, the host institutions, local constraints, and the scientific objectives of the project. The research topics are developed jointly by the mobile researchers, the program’s managers, and the host institutions.

Depending on the context and field, the methods used may combine:

- Ethnographic methods: field journals, formal and informal interviews, participant and non-participant observation;
- Participatory/creative methods: group interviews, discussion forums with visual aids or other forms of mediation;
- Quantitative methodologies: secondary analysis of existing data;
- Historical methods: work on archives and documentary sources.

Particular attention is paid to methodological reflexivity, both in the choice of tools and their implementation in different sociocultural contexts. This reflexivity is a central element of the scientific exchanges and educational contribution of the Marie Curie Staff Exchange program.