Age at Work: the Great Unifier, the Great Divider

What happens at work, and in workplaces, clearly has a lot to do with different jobs, occupations and class more generally, but workplaces are much more than that. Workplaces are also places of age, where age is “done”, is constructed and reconstructed, is experienced, celebrated and denied. At work, people are routinely assessed by age, sometimes in terms of being a certain number of years, more often through some form of cultural assessment of occupational or professional age – is this a young worker? An experienced professional of middle years? An older or simply an old worker? Are they ready for promotion or are they well past their ‘sell-buy date’? Just past it? Age is something other people have. These are some of the many issues around age, ageing and ageism that we explore in our new book, Age at Work: Ambiguous Boundaries of Organizations, Organizing and Ageing.