A new start? Negotiations of age and chrononormativity by older apprentices in England

Abstract

The decision to start a new career might seem an unusual one to make in later life. However, England has seen a steady rise in numbers of workers undertaking an apprenticeship in their fifties and sixties, through a government-funded policy initiative opening up training to adults at all stages of the lifecourse. At the same time, in most Western contexts, the amalgamation of ‘older’ and ‘apprentice’ presents a challenge to normative understandings of the ‘right age’ to undertake vocational training. What is it like to make a new start as an older worker? This paper draws on new qualitative research conducted in England with older apprentices, exploring how they found the experience and management of training ‘out of step’. Inspired by Elizabeth Freeman's temporalities approach, our findings reveal how powerful norms of age-normativity routinely structure understandings, experiences and identities of older-age training for both organisations and apprentices. While these norms demand careful negotiation by both apprentices and trainers, if managed successfully older workers gain significant benefits from their training. These findings have resonance not only for England, but for other international contexts considering expanding vocational training into older age. The paper concludes that if adult training schemes are to succeed, some fundamental changes may need to be made to understandings of age and ageing within contemporary workplaces.

Job (In)Security and Workers’ Training Decisions: A Framing Approach

“…A number of other studies have addressed the role of contextual factors for training investments (e.g. Evans & Kersh, 2014;Fuller et al, 2007;Leonard et al, 2018). However, we agree with the recent conclusion of Lebert and Antal (2016), who find that "concerning the influence of perceived job and employment insecurity on participation in further training, only little evidence is available" (p. 3).…”

No time to waste – How the social practices of temporal organisation change in the transition from work to retirement

“…I want to argue, however, that temporal deviations don't arise from (individual, intentional) resistance, but emanate from asynchronicity in connections between social practices (Blue, 2017;Lefebvre, [1984Lefebvre, [ ] 2004. Leonard et al (2018) exemplify this in their research on older apprentices who irritated work processes and rhythms in their companies -not because they intentionally wanted to challenge age stereotypes, but simply because of their participation in work practices which are usually carried out by younger people.…”

“… 1 Freeman’s concept of chrononormativity has been adopted in age studies and social gerontology and framed as ‘age-normativity’ (cf. Leonard et al., 2018), focussing, however, more on the practices of addressing someone as belonging to a specific age group and the – potentially discriminating – effects of these practices (e.g. in terms of ageism at the workplace) and not so much on life course transitions.…”

‘When I’m 65’: On the Age-negotiated Duty to Work

“…One such category is that of an apprentice. Leonard et al (2018) demonstrate the ways in which older persons occupying the position of an apprentice are perceived as breaking the normative expectations of how an apprentice and an older person should be. Thus, older apprentices are forced to negotiate their position in relation to powerful norms according to which old age and apprenticeship do not go hand in hand, if not to say that they contradict each other.…”