PRECARIZED AGEING‐IN‐PERIFERIA: Low‐Income Older Adults in a Transforming Neighbourhood

In this article we investigate how intersecting forms of precarity shape the everyday practices of ageing-in-place developed by low-income older adults in Via Milano, a historically segregated yet rapidly transforming neighbourhood in Brescia, northern Italy. We draw on qualitative and ethnographic research to examine how diverse urban changes—both material and symbolic—affect the conditions that make ageing-in-place possible, particularly for those already positioned at the socioeconomic margins. Indeed, low-income older adults’ practices of ageing-in-place are undermined by interrelated urban transformations, including the excluding effects of an ambitious regeneration plan and the sense of insecurity they consistently associate with the neighbourhood's growing ethnic diversity. These dynamics make it difficult for them to engage in community life. At the same time, we highlight the emergence of fragile yet vital forms of solidarity—such as practices of mutual aid—that contest the forms of exclusion reinforced by urban regeneration that are affecting low-income older adults. We therefore challenge normative assumptions about older adults’ autonomy and reveal how precarization unfolds across spaces, bodies and social relations. Ageing, we argue, must be rethought as a situated and politicized experience shaped by the material and symbolic regeneration of urban areas that has been fostered by neoliberalism.