Paper short abstract:

Through an ethnographic study of two co-creation initiatives, wherein active older citizens help frail older people to get out and about, the paper explores how co-governance and active citizenship transform old age and the provision of care.

Paper long abstract:

Recent years has seen a transformation in governmental discourse from new public management to co-governance (Pestoff & Brandsen 2013). With co-governance, citizens are urged to participate in both the execution of welfare services as well as the design of local policies and initiatives.

This coincides with a global shift in population composition. Older people today live longer and are more active, healthy and independent than previously. But retirement age has hitherto remained rather stable in Europe, which means that the many active retired people are increasingly invoked to engage in care practices through active ageing policies (e.g. European Commission 2011).

The paper explores how active citizenship is practiced amongst older people volunteering in Denmark. The author has conducted participant observations at two co-creation initiatives, which focus on getting frail older people out and about with the help of active, older citizens, either by biking on rickshaws or by pushing wheelchairs. The author contributes with an ethnographic approach to the debate about co-governance and active citizenship amongst the old. This approach highlights a contested practice, where the volunteers engage in a specific form of citizenship that they both find rewarding and necessary due to cuts in welfare services, as well as highly problematic, because they feel that they become part of a withdrawal of public care. Furthermore, the paper asks if citizenship has become a prerogative for those with the capacity to be active and caring, and if so, what becomes of citizenship once frailty sets in.