FNRS 2024 calls: Thinking about work after legal retirement age

At a time when various governments are trying to get us to work until we're 67, some workers are continuing to work past the legal retirement age.

The BRIDGE-EXT project, funded by the PDR du F.R.S-FNRS, aims to gain a better understanding of these professional situations by questioning both the individual and relational reasons that contribute to continuing to work, but also the structural dynamics involved. It is for the latter reason that the researchers have developed a partnership with colleagues in French-speaking Switzerland, under the supervision of Prof. Valérie Hugentobler of the Haute Ecole de Travail Social de Lausanne (HETSL/HES-SO).

The interest of this collaboration lies in understanding post-retirement work according to differentiated political contexts where retirement systems are both fairly comparable, but also very different. How, then, are we to apprehend this work, which poses both the question of life choices and the constraints, particularly financial, that weigh on individuals today?

The research team will be made up of sociologists and anthropologists specializing in issues of aging at work. Amélie Pierre will be hired at UNamur to work on these issues, which are at the heart of current affairs.

In recent years, her scientific horizons have opened up to questions related to transmissions, life courses and temporalities, as well as to the sociology of emotions.

She is also a member of the Institut TRANSITIONS - Pôle Transitions et âges de la vie. This cluster studies the way in which these life courses are recomposed according to new social constraints and normative imperatives. It focuses on the fragility of populations at all stages of life, and also on the repercussions of political measures and mechanisms on the construction of life courses. It brings together researchers from different disciplinary backgrounds who analyze both the normative transformations affecting life courses and life-age transitions.