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This qualitative intuitive inquiry into residential care in Sweden discusses effects of social and spatial connections and disconnections during the Covid-19 pandemic. Interviews were carried out with 11 residents living in three residential care homes. Observations and spatial analyses complemented the interviews. The study investigated residents’ experience of the altered use of architectural space during the different phases of the coronavirus pandemic. Restrictions comprised, in general, that public areas were emptied, while residents were confined to their private apartments 24 hours a day. This created an entirely different caring architecture and challenged the usual care model of community. However, many residents said that staying in their apartments around the clock was an experience that was very similar to ordinary days in residential care, since they normally stayed long hours in their apartments. However, the residents’ disconnection from local information about the disease created a situation of great ambiguity and uncertainty about the progress of the pandemic and the state of the disease in the home. The interviewees claimed nevertheless that they had not been particularly worried about the situation. They had continued with normal leisure activities to make the time pass. It seems as though the disconnection from most of the spaces outside their apartments, as well as from staff, family and fellow residents, made it possible for them to disconnect themselves from awareness of the dangers of the disease caused by Covid-19. © 2024 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

The Swedish Social Services Act (SFS 2001:453) stipulates since 1982 that the municipal Social Committee should become well acquainted with the living conditions in the municipality. They should also participate in urban planning, and in cooperation with other public bodies, organizations, associations and individuals promote good living environments in the municipality. The development, planning and design of good living environments for older people is an endeavour of great complexity that demands collaboration between many actors. Housing and care for older people is an important area in which social servicesand urban planning could benefit from collaboration. Planning for older people has recently been indicated as urgent and necessary, especially in the light of changed demography in which the proportion of older people is increasing. A built environment that accommodates older people’s everyday needs embraces issues such as age-friendliness, care, socio-spatial inequality, inclusion, and innovation. This research program, CollAge, investigates cross-sectoral collaboration in Swedish municipalities between social eldercare, urban planning and Senior Citizens’ Councils as regards housing and care. With diverse qualitative methodologies the multidisciplinary team of scholars in social work, architecture and urban planning explore how eldercare interventions and services are managed and understood in municipal urban planning and development, and how older people’s preferences can contribute to improved quality of care in social services and housing provision. The ultimate aim of the programme is to develop a methodological tool – CollAge – to support, facilitate and structure collaboration between the three actors.

This qualitative ethnographic study presents how intergenerational relationships have shaped the architecture of housing in the former apartheid township Kuisebmond in Walvis Bay, Namibia. The township housing, which was designed for nuclear families, now accommodates multiple generations. The original, small, single-family dwellings have become family houses by horizontal additions and extensions. The plots are often skilfully developed according to the families’ needs. In some cases, they have become impressive buildings, housing many individuals. Since formal housing provision has not been able to keep pace with urbanisation, informal housing has been constructed in the form of backyard shacks on the plots of the former township dwellings. These often mimic the former township housing units, albeit on a very small scale. Formal housing, reconstructed or not, together with backyard shacks, constitutes a social geography of intergenerational relations of the extended family. This pattern of urban restructuring affords a scaffolding for extended family needs and an architecture of resistance to apartheid social engineering. The paper reveals an important lesson for housing providers, which is intended as a critical commentary on the persistent tendency of present-day government to continue with the formula of mass-housing with spatially limited single-family dwellings as the former township houses. © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group., Open access.

The number of African older people who live permanently in urban areas is growing. This qualitative ethnographic study explores how older people employ welfare strategies, often involving members of the extended family in mutual care and support. These welfare strategies are emplaced; in this case, in different housing types in a former township in Namibia - Kuisebmond in Walvis Bay. Older people stay in former township houses, in backyard shacks or other rentals, or at an old-age home. Government welfare that was adjusted to family needs appeared in similar shapes in these housing types, such as access to better schools. Older people were both caregivers and receivers of care in these efforts. Taking care of grandchildren while their parents migrated for work was a mutuality of informal support that was highly beneficial to all involved. The non-contributory pensions facilitated many strategies by alleviating risks. Access to high quality housing and government healthcare made urban living a feasible alternative that challenged rural living. The study concludes that housing is a strategic welfare space where formal and informal welfare are optimised in various ways. Older individuals contribute to a large extent to the adjustment, maintenance, and development of these joint spaces., open access

This ethnographic study explores an old age home in a former township in Walvis Bay, Namibia as an institution to investigate its potential to be interwoven in community care services for older adults. Interviews with older adults from the community revealed highly negative opinions about the residence that equated it to an institution. These opinions are compared with conditions in the OAH and the residents’ views. The old age home was much more heterogenous as regards the composition of residents than what was perceived by older adults who lived in the community, who considered the home an option only for people who were childless or had been abandoned. Older adults who voluntarily lived alone in the home represented a new lifestyle that challenged the traditional family care practice that is the norm in later life. There was however some truth to the interviewees’ perceptions of coercive elements, both in terms of practices and architectural design. The paper argues that it is necessary to reduce the stigma that prevents residential care from being an accepted part of community care and a housing option in the future. The study result shows a number of potentialities that can contribute to this. © 2021 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC., open access

This qualitative study presents how intergenerational relationships have spatially shaped the former apartheid township Kuisebmond in Walvis Bay, Namibia. The apartheid housing, which was designed for nuclear families, now accommodates multiple generations. People in different age cohorts are distributed differently in space. People in late later life lived in the former township housing units, whilst people in early later life lived in backyard shacks or other rentals. Certain patterns of cohabitation with younger relatives were discernible. It is highly likely that the extended family will be an important facet of Namibian urban life in the foreseeable future, since traditional family patterns have been interpreted in an urbanised form. It is of great importance that housing can accommodate various versions of the extended family, necessary for family existence and intergenerational obligations of resource pooling. © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group., open access

This is a qualitative case study of care work in a liminal space, specifically the case of an extra-care housing residence, which is an innovative housing alternative for elderly people in need of care in Sweden. The study is an exploration of social care workers' perceptions about their workplaces and their understandings of themselves, which are shaped by their embeddedness in architectural space. The extra-care housing residence appeared as a liminal space in which two dominant spaces – home care services and residential care – underpinned the staff's perceptions of an unclear workplace and their identity work. © 2021 The Author, open access

It is often assumed that sub-Saharan African urban migrants return in later life to the villages from which they originated. This article challenges this model of circular migration by exploring the strategies of older adults who live permanently in urban areas. The empirical material comes from ethnographic case studies in two industrial towns formed by the apartheid and colonial housing policies of the 1950s and 1960s: Kuisebmond in Walvis Bay, Namibia, a former apartheid ‘location’; and Walukuba in Jinja, Uganda, a former ‘African’ rental estate. Older adults’ housing situation and its significance for their strategies and choices in later life provide the focus. The results show that even if many strategies appeared that are often associated with a return to the rural place of origin, for many the move back to the village was not a viable option. Participants in the study nurtured contacts with their places of origin, for example by making regular visits, sending remittances, contributing to housing in the village and receiving relatives in town. It is argued that these strategies, together with urban advantages–in particular a good housing situation–must be understood as translocal optimisation, in which potentialities emerge from an assemblage of various actors in different, connected locales. The optimal situation in which to age–in rural or urban areas–is a product of co-emergent actors and not necessarily an individual choice on the part of the older adult. The study concludes that urban living in later life seems to be an alternative choice for a group of older adults and must be acknowledged. © 2020, © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group., open access

This article examines the space–time situatedness of residing within extra-care housing (ECH) in Sweden. EHC constitutes an example of ordinary housing but is often categorized, along with senior housing, as “in-between housing.” What differentiates the extra-care housing from the ordinary is an age limit for moving in, the provision of communal facilities, and the presence of staff at certain times each week. Two housings with different environmental and architectural conditions have been analyzed through spatial analyses, observations, and interviews with residents (n = 18). The article concludes that the two different assemblings enabled two very different possibilities for accessing “safe aging.” One offered opportunities for the continuation of identities which contributed to feelings of safety, and one demanded the reconstitution of identities for developing meaning in the new housing., open access

Physical activity is often described as being important for people of all ages, but what different people mean when they talk about physical activity is unclear. A phenomenographic method was used to analyze how 13 older people and 17 professionals answer the question, "If I say physical activity, what does the concept mean to you?" as part of semi-structured interviews conducted in four assisted living facilities in two different municipalities. We identified a number of different perceptions of physical activity, with the older people and professionals having different responses. Elderly and professionals alike, define physical activity as a requirement for life and as an opportunity to maintain the body although they define the concepts in different ways. Elderly define the concept as a way to create meaning and the professionals have the attitude that the concept means everyday activities. The concept of physical activity may be defined in many different ways. This study has shown that elderly and professionals do not define physical activity in the same way. Therefore, professionals need to be aware of these differences when talking with elderly about individual needs in everyday life.

Architecture is hard stuff. It is formed by walls, roofs, floors, all components of hard materials, stone, glass and wood. It distributes people in space and directs their doings and movements. Institutions are even harder stuff. Order is pushed a step further by the coerciveness of discursive architectural models and caring practices, restricting options to certain ways of thinking and acting. This book illuminates how people and spaces negotiate, and often challenge, regularities and patterns embedded in the meeting between architecture and institutions. It contains a number of essays by authors from disciplines such as human geography, architecture, planning, design, social work and education. The contributions discuss different examples from institutions in which care is carried out, such as assisted living facilities, residential care for children, psychiatric care facilities, hospitals, and prisons. By adopting a non-representational perspective, emergent practices render visible capacities of being flexible and mouldable, in which institutional architecture is defied, contested and transformed. New situations appear which transgress physical space in partnership with those who populate it, whether humans or non-humans. This book reveals the relational and transformative conditions of care architecture and the ways in which institutions transform (or not) into caring architecture.

Architecture is hard stuff. It is formed by walls, roofs, floors, all components of hard materials, stone, glass and wood. It distributes people in space and directs their doings and movements. Institutions are even harder stuff. Order is pushed a step further by the coerciveness of discursive architectural models and caring practices, restricting options to certain ways of thinking and acting. This book sets out to illuminate how people and spaces negotiate, and often challenge, regularities and patterns embedded in the meeting between architecture and institutions. It contains a number of essays by authors from disciplines such as human geography, architecture, planning, design, social work and education. The essays discuss different examples from institutions in which care is carried out; assisted living facilities, residential care for children, psychiatric care facilities and hospitals. By adopting a non-representational perspective, emergent practices render visible capacities of being flexible and mouldable, in which institutional architecture is defied, contested and transformed. New situations appear which transgress physical space in partnership with those who populate it, whether humans or non-humans. This book reveals the relational and transformative conditions of care architecture and the way in which institutions transform (or not) into Caring Architecture.

Free choice in elderly care services is a debated issue. Using the theoretical support of philosophers of free will, this paper explores free choice in relocation to residential care. The three dominant perspectives within this field of philosophy, libertarianism, determinism and compatibilism, are applied from the perspective of the older individual to the process of moving. Empirical data were collected through qualitative interviews with 13 older individuals who had recently moved into residential care. These individuals had made the choice to move following either a health emergency or incremental health problems. In a deterministic perspective they had no alternative to moving, which was the inevitable solution to their various personal problems. A network of people important to them assisted in the move, making the choice possible. However, post-move the interviewees’ perspective had changed to a libertarian or compatibilist interpretation, whereby although the circumstances had conferred little freedom regarding the move, the interviewees reported a high degree of self-determination in the process. It appeared that in order to restore self-respect and personal agency, the older individuals had transformed their restricted choice into a choice made of free will or freer will., Funding agencies:This project has been funded by Vetenskapsradet, the Swedish Research Council (2009-1460).

The number of older residents in group homes for people with intellectual disability (ID) is increasing. This interview study was focused on how group home staff addresses issues of ageing and being old among people with ID. Twelve members of staff at four different group homes in Sweden were interviewed. Findings revealed old age as something unarticulated in the group home. Group home staff felt unprepared to meet age-related changes in residents. The study also revealed that group home staff had a one-tracked way of describing the process of ageing among people with ID, seemingly rooted in a medical paradigm of disability. This study suggests that there is a need to raise issues and give guidance related to ageing and ID in disability policy documents in order to support the development of a formal culture that addresses old age and ID in disability services., Vid tiden för disputation förelåg publikationen som manuskript

The aim of this article is to explore how older people with intellectual disability (ID), who live in group accommodation, describe their lived experience in relation to ageing and later life. The study adopted a phenomenological approach, based on the concept of life-world. Individual, qualitative interviews were conducted with twelve people with ID (five men, seven women), between the ages of 48 and 71 (m=64), who lived in four different group accommodation units in southern Sweden. A descriptive phenomenological analysis method was used, which disclosed a structure consisting of themes and subthemes. The findings of the study reveal the informants’ lived experience of ageing and later life as a multifaceted phenomenon, expressed through the two themes, “age as a process of change” and “existential aspects of ageing”, each with three sub themes. along with six substantialising[SK1] subthemes. The body is an essential element in their experience of ageing and growing old, and in how this experience is expressed. The study also finds social, cultural and historical dimensions of the life-world to be important in the informants’ experience of ageing and later life. This supports understanding of the existence of a collective life-world for older people with ID, the unique experiences the informants share because of their disability and its consequences for their life course.

We investigate how different mealtime situations help shape teenager and staff subjectivities in two Swedish residential care homes and a special school for girls and boys, 12–15 years old, with social, emotional, and behavioural difficulties. Three mealtime networks are analysed using concepts from actor–network theory, treating architectural space and artefacts, as well as teenagers and staff, as actors. The architectural spaces in the kitchen and dining room were first created for other purposes than residential care for troubled youth (i.e. a former farm, hospital, and preschool) and have been adapted to be more homelike while coping with housing and feeding 20 or more people. The original architectural spaces as well as activities before mealtimes were powerful actors in the mealtime network, causing different subjectivities to emerge in the translations. The subjectivities emerge in the first network as offenders/guards, in the second network as small children/nannies, and in the third network as guests/service staff. The different translations in the three meal networks create different mobilization opportunities for the teenagers concerning responsibility and normality.

Special Issue: Nordic light on housing for older people

This paper presents an analysis of two short-term care facilities with support of Actor-Network Theory with the aim to reveal performative processes in different networks in buildings in use. The two facilities differed in architectural design which was expected to influence the care model and organisation. One facility was larger and accommodated four patients/residents in double-rooms together with permanent residents who stayed in single-rooms. The other was smaller and accommodated only short-term care in single-rooms. The study revealed that the latter received more care-demanding people than the other. The size and the type of patients/residents influenced the social environment. The larger one was more busy and lively than the smaller. However, the analysis did not show any difference in quality of care or ambiance. Both facilities were valued as either good or bad by different residents or staff members. The study concludes that therapeutic values and outcomes are defined and redefined in the ongoing performances of everyday interactions.

Background Urine incontinence (UI) has been the focus of a considerable number of research projects; yet, there is no evidence that the research has had an impact on the prevalence of UI. Despite great impact on daily living, women seem to be reluctant to seek help from professionals or talk about the problem. Apart from this, scholars have noted that healthcare practitioners rarely ask older women about this health aspect and seem to minimise the problem when confronted with it. Aim The purpose of the study was to explore how meaning of UI was discursively constructed and negotiated by women bothered with long-term UI in the context of research interviews. Method Seven women aged 60–65 living in the Faroe Islands were interviewed to elaborate on daily living with long-term UI. The interview texts were analysed by means of discourse analysis. Results Three main themes emerged from the interviews. All the women related the disorder to their age and positioned themselves within the category ‘old women’ for whom UI was considered a normal condition. At the same time, they opposed to the idea that the condition was inevitable and accused their general practitioners of negligence by failing to take their complaints seriously. They felt ashamed of being incontinent and seemed to subject themselves to moral and aesthetic views about people who were not able to control their bladder function. Conclusion All the women used different cultural discourses to make meaning of UI and continuously negotiated these meanings. Avoiding public exposure of their leaking problem restricted their daily living, and the embarrassment of not being able to control their bladder function seemed to overrule any wish of actively dealing with their present condition., Funding agencies: Faroese Research Council

When older people move into an assisted living facility they have to make a highly restricted selection of what assets to bring to their new home. This presentation aims to give an analysis of these assets with the support of Bourdieu’s concept of habitus. Habitus refers to the lifestyle, values, tastes and dispositions of a particular social group that are attained through the activities and experiences of everyday life. The presentation is based on qualitative data that were collected by interviews and observations in the participants’ bedsitting-rooms in the facilities. The study revealed strong similarities in what the participants had brought, both at a specific point of time and over time. Most participants were born during the 20s and their life-course was epitomized by a small variety of furniture items and decorations that mirrored the fashions dominating each decade of the 20th century. Various items reflected the working-class background that most of the participants shared. For instance, a colorful aspect echoed the interest in art that was encouraged by the working-class movement as part of its educational ambitions for workers from the 30s onwards in Sweden. The study revealed few gender differences, with the exception of leisure time activities that the participants had pursued. The presentation concludes that the habitus lingers on and also influences the choices made during a move to assisted living. It becomes, as such, normative also in the context of the last home in life., Att skingra hemmet. Tingens förändrade betydelse under livets sena skeden och övergångar

This presentation conveys the history of the present-day urban pattern in north-western Namibia as a coproduction of missionary and South African healthcare and warfare endeavors. In the late 19th century Finnish missionaries arrived in Namibia. Over the next fifty years their evangelical and healthcare activities proliferated in a number of places in the area in question, where before there had been conglomerations of scattered farms. The missionary activities included construction of physical infrastructure, such as clinics and churches. From 1966 the South African apartheid government entered the scene. The next twenty years saw a governmental healthcare provision that was associated with the South African war against the liberation movement. Not only army bases but also hospitals were constructed for strategic military reasons. Since the missionaries were identified by the South Africans as taking the liberation movement’s side in this conflict, the South African physical infrastructure was constructed in the same places as the missionary stations. These bases and hospitals/clinics attracted people who were looking for jobs, with the consequence that settlements started to grow in these places. The South Africans’ administration also contributed to the burgeoning urbanization with the provision of housing for administrative staff and military personnel. Private and public companies opened workshops and shops which further attracted local people in search for jobs. This consolidated the geography that the missionaries had initiated, and generated an urban landscape in north-western Namibia which now, twenty years after the war ended and Namibian independence was gained, has evolved into municipalities.

Architectural space is a collaborator and knowledge producer in care to older people. Architectural space is also a therapeutic landscape that shapes care in different forms and designs (Conradson, 2005; Curtis et al., 2007). This presentation compares two different architectural designs of temporary care facilities, with the aim of showing how architecture contributed to two different therapeutic landscapes and caring practices although both facilities offered respite care and intermediate care. The analysis builds on organizational theory and Actor-Network Theory (Czarniawska and Hernes, 2005). Among the architectural features that differed were double rooms compared with single rooms, which had an impact on the allocation of rooms to different patients and the allocation of patients to the facilities. Another difference was that the double rooms were located in a permanent elderly care facility, while the singles were in a dedicated facility. These two situations engendered entirely different caring encounters and knowledge about individual patients which emerged from interactions between people, space and materialities. The conclusion from the comparison was that architectural space produces knowledge about caring organizations whereby they learn about themselves, their practices and their patients., In session: The geographies of architecture, knowledge and care Institutions and architecture are intertwined in a way that bypasses the intentional architectural object, especially in spaces intended for institutional care. Locations, buildings, rooms, regulations, policies and organisational structure frame the way in which care is provided and how the experience of receiving care is perceived and performed. The theoretical insights behind this approach derive mainly from Foucault, Goffman and Deleuze & Guattari, e.g. regarding what institutions do to people, how people cope with institutional framings and how space, objects and practices are entangled. This session seeks to highlight architecture as a dynamic location for knowledge formation, thus relating it to the conference theme as a co-producer of space together with its users. Furthermore, the session seeks to draw architecture and geography more closely together, looking beyond architecture and buildings as mere objects and instead applying a relational spatial perspective (Dovey 2013, Jacobs & Merriman 2011, Murdoch 2006). Our objective is to introduce different perspectives into the geographical field of knowledge regarding institutional care by examining how care organisations and practices may emerge in and from architectural space. Although architecture is comprised of tangible, solid matter, often producing small-scale spatialities, it nevertheless defies the restricted boundaries created by itself. As a rule, it transgresses its own physical content in partnership with those who populate it, whether humans or non-humans (e.g. Yaneva 2012). This makes it possible to talk about architecture in terms of experiences of space (e.g. Ballantyne 2004). This session aims to present examples of knowledge formation in certain architectural realms where care is provided in different modalities. The session presenters, who originate from the fields of architecture, geography, history and social work, tog

In Sweden, as in many other countries, students that schools are unable to handle are removed from their local environments and sometimes from their parental homes and moved to rural residential care homes. Although ‘home’ and ‘school’ are clearly considered places where problems exist, it is not these places that are scrutinised and subjected to change, but the students. How do the change of place and the performance of the alternative ‘home’ and alternative ‘school’ contribute to the students’ adjustment? In this article we explore the significance of place in these measures and ask questions about how possibilities for agency and subjectivities are produced. The article is based on an ethnographic study of two residential care homes for troubled youth, aged 12 to 15. The results show how complex assemblages produce opportunities and limitations for care and education and how location and buildings partake in the constitution of possible subjectivities and agency. The analysis inspired by Actor-Network Theory (ANT) can capture mobility and flow, an important aspect when studying complexity. This kind of analysis enables a study of the complex arrangements for disadvantaged youth that takes into consideration not just social interactions but also materiality.

Forskning om det särskilda boendets arkitektur är forskning om hur fysiska miljöer kan stötta svaga och sköra äldre med stora omsorgsbehov. Idag har ca 86 800 personer en bostad där service och omsorg är integrerat i det som kallas särskilt boende. Det är ett av de stora ekonomiska åtagandena för kommunerna och kostnaderna förväntas öka under de närmaste årtiondena. Dessa kostnadsökningen är i fokus för kommunernas intresse men det pågår också ett dynamiskt utvecklingsarbete i många kommuner där man letar efter sätt att höja kvaliteten i bostäder och omsorg. Den arkitektoniska utformningen är en faktor som kan bidra till ökad kvalitet.

This presentation aims to discuss three situations I experienced in an ethnographic fieldwork about care work in an assisted living facility in Sweden. The three situations explore various emotional aspects, what impact and influences they had on my fieldwork. The presentation makes a cross analysis of the emotional content and the space where the situation took place, including how they interfere with each other. A man with dementia. This situation took place in the man’s bathroom where the carer helped him with his hygiene. It included emotional aspects that had an impact on the ethical reconsiderations I did before going on with the study. They also brought aspect of privacy and exposure to the foreground in a fruitful way, a theme I later developed in an article in Ageing & Society. A blind man. This situation happened in the dining-room in the facility. This man was very depressed and only wanted to lie in his bed. Because he risked developing pneumonia, the staff tried to make him be up as much as possible although he did not want to. In this situation he protested vividly. I could mirror my feelings in the staff experience of the situation so I deepened my understanding of ethical aspects of their work. A woman with dementia. In this situation the woman was helped by me on and off the toilet in her bathroom. Her fragile body evoked the same feelings as a child evokes. This highly ambiguous situation made me reflect on the risks of infantilizing older people because of benevolence. The presentation will conclude with a summary of the various ways of benefitting of emotional experiences in a fieldwork, mainly ethical guidance and theoretical impact.

This study is a qualitative interview study about the household possessions that elderly women and men brought with them when moving into assisted living. The move implied a substantial reduction of their possessions since, in all cases, they had left a larger dwelling than the one they moved to. The study gives a glimpse into the everyday life of the oldest old in assisted living. The things the elderly participants brought were of three types; cherished objects, representations of who they were, and mundane objects. The most important objects indicated by the elderly often belonged to the third type, and were preferred for the significance they had for the everyday life of the individual. These objects revealed a circumscribed but dignified life in their private bed-sitting room, often in solitude, where the elderly individuals pursued various interests and small-scale activities. However, this life was organized and preferred by the individuals themselves, in accordance with the principles of resident autonomy and individual choice that are promoted in assisted living. The author suggests that these self-engaged pursuits can contribute to bridging the gap between disengagement and activity theories. The study results also contribute to making visible the private life of the oldest old in assisted living., Att skingra hemmet. Tingens förändrade betydelse under livets senad skeden och övergångar

Older people with intellectual disability (ID) are a growing population in Sweden as in the rest of the western world. The challenges to understand what it means to be old for an individual who have lived her whole life with ID need to be addressed. The aim of this study is to explore how older people ID who live in group accommodations describe their lived experience in relation to ageing and later life. The study has a phenomenological approach, based on the concept of life-world. Individual qualitative interviews were conducted with twelve people (five men, seven women) with ID, between 48 to 71 years (m=64), who lived in four different group accommodations in southern Sweden. A semi-structured interview guide was used. The descriptive phenomenological analysis method used discloses a structure consisting of themes and subthemes. The findings of the study reveal the informants’ lived experience of ageing and later life as a multifaceted phenomenon expressed through the two themes “Age as a process of change” and “Existential aspects of ageing” and six substantializing subthemes. The own body is essential for both how ageing and becoming old is experienced and for how this experience are expressed. The study also finds social, cultural and historical dimensions of the life-world to be important in the informants’ experience of ageing and later life and manifest the existence of a collective life-world for older people with ID, being the unique experiences that the informants share because of their disability and its life course consequences.