Political Participation and Activism of older people in Spain through collective action

Abstract

This paper contributes to identifying and explaining which factors (individual, organisational and contextual) condition the collective action of older people, its intensity and modalities of participation. The two modalities of collective political participation analysed are participation in highly formalised socio-political organisations and in protest events promoted by organisational structures linked to new social movements. A sample of 20 representatives/spokespersons from different organisational structures of older people, to whom the semi-structured in-depth interview technique is applied, serves as the basis for developing a multi-method strategy that allows us to identify a set of relevant factors, in the individual dimension in this case, that predispose to involvement as an activist. In addition to analyses focused on the individual dimension of the person, it is necessary to relate these to organisational and contextual factors for the most complete analysis possible of the object of study.