Real retirement is a combat sport

To work is a social norm so powerful that the right to inactivity, even won at the end of a life of toil, still has a slight taste of scandal. Some pensioners manage to resist, but at the price of challenging even the very value of work.

1. Senior's guide

The good retiree remains productive: he is involved with others, help those around him and, with an unmatched zeal, he continues to work. Despite this good will, he remains indebted: even the use of his money is no longer free: it is now a gift from the community, or an inheritance to save for younger generations.

2. But some pensioners are trying to refuse this model

Some pensioners oppose the right to direct their retirement as they see fit to the right of collective interference.

3. Because the end of career has put the job back in its place

The disillusionment of the last years of work (physical suffering, setting aside, loss of reference and meaning) frees these people from their obedience to the norm: work is no longer a sacred value, and this discredit justifies an idle retirement. It is therefore the rejection of work that frees the retirement.

4. Understand pensioners’ discontent differently

What if retirees were not only demonstrating to defend their purchasing power, but also because the very principle of retirement was continually under attack?

L'étude

#GérerSonArgent

How do people experience their retirement?

Judging by the impressive number of publications on this topic, the “silver economy” is about to become an evergreen as unavoidable as a “pension system reform” by the government. But these economical and political prisms obscure the main facets of the pension topic. Because, it should be reminded, retirement remains a pensioner problem, first and foremost. How do individuals experience their transition from work to retirement? Why do some people fear it, while other people are impatiently waiting for it? What do they actually do with their retirement? Why do some people continue to work while other choose leisure? We tried to address those interrogations in our report.

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AUHTOR OF THIS STUDY

Marc-Antoine Morier - Strategy & Anthropology

Graduated from the EHESS, Marc-Antoine shares his expertise in Sociology and Anthropology with companies. He joined unknowns in 2017 to organize and realize the social sciences fieldwork.

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Marc-Antoine Morier

""Social sciences offer methods and tools to understand people. Using them is a good way to understand how and why they do what they do and say what they say.""