Generationing relations in challenging times: Americans and Canadians in mid-life in the Great Recession

Abstract

Generation can be seen as a crossroads where multiple socioeconomic influences intersect with individual life courses. Conceptualized as a process, performed dynamically and relationally, rather than a static category, generationing builds self-identities and concepts of how the social order is expected to work. In this article the authors ask how the multilayered processes of generationing, as experienced by those in mid-life, are affected by the shock of the 2008 economic crisis in the United States and in Canada, two countries very differently touched by the crisis. The US has suffered greatly with home foreclosures, bankruptcies, continuing high unemployment and spreading poverty. Canada, by contrast, has had negligible levels of home foreclosures, few bankruptcies and lower unemployment. The data are qualitative interviews conducted specifically with those in mid-life in working and middle classes in comparable medium-sized cities in the two countries, from fall 2008 through spring 2010. The authors’ findings suggest that the shock of the economic crisis has deeply transformed the lives of those in the middle of generations and all those whose lives are linked to theirs, as well as the processes of generationing, particularly in the US, with implications for families, for societal cohesion and social order.