I am currently writing a second book about Cuan, my fieldsite in Ireland. This will allow me to spend much more time presenting evidence for inequality, focusing on an area of social housing located in the middle of Cuan, that remains quite apart from most of this quite affluent middle-class town. Detailed study, however, reveals many nuances to any simple or dualistic presentation that just opposes these different segments of the same town. The overall rise in income and possibilities in Irish society over the last 50 years have impacted upon most of the population, though not all. Bob would never have expected to be able to live outside of social housing, having worked first as a butcher’s assistant and retired finally as a school caretaker, low paid work that precludes the ability to purchase a property. Yet in retirement, he found his true vocation as a poet and today is as comfortable at the opera as he in the betting shop.

The term class is quite a crude categorisation. I would argue that Ireland has a much stronger egalitarian ideology than here in England, laid across still evident inequalities. Many of the oral histories of individuals I recorded talk of the extreme poverty of their origins but alongside the love of literature and the arts. I didn’t feel that this film represented class mobility or a change in class identity, or even that actually Bob sees things in such terms. It seemed there was both something Irish about Bob and also much that was simply individual. This is an additional point. Bob doesn’t have to be typical of anything or anyone, but for the anthropologist, it is hugely important to acknowledge that he exists and that abstract discussions of class and inequality need to balanced by meeting people as individuals, in this case as Bob.

The film is included in the recent book I wrote with Pauline Garvey, Ageing with Smartphones in Ireland.

A while back, Pauline Garvey and myself decided to write a chapter for our book about downsizing. This means that we rather assumed that downsizing would be an evident phenomenon for the age group we are studying, mainly people in their sixties and seventies. Certainly, in Ireland there is pressure on older people; hints from the media and the state that moving to a smaller home would help free up large family homes for families with children and perhaps release equity for their own children who are finding it hard to buy their own homes.

I found that most of my informants resent such pressure, feeling that they have worked hard for and deserve their homes. Their children may be living abroad and when visiting, my informants want to host them in their own homes.  Anyway, there are no hotels in Cuan. These people often want to move from the older estates they currently live in, where houses are typically expensive to maintain. But the evidence, confirmed from interviews with estate agents, is that they are not downsizing. Rather they aspire to move to new build houses, but with at least three bedrooms. When visiting such houses I found that they use this opportunity to express their desire to be modern and youthful. Far from squeezing possessions accumulated over decades into small retirement flats, they give these away and embrace modern furnishings and styles for their bright new houses.

Similarly, while they may be getting rid of their many accumulated possessions in the process. They may use this realign themselves with modern sensibility, viewing these actions as evidence that they have embraced the modern ‘green’ environmentalist perspective. So both in moving home and in divesting themselves of possessions, it seems that, far from preparing for ageing, they are seeking ways to become more youthful and more attached to contemporary mores.

Other evidence suggests that there is only limited transfers of equity down the generations to enable younger people to buy their own homes.  It seems more common for them to suggest that their children’s families can come back and stay in these reasonably spacious homes, while they are saving money to purchase their own. Most commonly, these children really want to be able to buy a home within Cuan itself, and this is expensive.

Actual downsizing is important in relation to frailty at whatever age this arrives. Alongside the need for specialist aids, downstairs bedrooms and toilets and, when required, a move to specialist sheltered accommodation or a nursing home. But, consistent with our earlier findings, this is about physical need. Otherwise, it seems to matter little whether people are in their eighties or fifties, they no longer consider themselves as old people who have to shrink their worlds, rather they remain concerned to find strategies for updating their world and remaining contemporary.

I thought this was quite an original, even radical finding; but perhaps we have not gone far enough. A 2016 report by the UK’s NHBC Foundation called Moving insights from the over-55s based on a survey of 1,500 households who have moved home, suggests that nearly a third have actually upsized, that the most popular homes are four bedrooms and that 46% have put more money into their new homes, rather than released equity. Unfortunately, the survey is not broken down by age. It is not then surprising that terms such as rightsizing are coming to displace downsizing. What that report doesn’t do, which we hope our project will do, is delve into the deeper context that may explain why this is happening.