About Us

Transdisciplinary research project and policy lab.
We identify policies of resilience.

#Migration #Fertility #LifeCourse #Ageing

The dynamics of the ageing of European societies and our era of escalating crises are the two cornerstones in this project. First, social inequalities in old age are very much a function of circumstances and choices made at a younger age and across the life-span, as well as of stereotypical assumptions, expectations and beliefs about older people, ageing and old age. Hence ageing must be viewed in terms of a life course approach. This is both because political decisions simultaneously impact the lives of both younger and older citizens, which will necessarily affect wellbeing and survival (period effects), and because the health, family and occupational status of older age groups change with improved conditions and prolonged life expectancy (cohort effects). Instead of thinking exclusively about ageing policies, be it pension or health care, all future policies must now be geared towards the life course perspective.

Secondly, given inevitable crises and inherent uncertainties, new policies – and revisions of old ones – ought to be resilience enhancing. They should enable both citizens and service providers to cope and adapt to whatever the next shock will be. A focus on resilience means that policies are thought of in terms of proactive planning, adaptability, flexibility and where possible, prevention, rather than post-hoc solutions to challenges related to the ageing of the population. But they must also factor in linked lives through families, social networks, environment, communities, nation states and also supra-national entities, such as the European Union (EU). By thinking of both life course and resilience together, this project will establish how policies could improve so that individuals of all ages can become better prepared for crises and unexpected shocks: whether this be an individual crisis (e.g. unexpected exposure to unemployment, illness, or loneliness); or a societal crisis (e.g. inflation, mass migration, or natural catastrophes). Resilience means that our policy-generating system – from education and health care to employment and family policies – must also be resilient for all living generations.

A key ambition of FutuRes is to establish a transdisciplinary policy lab, a platform where decision-makers from research, politics, business and civil society engage with the project and work closely together to elaborate evidence-informed solutions based on project results.