Abandoned identity. Analysis of neglect in geriatric institutions in Spain

This project seeks to understand neglect among the elderly in the Spanish State. Starting from the idea of ​​a fragile life, we focus on the analysis of the circumstances that surround people who lack the resources and social ties to support themselves, reasons that motivate their intervention due to the social protection mechanisms that act on the elderly. However, among the diversity of situations that occur around the geriatric and care network, the abandoned appear as people who detach themselves from the supports that are enabled for their support. Thus, they are reduced to forms of presence without recognition, without a life project, and forgotten. The structure of the research process is based on three dimensions of analysis: (1) the construction of identity of abandoned lives, (2) the institutional management that intervenes in abandonment, and (3) the social and cultural meaning of the remains. for the formulation of an interpretive framework of abandonment. At a methodological level, the research will be carried out with the use of ethnography, allowing a combination of different data production techniques: participant observation, documentary analysis and open interviews. This will be accompanied by conceptual work that allows us to reflect on how sociology can analyze the realities that proliferate on the edges of the modern social order.

Gabriel Gatti Universidad del País Vasco/EHU Predoctoral Formación de Profesorado Universitario (FPU) MINECO