There is increasing interest across European contexts in promoting active social lives in older age, and counteracting pathways and outcomes related to social isolation and loneliness for men and women in later life. This is evidenced within national and European level policy, including the 2021 Green Paper on Ageing and its concern with understanding how risks can accrue for European ageing populations in the relational sphere. Research indicates that life-course transitions can function as a source of these risks, leading to a range of potentially exclusionary impacts for the social relations of older men and women. Findings presented in this paper are drawn from the qualitative component of a larger European mixed-methods study on exclusion from social relations (GENPATH: A life course perspective on the GENdered PATHways of social exclusion in later life, and its consequences for health and well-being). We use data from 119 in-depth interviews from four jurisdictions: Austria, Czechia, Ireland and Spain. This research employed an approach that focused on capturing lived experienced insights related to relational change across the life course, the implications of these changes for multifaceted forms of exclusion from social relations and the role of gender in patterning these changes and implications. We focused on transitions that commonly emerged across those jurisdictions for older people: onset of ill-health, bereavement, retirement and relocation. We found that these transitions translate into multidimensional experiences of exclusion from social relations in the lives of older men and women by constraining their social networks, support networks, social opportunities and intimate relationships.

Masaryk University Faculty of Social Studies Brno Czechia Joštova 218 602 00 Brno střed Czechia

Masaryk University Faculty of Social Studies Office for Population Studies Dpt of Sociology Jostova 10 60200 Brno Czechia

National University of Ireland Galway NUI Galway Irish Centre for Social Gerontology Institute for Lifecourse and Society Corrib Village Ireland

NOVA Norwegian Social Research Oslo Metropolitan University P O Box 4 St Olavs plass NO 0130 Oslo Norway

University of Barcelona Department of Cognition Development and Educational Psychology Barcelona Spain

University of Vienna Sociology Department Rooseveltplatz 2 1090 Vienna Austria

Uniwersytet Ekonomiczny w Krakowie ul Rakowicka 27 31 510 Kraków Poland

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