Christopher Zraunig

CHRISTOPHER ZRAUNIG, then a graduate student at Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, was awarded funding in April 2022 to aid research on “Queer aging: On the possibilities and constraints of diversity work in German geriatric institutions,” supervised by Dr. Carolyn Rouse. “Many seniors live hidden”, reads the headline of a German newspaper from May 2021, pointing to the fears LGBTIQ+ seniors face when entering long-term care facilities due to anticipated discrimination and isolation. To attend to such concerns, Berlin’s LGBTIQ+ resource center has introduced a range of diversification initiatives to facilitate good aging outside the heteronormative and ableist grammars of the “successful aging paradigm.” These initiatives include intergenerational housing projects and a quality seal that is awarded to geriatric institutions which undergo a scripted diversification process. After the completed accreditation, an institution is awarded with the seal, which signifies LGBTQI+ sensitivity, attention for diversity, and inclusion of minorities. This research project addresses three main questions around gerontic values: 1) How do LGBTQI+ folks imagine and enact good later life outside the successful aging paradigm? 2) How is “diversity” enacted as a value in gerontic and geriatric settings and what are its effects? 3) Besides the effectiveness of diversification, also its productiveness is being explored: what new norms are being produced when diversity becomes a gerontic value? Drawing on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Berlin, this research project provides empirical answers to these questions around gerontic ethics.