Abstract EN:

This thesis focuses on the contribution of social and socio-cultural centers to social action for the elderly. How do these local actors in the animation of social life, historically taken on by the family, intervene in the care of ageing populations? The study aims to examine how the mechanisms and logics of actions applied by social centers that support this specific public, through the evolution of old age public policies, through the demographic transformations. It is through a field survey conducted among the network of Social and Sociocultural Centers of France (FCSF) and more precisely, among the Social Centers of the Pays de la Loire, that this thesis seeks to demonstrate that these local actors cannot totally escape the dominant patterns of public intervention. A context that leads them to adopt a preventive logic of ageing and "Aging Well" that challenges the principle of action designed for and with the concerned individuals. While social centers help to maintain social representations and contemporary norms of ageing, which can induce undesirable effects, they are also a resource that can be mobilized by the individual during the ageing process. In other words, it is also a question of understanding how and in what ways Social Centres participate in the experiences and pathways of ageing of their members.