The making of ‘the elderly’: Constructing the subject of care

•Older people are backgrounded and silenced in care discourses.•Elderly people are constructed as the other, the passive recipient of care.•Elderly are constructed as distinct group with generalisable, objective needs.•Needs, wishes and desires are defined (as objective truths) by those not being old.•Social Policy is built on the construction of the idealised, passive elderly person.

The provision and arrangement of care for elderly people is one of the main challenges for the future of European welfare states. In both political and public discourses elderly people feature as the subjects who are associated with particular needs, wishes and desires and for whom care needs to be guaranteed and organised. Underlying the cultural construction of the care regime and culture is an ideal type model of the elderly person. This paper analyses the discursive construction of elderly people in the discourses on care in Austria. An understanding of how elderly people as subjects, their wishes and needs and their position within society are constructed enables us to analyse, question and challenge the current dominant care arrangements and its cultural embeddings. The paper demonstrates the processes of silencing, categorisation and passivation of elderly people and it is argued that the socio-discursive processes lead to a particular image of the elderly person which consequently serves as the basis on which the care regime is built.