Abstract
This article analyzes mobility practices of older workers in four retirement homes. Age and older workers management is legally supervised in the French context and it aims at maintaining and enhancing the employability of over fifty employees. Efficient and prospective age management is the main issue of research in the scope because many limits and perverse effects of "good practices" and devices have been pointed out. Therefore, understanding the inefficiency of age management practices should be one of the main research objective but few studies develop such fine analysis of practices. Moreover, from an original point of view, age management can be seen as a set of mobility policies and practices. Our suggestion is thus to explore mobility practices of seniors in order to identify and understand their issues and limits. Why is it that mobility practices of older workers are not efficient to maintain their employability ? Case studies and cognitive mapping used in this exploratory research offers this detailed analysis of practices and representations. We investigated and confronted practices and circuits of representations of interviewed actors (Direction and employees of three age brackets) in four retirement homes. It reveal : 1) no effect of the potential of mobility of structures on actual practices ; 2) a critical point derived from occupational wear leading to some difficulties for older workers to understand/support and to get involved in mobility devices. Our purpose is to propose a framework to understand issues and limits of mobility practices of older workers and to enhance their efficiency.