Ageing, Difference and Discrimination: Property Transactions in the Crucible of Human Rights Norms

The question of group-based human rights for older people, rooted in recognition of their specific vulnerabilities, has come under the spotlight in recent years. The emergence and intensification of an international debate concerning the role of human rights norms in addressing difference and discrimination linked to ageing has culminated in the campaign for a new international convention on the rights of older people, to mirror existing group-based conventions relating to the rights of women, children and people with disabilities. At the same time, the demographic and socio-economic implications of the ‘ageing society’ have coincided with a political and policy context rooted in asset-based welfare to generate a new environment of risk around property transactions that utilise housing equity after retirement. These parallel discourses invoke competing images of the older person as a vulnerable legal subject and as a self-responsible autonomous consumer. While these tensions have to some extent been played out in debates concerning public service provision, the domain of private, market-based property transactions to liquidate housing equity (which now dominates welfare provision for older owners) has been almost exclusively underpinned by a narrative of self-responsible individualism. This paper explores the issues surrounding differential vulnerabilities as they affect older owner’s housing equity transactions, and reflects on alternative strategies to develop a coherent theoretical framework for older owners’ legal subjectivity.