Entering a contested terrain

The central subject of this book is to follow the ageing process by addressing a variety of its implicit social dimensions, and to do this by concentrating on a particular geographical region, the Mediterranean basin. At first, to study the demographic and social developments in such a large geographical unit seems to cause no specific difficulties in mobilising detailed and continuous projections as well as analysing its far-reaching sociopolitical dimensions. The immediate importance of this subject of ageing is even more apparent today. Considerations can start from some essential and undisputed observations about the general situation of ageing societies and particular constraints and specialities affecting the Mediterranean region.

Such observations can be summed up as follows: population ageing and the onset of a decline in the working-age population has today undoubtedly become an increasing concern for most governments. Across the Mediterranean, this phenomenon has exposed a great variation in its level and pace, mainly determined by a country's stage in the second demographic transition and by the scope and timing of the country's fertility decline. Such a development has important and far-reaching implications across all spheres of society. And since these processes are without any historical precedent, in order to meet these challenges, new policies and programmes are urgently required.

At first this task appears easy in having only to deal with an obviously welldefined geographical area to which our comparative social research is directed. However, we should not expect a straightforward way to approach the topic of ageing in the Mediterranean – it is characterised by a variety of cultural conceptions, persistent images and long-term powerful visions that are inseparably bound to a comprehensive and differentiated understanding of this area. To prove how and in which ways such a heritage will affect and influence the present situation of the differently ageing Mediterranean societies is, therefore, a useful and enlightening perspective for comparison.

• • The first step into this broad field of research can be made by simply asking the obvious question, what is meant by ‘the Mediterranean’, and how is the area more exactly defined?

• • I then elaborate on the various ways of conceptualising the Mediterranean, in terms of perceiving its environmental and ecological conditions as unifying dimensions.