This article discusses the organisation of community care for older people in two rural municipalities in Slovenia, which are contrasting in terms of "wellbeing" attained. The two case studies are part of a wider research project on community care in the country, aiming to establish the typology of institutional care for older people at the level of municipality. As a follow-up to the initial research, both cases assessed the typology "on the ground". The various actors were selected by snowball sampling and interviewed about past and present forms of caring for older people. Contrary to the typology, the results of both cases show that institutional forms of care exist in both municipalities but differ in the field of cooperation among various formal and informal local care-practitioners. Care within families, still the prevalent informal care provider in both communities, hides the financial inability of locals to use some formal care services in their community. Uniform national standards for organisation of formal care notwithstanding, the results show the communities' peculiar adjustments to population ageing and their partial integration into society.

The rate of suicide remains high in Slovenia, particularly in rural settings and among farmers. As is the case with many issues faced by rural people, few social responses are developed in terms of political action, health and social services and research. In this article, the severity of farmers' suicide in Slovenia is detailed and analysed as a social problem based on the following criteria: first, the scope of the situation is considered worrying and unequal; second, normative structures are abnormally or harmfully connected to the situation; third, there is a will and a power to transform the situation because it is found unacceptable according to social ethics and values; and fourth, the implementation of social responses such as intervention programmes and collective actions. This framework enables to highlight the importance of gender (masculinities), location (rural settings), local culture (agrarian values) and occupation (farming). Priority for future policies, practice and research should focus on these social determinants of health and wellbeing in support of farming people, communities and associations.

No abstract

Contestable Demographic Reasoning Regarding Labour Mobility and MigrationThe essay provides a review of contestable demographic reasoning applied in relation to migration and mobility, in which the notion of the national population as a closed and bounded system still persists. Although free movement of people has been enshrined as one of the fundamental principles of the European Union, their mobility within it remains selective and curtailed in various ways. Drawing on selected studies of labour mobility and migration within the European Union, the authors argue that labour mobility and migration policies continue to categorise people as either more or less entitled to move across the European Union's internal borders.

The ageing in farm population in slovenia is accompanied by a diminishing interest of the younger generation in farming. Hence, measures for early retirement of farmers and assistance to young farmers were introduced in 2004 and 2005. some results of two ensuing studies are presented here: the survey Generations and Gender relations on slovenian farms (2007) and ethnographic study on intergenerational solidarity (2009). The survey findings reveal that through intergenerational assistance farm population, especially the beneficiaries of both measures, shows specific characteristics compared to other observed groups (nonfarmers): stronger reliance on their own family resources and weaker dependence on state resources. The survey findings are further upgraded by the ethnographic results, explaining more in-depth from a life-course perspective the complex dynamics and background of intergenerational assistance on family farms.