The Paradox of Productive Aging: Social Work Practice Between Inclusion and Inequality in South Korea

This article explores how productive ageing programmes both support and constrain older adults in a low-income Seoul community. Based on three years of participant observation and 62 interviews, it shows how welfare organizations and frontline social workers translate policy through performance pressures, capacity-based expectations, and responsibilization. I describe this tension as the Productive Ageing Governance Paradox (PAGP). While these programmes offer material and relational resources, they may also produce stigma, unequal participation, and withdrawal. The findings highlight the contradictions of productivist welfare and their implications for gerontological social work practice and policy.