To older adults, a sense of control over relationships, structures and surroundings is key to living a meaningful life according to their own judgments. Through ninety-four ethnographic case studies of community dwelling older adults in Europe before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, this book provides insight into their lifeworlds in a historically situated and socio-culturally contextualized way. It highlights the importance of agency, friction between self-perceptions on age and outside impositions and the need to deconstruct old age as a homogenizing category of belonging.