Ageism between the young and the aged in the Czech Republic: Who they are and what they deslike about each other?

This paper focuses on ageism between extreme age groups of the adult population in the Czech Republic in an international comparison. It builds on the findings regarding the extent of the problem of ageism and the increasing importance of age as a social characteristic in modern societies. The objective is to enrich the traditional exploration of ageism as a problem relating to seniors with an analysis of mutual intergenerational relationships. Using the perspective of social identity theory, the relationships between young people and seniors are described as the result of the forming process of the own age and generational identities of young people and seniors and the mutual comparison and estranging of these groups. To answer the research questions regarding the methods of forming identities of the youth and age and the sources of mutual ageism, an analysis of qualitative interviews with young people and seniors and quantitative data from two international surveys (European Social Survey Round 4 and the International Social Survey Programme 2013) were used. Analyses in the empirical section show that ageism is more common in the Czech Republic than in other European country, and they also indicate the specific sources of ageism in the Czech environment. The importance of mutual expectations..