OLTRE LA PENSIONE: LA COSTRUZIONE DI SENSO DEL LAVORO PONTE*

This chapter reports preliminary findings from an ongoing qualitative meta-synthesis on bridge employment, paid work undertaken after exit from one’s main career job and before full retirement. Despite decades of research, the field remains fragmented across definitions, typologies, and explanatory frames with limited integrative, interpretive synthesis of lived experiences. We address this gap by metasynthesizing qualitative studies to illuminate how older workers interpret and manage the retirement transition, giving meaning to the continuation of work activity. Following a meta-ethnographic, inductive approach, we analyzed 16 studies spanning healthcare, academia, manufacturing, services, and public administration in predominantly Western contexts. We conducted open coding, reciprocal translation across studies, and back-to-data checks; because the synthesis is in progress, we present early first-order codes rather than second-order meta-concepts. Three preliminary thematic axes stand out: bridge employment operates as an identity mechanism that preserves and reconfigures the professional self, authenticity and hybrid identity; intergenerational mentoring as generativity; digitalization and techno-ageism. This chapter contributes (i) theoretically, by advancing an interpretive, multi-level reading of meaning-making in latecareer transitions; and (ii) practically, by translating emergent themes into HRM design cues and multilevel age-inclusive countermeasures including job design, stigma-free upskilling, structured mentoring, and governance of phased pathways.